Are you experiencing problems with Google Chrome web search performance? This article will show you how to decrease chrome memory usage.
According to a survey by Statcounter, Google Chrome holds a staggering 62.78% global market share. Billions of internet users use Google Chrome to study, work, or for entertainment.
Google Chrome is used by the target audience and Google Search Engine, the most popular search engine for the internet, is also used by businesses for their marketing strategies. This ripple effect can increase Google Chrome usage.
Many users have reported that Google Chrome is using too much RAM. This article will help you to reduce Chrome memory consumption if you are facing the same problem.
Why does Chrome use so much RAM?
Google Chrome is a heavy user of RAM and memory. These are the top reasons why Google Chrome uses so much RAM or memory.
- Open live streaming websites, cloud-based software, and social media pages all use more RAM. They process the content through your computing resources and deliver it to you.
- Google Chrome divides the content of a webpage into separate processes. This ensures that even if one page is not responding, the whole tab will continue to respond. Multiple processes on your Windows or macOS computer can take up RAM space. RAM consumption per process increases as the tab count increases.
- Chrome prerendering speeds up the loading of your website, but it takes a lot more RAM.
- Extensions that interact directly with web pages, such as ad blockers and YouTube extensions, continue to work in the background. Your computer memory is also occupied during this time.
- Some websites and extensions can use RAM, CPU, or Network for cryptocurrency miners.
These are just a few reasons Chrome needs to use more computing power. Don’t worry! There are many ways to decrease Chrome memory usage. There are two options: you can use the Chrome extensions or mix of manual techniques.
How to reduce Chrome memory usage (Manual Methods).
Google Chrome has multiple processes that can be used to reduce memory usage. You can use the following strategies depending on your situation:
Close to Unnecessary Tabs
To save computing resources, close the tab if you don’t need it for ongoing work. This will result in a better performance of your computer.
Activate Hardware Acceleration
Hardware acceleration is when a computer uses a graphics processor (GPU), for video streaming, graphic design, and game streaming. To reduce CPU load, Chrome can enable this feature. These steps can be used:
- Go to Google Chrome Setting.
- Type “Hardware Acceleration” in the search bar
- To enable hardware acceleration, select the option.
- Google Chrome can be restarted.
Google Chrome, when active, will route graphic-intensive tasks the GPU of your computer. This will decrease RAM usage and increase video RAM (VRAM) usage. Your computer’s performance will increase gradually. Move on to the next step once you are done.
Removing duplicate extensions and unused extensions
Chrome extensions can be installed for similar tasks. You might end up installing Google Keep or Askify, Upword or Chrome Note. If you are only interested in note-taking, keep Google Keep but remove the other apps.
All extensions are loaded in the background when you open Chrome. Extensions that are not being used consume computing resources and do not provide any benefits.
Use the Chrome Task manager
Chrome Task Manager allows you to identify which processes consume excessive RAM. These steps will help you reduce your memory usage.
- To open the Chrome Task Manager, press Shift+Esc in a Chrome tab.
- There will be processes such as Utility, Tab and Subframe, Rendere and Extensions.
- You will see a memory footprint on the right. This number shows the RAM usage.
- To close a task, select it and click End Process.
This step may be helpful if you experience unusual latency when computing.
Clean up your computer
Malicious apps and malware could take advantage of your computer’s resources to do unauthorized activities, such as bitcoin mining. To get rid of unwanted apps, use the Clean Up Computer feature in Google Chrome. These steps will help you follow the instructions:
- In the address bar, type “chrome://settings/.”
- In the search bar, type “Clean up”
- Click on Clean Up Computer.
- To begin the cleaning process, click Find.
After the cleanup is completed, restart Google Chrome to verify its performance.
Reset Chrome Settings
Google Chrome saves a lot data when you use Chrome for more than a few years without a new installation. These saved data can also slow down your computer’s performance and use system RAM. These steps will help you reduce memory usage.
- Google Chrome offers Settings.
- Type “Reset” in the search box.
- You will see the Restore settings to original options.
- Click on it, then select Reset Settings.
Resetting Chrome will remove any settings that are not used and restore it to its original state. The process doesn’t affect bookmarks, passwords, or browsing history.
Stop Background Apps
Chrome’s background apps may be consuming more RAM than you are using the browser for. These steps can be used to disable this option.
- In the search bar of the Settings menu in Chrome, type “Background Apps”.
- The Continue to run background apps option will be displayed.
- You can deactivate it by moving the radio button to your left.
To implement the changes, you will need to restart your browser.
