Chrome can be a real memory hog, slowing down your entire system, especially when you’ve got tons of tabs and extensions running. It can cause other programs to become sluggish or even freeze up due to lack of available RAM.
To combat this, Chrome offers a handy feature called Memory Saver. This tool helps keep things running smoothly by putting inactive tabs to sleep. This means they don’t eat up your RAM while you’re not actively using them.
What is Chrome’s Memory Saver Feature?
Memory Saver is designed to free up your computer’s memory by deactivating tabs that you haven’t used for a while. When a tab is deactivated, it’s essentially paused. When you click back on it, Chrome quickly reloads it, and you can carry on right where you left off. Not only does this speed up Chrome, but it also helps other apps on your computer run better.
Plus, by reducing memory consumption, Memory Saver can also extend battery life on laptops and similar devices. This feature is available from Chrome version 110, so make sure your browser is updated. Google claims that using the Memory Saver can lead to up to a 40% reduction in memory usage, freeing up as much as 10 GB of RAM.
What Keeps a Tab Active?
There are certain things that will stop tabs from being deactivated by the Memory Saver. These include:
- Playing audio or video, including calls.
- Screen sharing.
- Active downloads.
- Partially filled-in forms.
- Interacting with USB or Bluetooth devices.
- Website notifications.
How to Enable or Disable Memory Saver in Chrome
Okay, let’s get into how you can manage the Memory Saver feature:
Step 1: Launch Google Chrome on your computer. Then, click the three-dot menu (the ellipsis) located at the upper-right corner of the window. From the menu, select Settings.
Step 2: Once in the Settings menu, on the left sidebar, click on Performance. This is where you’ll find all the settings related to optimizing how Chrome works.
Step 3: To turn on Memory Saver, find the Memory Saver option and click the toggle switch. Click it again if you want to turn it off.
Step 4: If you don’t want Memory Saver to affect certain websites, you can add them to the exception list. Click the Add button next to “Always keep these sites active”.
Step 5: In the dialog box, type the URL you want to keep active. You can use complete URLs, domains, subdomains, or even specific pages. For instance:
To keep all subdomains under Google active, enter google.com. That will cover sites like drive.google.com and calendar.google.com.
To keep only the main domain active, and not the subdomains, add a dot before the domain: .google.com. This will not include subdomains, but will keep www.google.com active.
To keep a specific section active, include the full path. For example, www.google.com/news will keep only the news section active, while allowing other sections to be deactivated.
Step 6: You can also use an asterisk * as a wildcard for URL patterns. For example, www.youtube.com/watch?v=* will keep all YouTube video pages active.
Keep in mind, wildcards can only be used in specific parts of the URL, not the hostname or subdomain. Patterns like *oogle.com or www.google.com/* are invalid and will not stop the deactivation.
By using the Memory Saver and customizing the list of allowed sites, you can help Chrome run more efficiently and reduce its memory usage, making your computer work better.