Google Chrome’s memory consumption is a tax to pay for properly enjoying what is for many (including the subscriber) the best web browser on the market in several sections, including performance. In return, we must acknowledge that: Chrome is a big resource hog.

Many years ago, Chrome lost the original concept of a minimal browser and became a complete application platform. Except running cards in separate processes If you work with several open at the same time, it consumes a lot of resources. And we must add that the security improvements implemented at the time to protect the browser against side-channel attacks from speculative execution vulnerabilities (Spectre and Meltdown) added additional resources.

Google has addressed the issue from time to time and implemented this feature in 2019 “Card Freeze”. This was a major improvement over the existing automatic discarding of unused tabs in the browser. AND “proactive card freeze” which allowed for better customization of tab loading and provided a faster and smoother user experience. Always within the scope of possible, it is understood because the model of execution of cards in independent processes, which improves performance penalizes consumption regardless of how many optimizations are implemented.

What is Google Chrome’s memory usage?

If you’re using Chrome on Windows, it’s easy to see your browser’s overall usage in sections like memory, CPU, disk, network, or GPU by going to the system’s task manager. The two critical components here are the RAM and the processor. If one of them “gets out of control” (when we have several windows full of active cards) it is not uncommon to experience lags or even outright crashes from your personal computer.

But, Can you know how much memory each card uses? Well yes, and in a very simple way if you are using Chrome 119 or higher, because you just need to hover over the tab. As you will see, the addiction to algae that many of us love is expensive on the resource side.

Due to the (complicated) way the operating system handles memory, there is no direct correlation between memory usage and the amount of physical RAM your computer has and is using, and most of the time if you hit Add them all, See how this number exceeds RAM , which you installed. This is because the operating system stores (or caches) some of this information on the storage drive.

How to reduce memory consumption of Google Chrome?

Google Chrome enabled and memory storage function which was added earlier this year and which disables tabs you’re not using, allowing the browser to free up unused memory. The disadvantage here is obvious, because when you need this tab, the browser will have to reload it.

Inactive cards are easy to spot because the icons have a gray circle around them. Tabs will show how much memory you’ve saved when you turn them off. The feature is activated in Settings > More tools > Performance.

Here you can activate memory saving so Chrome frees memory from inactive tabs. This can be done globally or keep certain pages you use frequently active.

General tips

we insist. This new feature works, but it’s not a panacea and can reduce one of the browser’s strengths, its performance. Having enough RAM is ideal. In this special, we’ll reiterate how much is appropriate to have for each type of main task we’re trying to cover.

However, if you go directly to the hardware of your computer, you can activate the memory saving function and also see other general sections that will allow you to effectively reduce the consumption of the browser:

• Remove the browser extension. Some are very useful, but they are one of the features that increase resource consumption the most. Go to Settings-Extensions and disable or remove the ones that are not absolutely necessary.
• Remove background pages. Page v Background which is used to allow offline access to Google Drive documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or drawings. If you’re not using it, go to the Google Drive settings page and disable the feature.
• Select to run the plug-in. Go to Settings-Privacy-Content Settings-Plugins and check Let me decide when to run content from plugins. This will prevent high consumption plugins from automatically loading in the background on all pages. This feature is called Click-to-Play and can be used in other browsers such as Firefox.
• Select the number of open cards. We already mentioned that Chrome running each tab in a separate process forces it to spend more resources. Some even go so far as to brick the computer with less powerful hardware. If you want to save RAM and CPU, you will need to limit the number of open tabs.