Chrome, despite being the browser with the largest market share, is by no means the best browser on the market, however, it has gained a huge user base thanks to Android and the Google search engine, users who are not willing to give up everything it offers, even though those functionalities are also available in other browsers.
Taking into account the fidelity of many users to Chrome, if we don’t want it to stop working or to work erratically, we must follow a series of tips to always keep it in shape.
Limit the number of extensions
Browser extensions are great for adding special functionality to browsers. However, abusing these small applications is harmful to the browser. The greater the number of extensions, the time it takes to start Chrome becomes unnecessarily long. Also, some extensions don’t mix well with others, so they can conflict and affect the browser’s performance, forcing us to restore Chrome from scratch to solve the problems. Within the Chrome configuration options, we can manually activate and deactivate the extensions that we want to be working in Chrome. In this way, we can use the extensions that we want in a timely manner and deactivate them once their use has ended so that the performance of the Google browser is not affected.
Reduce the number of open tabs
Chrome has never been characterized as a browser that cares about system resources . As we open new tabs, Chrome’s system resource consumption increases considerably, since it has a habit of keeping tabs updated in the background, an unnecessary process if we don’t need the information contained in that tab. This is why, whenever possible, we should reduce the number of open tabs in Chrome to maintain the best possible performance and avoid affecting our user experience.
Update to the latest version
With each new version of Chrome, Google implements not only security improvements to patch security holes but also to implement performance improvements that allow the browser to be more efficient both in terms of resources and power consumption. But, in addition, new features are also included that are sometimes hidden or in the testing phase. Every time we start Chrome, the browser checks if there is a new version of Chrome to download and install it. However, it doesn’t always work. To check that we have the latest version of Chrome installed, we access the browser configuration options and click on Chrome Information.
Limit the number of open apps
Any application that we open on our computer consumes a series of resources and RAM memory that we can use to make Chrome work much more smoothly. If it is not necessary to keep applications open in the background because we are no longer going to use them, it is advisable to close them in order to free up memory and make Chrome work much more smoothly.
Turn on hardware acceleration
Chrome’s hardware acceleration makes use of all the computer’s resources so that the loading process of the web pages that we visit is faster. In this way, we prevent all the work of managing and loading the tabs from falling on our computer’s processor. By enabling hardware acceleration, the work of keeping Chrome running is divided between the graphics card (it doesn’t have to be a dedicated one) and the processor. This function is available within the Chrome configuration options, within the System section.