Chrome has come a long way since its first beta was
released in 2008. Currently sitting at the top of the desktop and mobile market
share charts, Google’s browser is flexible, feature packed, and
cross-platform. But for all its popularity Chrome is also notorious for its
habit of consuming a lot of RAM and draining battery life on laptops.
The reason for this has to do in part with something
called process isolation, which is meant to make Chrome more stable and
secure. By separating every tab, plugin, and extension into its own process, if
a single plugin or website crashes it doesn’t bring down the whole browser.
Likewise, by this same logic, if an attack takes place in one tab, it’s harder
for it to access data on another tab.
This is why you see a lot different entries for
Chrome when you open up Task Manager on your computer, and since the browser
needs to duplicate some tasks for every tab, it all adds up. Certain plugins
and extensions can also contribute to higher memory usage, and some behind the
scenes enhancements, like Chrome’s retendering feature can make loading up a
webpage faster by predicting where you’ll go to next, but it will use up some
RAM as well.
As long as you have plenty of memory it’s
all good. All of this will make your experience faster. The problem is when
Chrome’s RAM usage is limiting the amount of memory available for other apps.
Google isn't blind to these issues and is
continually improving in this area, but there are some things you can do to
curb RAM usage and keep Chrome from becoming slow and annoying. We'll also
share some 'hidden' features you can enable to get the most out of your web
browsing experience.
Manually close processes
This should be your first line of defense when
Chrome starts to feel sluggish. To see a list of running processes simply head
to the Task Manager by pressing Shift + Esc on Windows or from the Window menu
if you are on a Mac. Sort processes by memory usage and shut down anything you
don’t need.
Get rid of extensions you
don't use
Just because you needed to download an embedded
video one time it doesn’t mean you’ll need an extension for that purpose
running all the time. Be selective about the extensions you install and then be
selective about the ones you keep. You probably only need a handful of
essentials, so type chrome://extensions into the address bar, disable
the ones you don’t regularly need but want to keep handy, and delete whatever
you don’t really need anymore.
Make every plugin
click-to-play
Chrome has already started blocking Flash ads, and
will start blocking Flash by default later this year except for
several major websites. But the browser already includes a built-in
click-to-play feature that works for every plugin. To enable it go to chrome://settings,
click on Show advanced settings, and then click Content settings under Privacy.
Scroll down to the Plugins section and select ‘Let me choose when to run plugin
content’.
Make sure that “always allowed to run” isn’t enabled
in chrome://plugins as that appears to override the click-to-play
setting. Also if you see something that’s not essential in your plugins list
you can go ahead and disable or delete like we did with extensions.
One Tab and The Great
Suspender
If you tend to keep a lot of tabs open and don’t
intend to change that habit, there are a few extensions that can help. Two of
the most popular options are One Tab and The Great Suspender.
One Tab basically lets you close every open tab
with a click and converts them into a list instead. Whenever you need to access
the tabs again, you can either restore them all at once or individually by
clicking on the respective link. You can also easily export and import your
tabs as a list of URLs. Depending on how many tabs you are running and how many
scripts are running inside your tabs, moving them to OneTab can significantly
improve performance.
The Great Suspender on the other hand has a
more hands off approach as it will automatically suspend tabs that have not
been used for a while, freeing up memory and CPU that the tab was consuming.
Tabs retain their favicon and title text and can be restored by clicking
anywhere on the page when needed. You can configure how long to wait before a
tab is suspended and whitelist sites.
We should note that Google is testing a feature
called tab discarding in Chrome since version 45that replicates
more or less what The Great Suspender does, which is definitely a welcome
improvement. If enabled, tabs get automatically discarded from memory when
system memory is low, and reloaded when clicked on. In the future, Chrome will
be adding tab serializing so after suspending a tab and reloading it you can go
back exactly where you were instead of making it load fresh.
Access Chrome's Experimental
Features
If you are feeling adventurous you can play around
with Chrome's flags, which are experimental features that Google is testing but
aren’t part of the main browsing experience. To access them type chrome://flags into
the address bar. You'll see a short warning telling you these experimental
features may change, break, or disappear at any time. Here are a few we
recommend you to try:
Number of raster threads: Changing this number
from “Default” to “4” will speed up image rendering.
Enable fast tab/window close: This will run
Chrome's on unload JavaScript handler independently of the GUI to make tab
closing faster.
Enable experimental canvas features: This
allows Chrome to make use of opaque canvases to speed up web page loading times
by making certain assumptions about the content that is being rendered, like
automatically removing everything underneath the canvas pixels because it won't
be visible to users.
Automatic tab discarding: If enabled, tabs get
automatically discarded from memory when the system memory is low. Discarded
tabs are still visible on the tab strip and get reloaded when clicked on. Info
about discarded tabs can be found at chrome://discards.
(Bonus) Tab audio muting UI control: This one
is not speed related but it is certainly handy. Enabling this will make the
audio indicators in the tab strip double as tab audio mute controls, so you
don't need to switch tabs to turn off its sound.
There are over a hundred different experimental
features to choose from and Google is constantly adding and removing a bunch of
them as part of its testing. Choose whatever you need and click the relaunch
now button at the bottom of the screen to apply the settings.
Data Saver Extension
If you are on a slow connection, this Google-made
extension can help reduce data usage by using the company's servers to
compress pages you visit before downloading them. Pages accessed using private
connections (HTTPS) or in incognito tabs will not be optimized or seen by
Google.
Other Good Practices
You can also delete the History Provider Cache to
free up some space if needed, and avoid using custom themes as you'll just use
up more system resources unnecessarily. You can also speed up your browsing
experience by learning and using Chrome's keyboard shortcuts.
Be sure to give other browsers a try, too. Safari is
a great alternative for Mac users as it's tightly integrated with the operating
system, making it fast and efficient. Microsoft is also building Edge from the
ground up to make it a serious contender if you are on Windows 10, and while
it’s still lacking some basic features, the company is already touting its
efficiency over Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
