We know that Chrome loves to eat up your Mac’s RAM. I enabled this setting and you can already see the difference.
Chrome for Mac adds some promising new features alleviate this “insatiable appetite” for our Mac’s RAM. And while new models like the Mac mini or iMac already come with 16GB of base memory, many of us still have 8GB of RAM.
It’s a simple setup that takes less than a minute to activate, and once you do you’ll notice how Google Chrome has better performance and more RAM remains free for other system tasks. So the “war” between Safari and Chrome is more interesting than ever.
Chrome goes on a diet and memory saving mode evolves
Google has taken things a step further with the release of the Memory Saver feature in the Chrome browser for Mac. designed to speed up the browser Limit the memory used by inactive tabs. This is especially noticeable on tabs that you have open in the background but that you don’t access as often.
Chrome now has three different modes: medium, balanced and maximum. Depending on your Macs, RAM and browser usage, we recommend activating one or the other option.
How to enable and configure memory saving mode in Chrome for Mac
The steps are so simple that activating the memory saving mode will not take you more than a minute:
- Open Google Chrome on your Mac.
- From the top menu, select Chrome > Settings.
- Click Performance.
- Right in the middle of the screen you will find the Memory section.
From here, select the mode that best suits your viewing experience:
- Moderate– Tabs are disabled after a long time.
- Balanced– Tabs are deactivated after an average period of time and depending on usage.
- Maximum– Tabs are disabled after a very short period of time.
But Chrome didn’t stop there. It also added a performance tool that identifies potential performance issues and offers you solutions to eliminate them.
If Chrome detects that a tab is consuming too many resources, you’ll see a “Performance Problem” warning. With a simple click “Fix Now”the browser optimizes your browsing experience. This option is also enabled in Chrome Settings > Performance > Performance Alerts.
Once these new features are activated, the difference is noticeable. Navigation is smoother and pages load faster. Therefore, if you use Chrome daily, we recommend activating the section Balanced or Maximum if your Mac has 8GB of RAM.. While we also remind you that Safari is the browser that optimizes resources best, we know that some web pages perform better on Google Chrome, so now we can combine the best of both worlds.
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