Why does Chrome use so much RAM 😭?

Introduction

Browsers are the best way chosen to reach the World Wide Web nowadays. Following this, below is an illustration of people's browser choices.

Google, is one of the most appreciated and target institutes by the world developers community. The second most used browser after Opera chrome has been doing great with special features known by all. Before diving dip in our target, let's take a step aside and know first where we are found.

It may sound confusing talking about such a topic when you don't know what we are about to jump into.

What's is a browser?

In simple terms, a browser is software that allows a computer user to find and view information on the Internet. Web browsers interpret the HTML tags in downloaded documents and format the displayed data according to a set of standard style rules.
For several years browsers have been created, updated and reinvented. Each of these with different from the other and each with a particular characteristic making it unique to the users.
Below is the most used browser in 2022:

Why is chrome the people's choice?

Let's talk and defend the fact that chrome is one of the most used browsers since and still trending in 2022. Let's jump in and get more knowledge about it.

The second most chosen browser, chrome is special with its fast, simplicity, security, privacy, customization, SignIn methods and Auto password saving.
Chrome is designed to be the fastest web browser. With one click, it loads web pages, multiple tabs, and applications with lightning speed. Chrome is fitted with V8, a faster and more powerful JavaScript engine. Chrome also loads web pages faster by using the WebKit open-source rendering engine.
Chrome is clean, easy, keeps you safe, provides the ability to shape, ameliorate and change it in their own way, in other words, chrome gives a full customization option.
The so awaited question...

Why is chrome this way slow?

Using chrome can sometimes seems tedious, the reason behind this is as follows. Chrome splits every tab, plugin and extension into its own process. This leads to higher RAM usage since it has to duplicate some tasks for every tab. Also, chrome's prerendering feature can cause higher memory usage. Certain extensions websites may also leak memory causing higher RAM usage. And, of course, the more tabs, extensions and plugins you have open, installed and running, the more memory Chrome is going to use.

How Does Google Chrome Manage RAM?

As said above chrome utilises memory and consumes a lot of it. Chrome should normally manage the memory in order to offer stability and a faster speed which it fails to do often. The reasons below this are as follows.
The main reason for running each process separately is stability. By running each process separately, if one crashes, the entire browser remains stable. 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 downside is that some processes that single-process browsers can share between tabs must be replicated for each tab in Chrome. Splitting into multiple processes comes with security benefits, too, similar to sandboxing or using a virtual machine.

when Chrome runs on a device with fewer resources, Chrome will consolidate into single processes to reduce the overall memory footprint. Using a single process allows for a reduction in resources but comes at the risk of browser instability.

Chrome is aware of how much memory it is using. It isn't mindlessly eating every bit of RAM it can find. Chrome limits the number of processes it can start depending on your system hardware. It is an internal limit, but when reached, Chrome switches to running tabs from the same site in a single process.

How to speed up chrome?

Upon all these memory misuses, chrome can be sped up to a higher level and optimise memory for this matter. And guess what, I compiled some different ways in which this can be accomplished. Stay tuned and follow me towards the end of this journey.

This poor speed and memory utilisation with Chrome can be solved with some extensions and plugins as shown below.
Using the chrome task manager similar to the windows task manager, we can visualise the use of memory for each opened tab.
Plugins like SimpleExtManager add a small dropdown box alongside your extension tray. Then it is one click on and off for all extensions. Available in chrome store here.

The Great Discarder, 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.

Conclusion

What we have to keep in mind now is, Chrome is the dominant browser globally. Alternative browsers like Firefox and Opera can use a similar amount of memory as Chrome, so switching isn't always the best option. Also, each browser is unique and perfect in accomplishing the task it was made for.

#chrome #chrome-extension #browsers #opensource #microsoft-edge