Manual maintenance can be tedious and time-consuming. To reduce Chrome memory usage, you can use the following Google Chrome Extensions instead of doing it yourself.
Chrome Extensions: How to Reduce Chrome Memory Usage
Below are some popular Google Chrome extensions that will help you reduce memory usage.
The Great Suspender Original
The Great Suspender Original Chrome extension allows you to suspend tabs that are not being used. Tab suspension can be done without closing any tabs. You will need to review your browsing history if you later require the tabs closed.
To reduce the memory consumption of Chrome, you can use tab suspension to do extensive internet research. Tab suspension puts the website into sleep mode. The web page cannot use background tasks such as ads, videos and data updating.
This extension allows you to manage multiple tabs easily. This extension makes it easy to find the tab that you need for your research. This extension has some cool features:
- In one click, suspend unused tabs and websites
- Scheduled scheduling can be used to automate the tab suspension process.
- When necessary, restore one or more suspended tabs.
- To make it easier to manage open Chrome pages, create tab groups
This extension is used by over 200,000 people to reduce RAM usage. This extension is also available in 22 languages other than English.
Memory Saver
Memory Savingr automates the process of removing Chrome tabs you don’t use. The background processes associated with a tab are stopped when you discard it. The website will no longer use your system resources such as RAM, CPU, and Power.
It can be a tedious process to manually discard tabs. To reduce Chrome memory usage, you can use this Chrome extension. Memory Saver extension does not occupy too much of your computing resources.
The Main Settings section allows you to set a cut off memory. If the system memory drops below this amount, the tool will discard tabs. The tool can be manually set a low-memory scan interval. You can also set a time period to schedule when you want to remove an inactive tab.
When you disable tab, Google Chrome’s process numbers will be almost half.
TooManyTabs
TooManyTabs Chrome is an advanced Chrome tabs manager that includes a memory-saving option. This tool provides a bird’s-eye view of all tabs open in Chrome. That tool can show you what tabs are open in your Chrome browser.
You can’t even identify websites if you have more than 15 websites open in Chrome. You can also lose track of the order in which tabs are opened. The computer can become extremely slow if it doesn’t have 8+GB RAM.
This Chrome extension can help you overcome these problems. The left-side window displays all open tabs in column view. You can also sort them easily by name, creation time, and website domain.
The right-side panel will display information about closed and suspended tabs. To suspend a tab, click on the arrow next to it. If you activate it from the options menu, the tool will display a preview of a website.
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OneTab
OneTab, another tab management extension, also saves your computer memory. This tool is rated 4.5 by 13,000+ users. This extension has been used by 2M+ Chrome users to reduce Chrome memory usage, and to clear out clutter from open tabs.
When you have so many tabs open, it is easy to get overwhelmed. Instead of scrolling through every tab to track content, you can simply add them all to OneTab and create a list.
It is easy to see which tabs contain which websites from the list. This will allow you to organize your research. Google Chrome terminates background processes when you send open tabs through OneTab.
This tool also prevents duplicate pages. This allows you to save RAM by not allowing the same website to be opened more than once.
Tab Snooze
Tab Snooze Chrome extension is a useful productivity tool that allows you to focus on web research. It organizes multiple tabs and reduces RAM usage.
The app has a rating of 4.7 out of 44757 users. Chrome Web Store also shows that the app has been used by over 70,000 users to clear tab clutter. The extension is lightweight, and doesn’t consume much RAM or CPU.
After installing the extension, you will see a sickle-shaped icon of the moon. Click on this icon to see snoozing options such as Later Today, Tomorrow and Next Weekend. To snooze an open window, click on any of these options.
Click on the number in the lower-left corner to access a list snoozed tabs.
TabMemFree
TabMemFree provides a completely automatic solution to Google Chrome’s memory hogging. This extension reduces system resource consumption by offloading unused tabs.
This does not alter the tab’s name, title, position or icon in the Chrome browser. The embedded scripts on the website are not affected by the suspension.
Chrome extensions work on all Chrome windows you have open. You can also disable or enable the extension by clicking a single button. The extension can be managed easily by simply specifying the tab timeout and check period.
The extension will scan tabs that haven’t been used in 15 minutes or less according to the time. To save computing resources, the extension will then unload any tabs that are not being used.
Conclusion
Too much RAM or memory has been an issue for computer users. The problem can become a major headache, especially if you don’t use a high-performance or gaming workstation.
Google Chrome is a heavy user of RAM. This is an issue for computers with low configurations or average RAM. You must realize that the browser uses a lot of computing resource to provide convenient browsing that other browsers might not.
To reduce Chrome memory usage, you can use any of the steps described above.
