Monitor and Control Memory Usage in Google Chrome | Tips

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Want to know just how much memory Google Chrome and any installed extensions are using at a given moment?

How Much Memory is being used?

Here is a test page

Access Chrome’s Task Manager using the Page Menu -> Developer -> Task manager.

Or right click  Tab Bar and select Task manager.

Here you can see the Memory usage on a idle browser. Certainly a killer because not all the extensions are being used at the time.

You can get more than just the memory consumption.

For our example Shared Memory & Private Memory.

Using the about:memory Page

Want even more detail? Type “about:memory” into the Address Bar and press Enter.

View the Memory & Virtual Memory statistics.

All the processes.

The Difference with the Extensions Disabled

Just for checking it out.

The Task Manager Window is looking rather empty now but the memory consumption has definitely seen an improvement.

Comparing Memory Usage for Two Extensions with Similar Functions

For our next step we decided to compare the memory usage for two extensions with similar functionality. This can be helpful if you are wanting to keep memory consumption trimmed down as much as possible when deciding between similar extensions.

First up was Speed Dial.

The stats for Speed Dial…quite a change from what was shown above (~3,000 – 6,000 K).

Next up was Incredible StartPage.

Surprisingly both were nearly identical in the amount of memory being used.

Purging Memory

Perhaps you like the idea of being able to “purge” some of that excess memory consumption. With a simple command switch modification to Chrome’s shortcut(s) you can add a Purge Memory Button to the Task Manager Window as shown below. Notice the amount of memory being consumed at the moment…

One quick click and there is a noticeable drop in memory consumption.

Conclusion

We hope that our examples here will prove useful to you in managing the memory consumption in your own Google Chrome installation. If you have a computer with limited resources every little bit definitely helps out.

Go to Source Article at How to Geek

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