Google Chrome browser can take lot of computer memory specially when lots of tabs are used. To be able to use Chrome best it is a good idea to have a high level understanding how memory is used in chrome. I’m using Chrome on Macbook and this article is written in that context but it is equally applicable for other operating systems like Windows and Linux.

Chrome’s multi process architecture

Chrome has a multi process architecture. That means for each tab there is a separate process. As per Chrome help page, Chrome keeps separate processes for these:

Browser: This manages all other tabs GPU (Graphical processing unit) Renderers: One renderer process for each tab Plug-ins: e.g. Shockwave Flash, Google talk plugin, etc. Extensions: e.g. Page speed insights, Image properties context menu, etc.

Here is how an activity monitor on Mac looks like with multiple Chrome tabs open:

Even though multiple process architecture will cause high memory usage, but it has huge advantage of keeping processes independent of each other. So issue in one tab will not impact the performance of other tabs or overall browser.

Chrome task manager – find and kill high memory tasks

You can use Chrome task manager to find high memory tasks. I noticed that Google Analytics when used in real time mode, takes up huge memory. It can go up to 1GB also if kept open for 1 day or so. So its best to kill such tabs and relaunch them. To open Chrome task manager, click on Chrome setting icon, then “Tools” and then Task manager as shown below:

Here is how a task manager window looks like.



You can kill a task from task manager by selecting the task and clicking on “End process”. In case task is a tab task, you can also kill it by closing the tab.

Final notes

Here are the things you can do to keep the memory under control: