Why Is Google Chrome Eating up All Your RAM? Here’s How To Fix It

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If you’ve been using a Personal Computer for a while, you would be slightly aware of the fact that Google Chrome is considered a RAM eater among the family of browsers.

Head over to your Task Manager whilst Chrome’s loaded up and see how Google’s Premier Internet Browser tops the list in terms of the number of processes.

Google Chrome is considered a RAM

The Question Is, No Wait, the questions are: Why does Chrome use so much RAM? Does it even hinder System Performance? Does it use more resources than other browsers?

What can be done to cut down the resource usage? Let us try and Answer All Such Questions Below.

How And Why Does Google Chrome Use So Much RAM?

In order to understand how and why Chrome uses so much memory, you need to have a brief overview of how Most Modern-Day browsers work.

Every application on your PC runs processes in the RAM. RAM (Random Access Memory) is temporary storage for all data, and it is lightning fast.

Therefore, for all concurrent tasks, your CPU carries out processes in the RAM for Faster Communication as compared to HDD or even SSD.

Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge store each tab, plugin, and extension in a RAM Process Called Isolation. Isolation prevents one process from writing to another one.

RAM process called isolation

Hence, when you open your Task Manager or Activity Monitor, you usually notice multiple entries from Chrome and that freaks you out.

Take a quick little glance and you’ll notice that each process only uses a Small Amount Of RAM, but the load is very high when you add them up.

Chrome intends to use this method to offer Better Stability and faster loading speeds.

However, the browser, in many cases appears to be eating a ton of your Precious RAM. Let’s understand how Chrome handles RAM.

The main objective for running each process Separately Is Stability. Sometimes, a plugin or extension will fail, requiring you to refresh the tab.

If every tab and Extension was Run in the same process, you might have to restart the whole browser instead of a single tab.

The con is that some processes that Ingle-Process Browsers can share between tabs must be replicated for each tab in Chrome.

The pro however is that splitting Multiple Processes comes with some security advantages. Imagine a JavaScript Attack taking place in one tab.

When a Cyber-Attack like that takes place, it will happen in the tab it was launched in, instead of moving onto different tabs.

Closing the particular tab should get rid of the issue in Most Cases, without having to restart the entire browser.

Adding the amount of RAM usage in Chrome are Plugins and Extensions. Each plugin or extension you add to Google Chrome requires resources to run.

The more extensions you have Installed, the more RAM Chrome needs to run.

How To make Google Chrome Consume Less RAM?

Now that we have brief know-how of how Chrome handles memory, let us try and figure out the possible ways in which we can minimize the usage.

1. Google Chrome Task Manager

Google Chrome Task Manager

The most important tool you need to get yourself familiar with is the Chrome Task Manager.

This is very similar to the normal Windows Task Manager and can be accessed by the Shift + Esc shortcut.

Watch out for tabs and extensions that have Ballooned In Size. Sometimes, a single Chrome tab can use lots of memory due to a bug or poor configuration.
Sometimes, a Chrome Memory Leak will cause your browser to freeze (or even your whole system).

Once you’ve killed off the Resource-Heavy Processes, there are some other things you can do to fix frequent Chrome crashes.

2. Managing Chrome’s Plugins And Extensions To Save RAM

Managing Chrome's Plugins and Extensions to Save RAM

You can turn off or uninstall extensions that are consuming a lot of resources.

Access the Chrome menu, go to More Tools and then select Extensions. Right-click any extension you want to disable or uninstall and select the desired action.

If you don’t want to Uninstall A Certain Extension you can simply reserve it for certain web pages and block it on others.

3. Chrome Tab Management Extensions Can Help Save RAM

This solution sounds funny since this involves us Suggesting The Installation of more extensions whilst we are explaining how removing them can better the overall experience.

Some extensions are designed specifically with RAM Management in mind and those are the ones we are suggesting here. These extensions help you customize how Chrome handles and discards tabs you are no longer using.

RAM management

The Great Suspender is a great example. This free extension allows you to kill processes on all but one tab, instantly reducing how much memory Chrome is consuming.

It comes with a Variety Of Other Options, too, including the handy Unsuspend all tabs button for when you want to activate everything again.

memory Chrome is consuming.

Another amazing option is The Great Discarder, which allows you to customize the frequency Chrome discards unused tabs. Chrome discards tabs when they’re not in use to save memory.

With The Great Discarder, you can change the length of time, specify tabs not to discard, and so on.

Final Wording

We hope you understood How Chrome Works and handles the RAM in your system. In terms of ease of use, Accessibility And Variety of extensions, Chrome is my Personal Favorite Choice.

I am sure there are many of you out there as well who would like to stick to Chrome, therefore you could try out one of the steps given above to try and either Reduce RAM Usage and or effectively manage your tabs.

In case of any queries, please do leave us your Thoughts and Comments.