How to Reduce Memory Consumption and Free Up CPU Resources of Google Chrome.


Google Chrome is used by many one including me. I like the speed of the browser. But One thing I don’t like in Chrome is it takes more memory or CPU resources. Chrome creates a separate process for each tab asking for separate resources from the computer.

The priority is given to the active tab. This makes the browser stable and makes it load web applications faster. You can change this and make all the tabs as a single process with a simple trick. This will reduce the memory consumption and will  free up some CPU resources.

Note: This will be useful if you don’t surf many sites at a time. Don’t perform this hack if you are using Google chrome to open many number of sites at a time.

You can change the settings in 3 different ways based on the way of usage. They as as follows..

–process-per-tab
The default mode; each tab gets an independent process of its own. This increases the rendering of web pages and makes the browser stable as each tab is a separate process from the rest. But it also consumes memory.

–process-per-site
One process for each unique website; for instance a user with two tabs open for Gmail and another for pcsplace will have the two Google tabs running under the same process.

–single-process
The simplest mode; all tabs run in a single process, much like the other browsers we have now. This setting frees up memory for other applications. This is what we are looking for.

reduce google chrome memory consumption

To enable any of these settings,

  • Create a shortcut for Chrome.
  • Open the Properties tab.
  • Edit the Target field by appending single-process or –process-per-tab or –process-per-site to the file path.

Create different shortcuts for different settings and use them accordingly.

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