Reduce Chrome high memory usage & make it use less RAM
We will be taking a look at the following fixes to reduce Chrome high memory usage:
Make Chrome use less memory
1] Close Unused Tabs
If any of the tabs are open that you are no longer using, there might be a high chance that it is going to use a good chunk of your RAM. So, to recover from this issue, you can try to close any of these unused tabs and check if the RAM usage comes down.
2] Enable Hardware Acceleration
First of all open Google Chrome and click on the Menu button (by clicking on three dots button on the top right corner). Next click on Settings. After the Settings page opens, scroll down to find the button that is labeled as Advanced and click on it. Under the section that goes by the name System, turn on the toggle of Use hardware acceleration when available. Restart Google Chrome. When it starts up again, type in chrome://gpu/ in the address bar and hit the Enter key. This will now display if Hardware Acceleration or GPU Rendering is enabled or not
3] Run a Malware Scan
As mentioned before, this problem can occur due to some changes made by malware or adware. Therefore, scan your whole system for malware or adware. Use any antivirus software to scan your computer. You may want to also use AdwCleaner. This useful freeware lets you carry out the following tasks with the click of your button:
Reset ProxyReset WinsockReset TCP/IPReset FirewallReset Hosts file.
4] Create a new User Profile for Google Chrome
Kill every single process for Google Chrome from the Task Manager. Next, navigate to the following location in Explorer- Press CTRL + A on your keyboard to select all the files inside of the location mentioned above. Then press Shift + Delete to delete all these selected files permanently. Now, open Google Chrome and create a new User Profile and then finally check if your issue is fixed.
5] Remove or disable conflicting Browser Extensions
There are high chances that the extensions and toolbars installed on your browser might be conflicting with the loading of your website. So, to fix that, you need to remove or disable these extensions and toolbars. Maybe you could start Chrome in Safe Mode and then try to identify the offending extension.
6] Disable the Site Isolation Feature
Open Google Chrome browser and visit this URL: chrome://flags Look for Strict site isolation in the search box on the top portion of the page. Then, toggle the appropriate entry to Enabled. Restart Google Chrome for the changes to take effect. This will enable the Site Isolation feature on Google Chrome. Fix: Chrome high CPU, Memory or Disk usage.
7] Turn on Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly
Open Google Chrome and click on the Menu button denoted by three verticle dots in the top right corner. Then, click on Settings. In the Settings section, scroll down and click on Advanced to reveal the Advanced Settings. Now, scroll down to the Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly button and turn it on. TIP: Make Chrome browser use less memory on Windows; comes with a price though.
8] Use the process-per-site switch
You can use the process-per-site switch to make Chrome browser use less memory on Windows; it comes with a price, though! Chrome supports a process model, which groups all instances of the same website into the same process, while processes of different sites are isolated from each other. The benefit of using this model is that since this model creates fewer concurrent processes than the default model, the memory overhead will be reduced. This will result in saving of some resources of your computer. The small price you will have to pay is that if a tab of one website crashes for some reason, all other tabs of the same website will crash. The browser or open tabs of other websites will, however, not crash. This can result in another issue at times. It can result in large renderer processes: To use this model, users should specify a –process-per-site command-line switch when starting Chromium. This creates fewer renderer processes, trading some robustness for lower memory overhead. This model is based on the origin of the content and not the relationships between tabs. So if you want to save memory while using Chrome, and are willing to make these small sacrifices, you may go ahead and configure Chrome to run in, what is called as Process-per-site mode. To do this, right-click on Chrome’s shortcut and select Properties. Append the –process-per-site switch to the target URL that you see in the box. You may also append it to the main Chrome’s executable in its Program Folder. Thus the path now will look as follows, in my case:
Click on Apply and Exit.
9] Reset or Reinstall Google Chrome
To reset Chrome browser, make sure that Google Chrome is not running anywhere in the background using the Task Manager. When you use the Reset feature, the following will happen: To begin, hit the WINKEY + R combinations to open Run and then navigate to the following path, Now, select the folder named as Default and hit the Shift + Delete button combinations and then click on Yes for the confirmation prompt you get. After deleting the Default folder, open Google Chrome and click on the Menu button denoted by three verticle dots in the top right corner. Then, click on Settings. In the Settings section, scroll down and click on Advanced to reveal the Advanced Settings. Now, scroll down to the Restore Settings to their original defaults button and click on it. Click on Reset, and this will reset your Google Chrome browser. When you use this option, it will reset your profile to the post-fresh-install state. Now check if your issue is fixed or not.
And if all the methods that are mentioned above do not work properly, the last and the ultimate fix would be reinstalling Google Chrome. First, you will have to back up your browser data like bookmarks, passwords, etc, then, uninstall Google Chrome fully from your computer. This should also include all the leftover folders with browsing data, user data, etc. Now, make sure you download the latest version of Google Chrome from its website. Having done that, you could import your data back. TIP: The Great Suspender will automatically suspend tabs on Google Chrome.
Why is my Google Chrome taking up so much memory?
Google Chrome web browser uses one process for every tab by default. If you open the Windows Task Manager, you will be able to see multiple Google Chrome processes. The idea behind this is should any one of your tabs crashes, it will not crash the entire browser, as each tab will have its process running. Only that tab will crash.
How do I fix Chrome high CPU, Disk, Memory usage?
If you are facing high CPU, Memory or Disk usage issue in Chrome, you need to take a look at the following areas:
Disable or remove unwanted ExtensionsDisable built-in featuresUse Chrome Task Manager to identify the culprit tabsReset Chrome.
Here are some tips to speed up Google Chrome browser on Windows.
