Google Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers, and it commands a significant chunk of the market, thanks in part to being preinstalled on Android smartphones. But even on desktop platforms, Chrome still dominates. And it’s a great browser except for its privacy issues and memory use. It’s no secret, Chrome really is a memory hog.
So if you’re experiencing sluggishness when using the browser with a couple of tabs open, you aren’t alone. Thankfully, you can fix Chrome’s memory-hungry tendencies by toggling some of its hidden features, called flags. These are experimental features that are still in the works, but Google makes them available for anyone to use.
Partial swap
Improves memory management and responsiveness
Screenshot by Alvin Wanjala — no attribution required
One of the key Chrome flags that can fix its high memory usage is Partial swap. The name might not give anything away if you’re not technical, but this feature improves memory management in Chrome by giving priority to the most active tabs. Additionally, Partial swap helps Chrome manage memory better and improve responsiveness by updating only parts of the interface that have changed and leaving the rest as is.
Instead of updating the entire interface, it updates only the changed parts, reducing memory usage and speeding up Chrome. The Chrome flag for Partial swap is chrome://flags/#ui-disable-partial-swap. This flag is enabled by default, but just to be sure, enter chrome://flags/#ui-disable-partial-swap in your Chrome address bar and check if it’s set to Enabled. If not, then go ahead and switch the Partial swap to Enabled.
Infinite tab freezing
Automatically freeze certain tabs
Screenshot by Alvin Wanjala — no attribution required
When you open dozens of tabs in Chrome, you’ll notice that the browser automatically freezes some of them to free up some memory. Because every tab in Chrome runs as an independent process in your memory, every new tab that you open creates a new process. While it improves security, this design leads to high memory use—don’t be surprised if Chrome uses 30GB of memory.
The best way to tackle this is to enable Chrome’s experimental Infinite Tab Freezing feature, which automatically freezes every other tab except the last five recently used ones and active ones (like the ones playing music or video). By freezing the tabs, Chrome suspends JavaScript and any background activity, which reduces memory use and can help improve the performance of your browser. To enable the Infinite Tab Freezing flag, enter chrome://flags/#infinite-tabs-freezing and change the setting to Enabled.
Memory purge on freeze limit
Limit how often Chrome purges frozen pages
Screenshot by Alvin Wanjala — no attribution required
This Chrome flag helps reduce the browser’s memory usage by optimizing how it manages memory for frozen tabs. We’ve discussed how Chrome can freeze tabs to reduce memory use above, but what you don’t know is that the browser has to run a process in the background to do so.
While purging memory of frozen or inactive tabs helps reduce memory usage, if Chrome has to do this purging constantly, that can lead to processing overhead. As you may have guessed, this may inadvertently increase memory usage if pages that are inactive are unfrozen periodically. That’s where the Memory Purge on Freeze Limit Chrome flag comes in handy.
This flag limits memory purging, allowing Chrome to do it once for every background interval of frozen tabs, thus reducing processing overhead, which results in lower memory usage. It might not lead to a massive reduction in memory use, but when it comes to Chrome, every tiny tweak that can make it run with less RAM is really appreciated. The Chrome flag for this feature is chrome://flags/#memory-purge-on-freeze-limit.
Related
Don’t Let Chrome Gobble RAM—Activate This Hidden Setting
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Enable subframe process reuse
Allow sharing of processes across tabs for less memory use
As mentioned before, Chrome leverages an architecture where each tab creates a new process in memory for isolation. But this leads to high memory usage, especially when you have dozens of open tabs all running as separate processes in your memory. Another flag you can use to mitigate Chrome memory usage is the chrome://flags/#disable-process-reuse flag. With this flag disabled, Chrome reduces memory use by reusing idle renderer processes from other tabs.
By doing so, the browser reduces the need to spin up new processes for every new tab you create, resulting in less memory usage. This feature is typically turned off by default, but you can check whether yours is enabled. If it’s enabled, be sure to disable it, as it will allow Chrome to reuse processes, saving you precious memory.
Don’t let Chrome slow down your device
Chrome’s high memory usage can be problematic if you don’t manage your tabs well, and there are various tips you can take advantage of to address the issue. The discussed Chrome flags can help you reduce Chrome’s memory usage. But we’ve only covered the flags; there are other built-in features you can use to reduce Chrome memory use, such as Memory Saver.
