A few weeks ago we said it: Google Chrome had started to malfunction on many computers. Mine included, where all the tabs opened and closed with a lot of lag. And until I found the culprit, the user experience was disastrous. By the way, it was solved by removing an extension.
Well, if you are tired of your Chrome browser performing poorly, Google is introducing new measures to help optimize Chrome’s resource usage and make the browser run more smoothly, including updates to existing features.
Google has announced the new measures, which are already in place, in a blog post, and the centerpiece of the changes is a new “performance detection” tool.
A tool to search for bugs in Chrome
This feature proactively seeks performance issues and offers an immediate solution to the user. So, if you are browsing a demanding website and things slow down a bit, Chrome might suggest that you close the bunch of tabs you have open to free up system resources.
Google indicates that you will be offered a “performance issue alert” and that this notification will come with a “fix now” button, so it is essentially a one-click solution for any resource hoarding problem. In theory, at least.
Google has also enhanced its memory-saving feature, which frees up RAM from inactive browser tabs. It now has three settings: moderate, balanced, and maximum.
With the moderate mode, Google claims that Chrome disables inactive tabs based on “your system’s needs,” while the maximum mode disables them more quickly when you leave a specific tab.
The balanced mode achieves a balance between your system’s needs and your browsing habits, so, as expected, it is a middle ground (tabs that become inactive take longer to come back to life when you return to them, so the maximum setting is aggressive, and it is not ideal in this regard).
Finally, Google has introduced some new options to adjust Chrome’s performance controls, so that if there is a website you don’t want to be inactive with the Memory Saver, you can specify it (if it’s a site that works in the background, for example). It is also possible to disable parts of the interface related to this functionality, such as the icon that shows a tab is inactive and the details about a tab’s memory usage.
Google is making some useful enhancements here in terms of achieving better performance with Chrome, but of course, all these features are optional, you don’t have to enable them. If you don’t like the idea of your browser sending you performance alerts, you can disable the new performance detection tool. Or try other browsers, like Mozilla or Opera.
