More than 65 percent of computers use Google Chrome as their primary browser, and its direct competitor is a variant built on the same code. That means a large number of users are exposed to the same virtues... and the same quirks. Fortunately, optimizing Google Chrome isn’t that complicated. With a basic review of its settings, some background tweaks, and a few changes in habits, our experience with the browser can improve, and a lot.
Close background applications
Chrome/Chromium has a factory setting that allows some applications to keep running in the background, even when the browser is closed. On machines with plenty of RAM, that can be an advantage, but we all know the relationship between Chrome and memory, so it’s not a bad idea to disable this setting. You’ll find it under the System section, or Advanced -> System.
The task manager is your friend
No, I’m not referring to the normal Windows task manager, but to the one built into Google Chrome. If you press Shift+Esc with the browser open (the alternative is to visit the More Tools section in the menu), you’ll get a window that includes the full list of tabs and processes linked to Chrome/Chromium, the ID, and most importantly: their memory usage. If something goes wrong with one of those elements, you can select it and click End process.
Do you really need all those tabs and extensions?
The usefulness of some extensions is unquestionable, and many users reduce their browsing sessions to a festival of loaded tabs because they feel it’s more comfortable to work that way. The problem is that the combination of too many tabs and extensions forms an explosive cocktail that destroys performance. Now, this is nothing more than a suggestion, but if your session feels like swimming in jelly, perhaps tabs and extensions deserve a second look.
Process limit per site
Google Chrome has different strategies for loading a website. According to available information, the default method is “Process-per-site-instance”, which allows a website to load multiple processes. The alternative is “Process-per-site”, setting a limit of one process per site.
The good news is that “Process-per-site” can reduce RAM usage. The bad news is that we give up stability in the exchange. If you want to experiment with this, all you need to do is add the command --process-per-site to the Chrome/Chromium shortcut, as shown in the image.
Tweaks in chrome://flags
Finally, I’m going to share the chrome://flags tweaks I currently use in Chrome/Chromium. Some may not be available (it all depends on each browser), or they may use a slightly different description:
- Max-connections-per-host limits the number of simultaneous connections per host to 6 or 15. I’ve only seen this value in Chromium.
- Smooth-scrolling explains itself. If you want smoother scrolling in Chrome/Chromium, enable it.
- Enable-quic is about the QUIC protocol, which has carried the “experimental” label for a while, but I haven’t noticed any negative effects from enabling it.
- Enable-gpu-rasterization and Enable-zero-copy depend on both the available GPU and the installed driver, and you should update it before playing with these values.
- Enable-parallel-downloading enables parallel downloads for more speed.
- Use-angle was mentioned in one of our articles to solve YouTube problems in Chrome, especially when scrolling. Switching from Default to D3D9 or OpenGL usually fixes that issue.
