Last updated: January 2, 2023
Google's Chrome browser uses a lot of memory. Sometimes it consumes so much memory that your PC is getting slow or even turn off unexpectedly. Especially when you start a surf session with a multitude of tabs open.
To solve this problem, you can turn to the extension The Great Suspender which can suspend tabs manually or after a predefined time.
The Great Suspender is an extension that allows you to automatically suspend inactive tabs after a certain amount of time. I will show you in this article how to use this extension to free up as much memory as possible.
Reduce the memory consumption of the Chrome browser?
Step 1:
When you launch Google Chrome and open multiple tabs at the same time, the memory consumption can reach several hundred MB which can really slow down your computer. So it is recommended to check how much memory Google Chrome consumes.
To identify which sites and extensions are consuming the most memory, follow these steps:
- Click on the "Menu" button then "Tools",
- Then go to "Task Manager".
- The tabs, applications, and extensions are individually identified. Click on the "Memory" column to sort them in ascending order.
- To stop a process from the list, select it and click "End process", which will allow you to reclaim memory.
- If you stop a page, it will be closed and an error message will appear. To restore the page, click "Refresh".
Step 2:
To stop each process individually, install the extension "The Great Suspender". This will suspend the tabs that are running in the background.
The pages remain open, however they do not become active again until you click on "click to Reload" or the "Refresh this page" button.
To suspend a page, select it, click on the Great Suspender icon, then "Suspend this tab". To suspend all the pages and free the maximum amount of memory, click on "Suspend all tabs". Click on a page to refresh it or click on "Reload all tabs".
Step 3:
Click "Setting" and choose "Show history" to view recently suspended applications sorted by date. You can re-suspend apps that were previously suspended or click "Reload all tabs for this days". Go back to "Setting" and click on "Clear Histroy" to clear the list.
Step 4:
In "Setting" you can create a whitelist of sites that you always want to keep as active. For example the YouTube site. We often tend to let a video load before playing it. So to keep a site's tab active, enter a keyword for a site in the "Whitelist" field. The Great Suspender extension can also automatically suspend tabs after a certain period of inactivity. Choose the time limit from the drop-down menu.
To conclude, be aware that The Great Suspender saves the state of your tabs when you close the browser, which allows you to restart it more quickly by loading only the active pages in memory.