Slow Chrome Fix

Slow Chrome Fix: a reader asks…

Hi Chris, I use Google Chrome on my Windows 7 laptop, and I’ve noticed that it’s gotten a lot slower than it used to be. I read in something you wrote earlier about not keeping too many tabs open, but I really need to have a bunch open for my work. Is there any way I can speedup Chrome?

For your situation, you can turn to an experimental feature that recent versions of Chrome can have added to them. Normally Chrome keeps all your tabs updated as long as Chrome is open, and also when the program is running in the background. You’ll know you’re in the latter situation if you close Chrome and the icon in your system notification area (the bottom-right of your screen) remains.

This new experimental feature can be turned on easily:

1. open a new tab in Chrome
2. type “chrome://flags/#enable-tab-discarding” into the tab and press the Enter key on your keyboard, then click
3. click the ‘Enable’ link and then click the ‘Relaunch Now’ button at the bottom of that window

What this does is enable Chrome to discard tab data when you’re not actively using that tab. So those other webpages you’re not looking at won’t automatically update until you click on the tab. This frees up some (perhaps a lot!) memory your computer is using, which contributes to the slowdown you’ve been noticing. This also works on Macs!

If for any reason you want to reverse this, follow the same 3 steps above, only choose ‘Disable’ in the entry on step 3. I should note that unless you routinely keep a dozen or more tabs open at the same time, you don’t need to turn on tab discarding and you may find it more work than it’s worth. When this feature is turned on, every time you click to a tab, it reloads that page – this can slow you down if you do a lot of clicking between tabs.

And of course, you can always restart your computer, which also clears out your memory and fixes a bunch of problems (like 80% of all computer problems).