I’ve been using Google Chrome since it was introduced, though it’s no longer the only browser I rely on for web browsing.
I started looking elsewhere when I replaced my high-end desktop with a laptop for daily use.
Switching to a laptop made me understand why users accused Google Chrome of being a “memory hog” and ultimately slowing down PCs.
This was back during COVID-19, though Chrome has become better since then.
The Mountain View tech giant has since taken serious steps to address some of the key issues users complained about in the past.
I was delighted when the company introduced a handy feature to mitigate the memory hog issue in 2023.
I enabled the feature in settings soon after receiving the Chrome 110 update and immediately noticed the difference.
I changed one setting in Google Chrome, and it stopped the web browser from slowing down my laptop.
I switched from Chrome to this underrated Android browser, and it completely fixed my mobile web lag
I finally stopped blamming websites
Why was Chrome slowing down my laptop?
My laptop is nowhere near as powerful as my desktop PC, but I still made the former my daily driver because I needed something more portable.
I wouldn’t miss my desktop PC much as long as I was not running Chrome with a gazillion tabs open, which was rare.
The more tabs I opened in Chrome, the more sluggish my laptop felt, and I couldn’t do anything about it other than close some of them.
With my laptop slowing down, even closing tabs sometimes feels like a real struggle.
I didn’t have any resource-heavy extensions installed on Chrome, so I had only the excessive tabs to blame for the slowdown.
Every active tab consumes memory, but the amount of RAM each one uses depends on what the browser loads in the tab.
How long those tabs have been open is also an important factor.
Since I do a lot of research online, I usually open multiple tabs at once, including text-heavy articles that are packed with ads, YouTube videos, and sometimes graphic design web apps like Figma.
Together, they can consume a lot of RAM, leaving less memory available for the rest of the system.
On top of Chrome with all these tabs open, launching a desktop app would cause the spinning blue circle to stay on the screen longer than usual. I would instantly know that the background process was stuck.
In multiple such instances, I had to restart my PC to get out of this mess.
The one Chrome setting that fixed it
Buying a more powerful laptop would’ve brought some respite, but it was never going to be a permanent solution.
So, I waited for Google to do something about it, and the company did in the form of Memory saver in Chrome.
It’s easy to navigate and enable the Memory saver toggle in Chrome. All you do is click the three-dot menu in the upper-left corner, select Settings, choose Performance, and then enable the Memory saver feature.
The way Memory saver stops your PC from slowing down is simple. When enabled, it deactivates tabs that you aren’t currently using, allowing Chrome to free up memory that other apps and active tabs can use.
It ensures that more computer resources are available for things that matter to you. So, when you switch to an inactive tab, it isn’t instantly available because it takes a couple of seconds or a little more to reload.
When you enable the Memory saver tab, Chrome will automatically choose the balanced memory savings. This means that the tabs become inactive after an “optimal” period of time.
It doesn’t have a strict timer. Instead, it looks for things like how often you visit a page and the available memory resources. The Balanced option is generally the sweet spot for most people.
The Memory saver also has Moderate and Maximum options, but they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. The former takes the longest to deactivate tabs, while the latter ensures tabs become inactive after a short period of time.
I prefer the default option, because it gives the best of both worlds: saving memory while keeping tabs readily accessible. Who would want to wait a couple of seconds or more each time they switch to another tab?
Give Chrome one less reason to slow down your laptop
Excessive tabs open in Chrome can significantly slow down your PC, but multiple other factors can also be responsible.
An outdated version of Chrome, ad-heavy websites, and poorly optimized extensions can significantly impact the performance of Chrome and your PC.
I don’t have any outdated Chrome extensions installed on my PC and always keep the browser up to date, but whether websites will show a lot of ads, scripts, or autoplay videos isn’t really in my control.
This is why I trust the Memory saver feature to handle things for me.
