Your laptop doesn’t need a hardware upgrade to feel quicker. In many cases, the biggest slowdowns come from your browser—especially when Chrome silently racks up background tasks, bloated caches, and heavy page processes. The good news is that Chrome includes several powerful settings most people never touch, and flipping just a few can make everyday browsing feel noticeably snappier. This guide walks through seven hidden tweaks that improve Chrome speed by reducing memory waste, cutting background activity, and keeping tabs from dragging your system down. You’ll also learn how to spot which sites and extensions are actually slowing you down, so you can fix the real bottlenecks instead of guessing.
1) Turn on Chrome’s Memory Saver (the fastest Chrome speed win)
Chrome’s biggest performance tax on laptops is RAM. A handful of tab-heavy sessions can push memory usage high enough that your whole system starts swapping to disk, which feels like “everything is slow.” Memory Saver helps by freeing up resources from inactive tabs while keeping them available to reload quickly when you return.
How to enable Memory Saver
1. Open Chrome.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Click Performance.
4. Toggle on Memory Saver.
If you don’t see Performance, update Chrome first: Chrome menu (three dots) → Help → About Google Chrome.
Choose which sites stay active
Memory Saver is smart, but you can make it smarter for your workflow. Add exceptions so important tabs (music, email, dashboards, research tools) don’t reload when you click back.
– In Settings → Performance → Memory Saver, add sites under “Always keep these sites active”
– Add work-critical domains like your webmail, task manager, or web apps you frequently monitor
Example: If you keep a Google Docs file and a Slack web tab open all day, whitelisting them prevents small delays and avoids losing state in certain web apps.
2) Stop background apps from running after you close Chrome
One of the most overlooked reasons a laptop feels sluggish is that Chrome may continue running background processes even after you close every browser window. These background tasks can include extension activity, push notifications, preloading services, and app-like processes that nibble at CPU and memory.
Disable Chrome’s “keep running in background” setting
1. Open Chrome Settings.
2. Go to System.
3. Toggle off “Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed.”
This is especially helpful on laptops where battery life and fan noise matter. Cutting background activity doesn’t just improve Chrome speed; it helps your whole system feel less “busy.”
When leaving it on makes sense
If you rely on Chrome-based apps (like certain messaging tools) and expect notifications even when Chrome isn’t open, you may want to keep it enabled. For most people, though, disabling background apps is a clear performance and battery win.
3) Enable Chrome’s built-in Efficiency Mode tools (and actually use them)
Chrome has been steadily adding features meant to reduce resource usage, but many users never look at the controls. In addition to Memory Saver, Chrome’s Performance settings can help keep laptop fans quieter and reduce CPU spikes that make your machine feel laggy.
Find and tune Performance settings
Go to Settings → Performance and review what’s enabled. Depending on your Chrome version, you may see additional options beyond Memory Saver. The key idea is simple: prioritize active tabs and reduce waste from inactive ones.
If your laptop tends to slow down after an hour of browsing, it’s usually a sign that:
– Too many tabs are staying “hot” in memory
– Extensions are doing background work
– A few heavy websites are chewing CPU continuously
This section is about reducing those leaks so Chrome speed stays consistent from morning to evening.
Use Chrome’s Task Manager to catch the real culprits
Chrome has its own Task Manager that shows which tabs and extensions consume the most memory and CPU.
1. In Chrome, click the three-dot menu.
2. More tools → Task Manager.
3. Sort by CPU or Memory footprint.
4. Select the offender → End process.
This is one of the most practical tools in the whole browser, and it’s often faster than guessing which tab is misbehaving. If one site is constantly pegging CPU, ending that process can instantly make your laptop feel responsive again.
4) Limit preloading and prediction features that waste resources
Chrome includes features designed to make browsing feel faster by preloading pages you might visit next. On powerful desktops, that can be a net win. On many laptops, especially those with limited RAM or aging CPUs, it can waste bandwidth and keep the browser doing extra work in the background.
Adjust preload behavior
In Chrome:
1. Settings → Privacy and security.
2. Look for settings related to preloading, prediction, or “preload pages.”
3. Reduce or disable aggressive preloading if your laptop feels bogged down.
The exact wording can change across Chrome versions, but the goal stays the same: stop Chrome from doing work you didn’t ask it to do.
Why this affects perceived speed
When Chrome preloads, it can:
– Increase network usage (especially noticeable on shared Wi‑Fi)
– Increase memory use due to pre-rendered content
– Add CPU activity that competes with what you’re doing now
If you’re trying to improve Chrome speed on a mid-range laptop, reducing unnecessary preloading can make browsing feel cleaner and more direct.
For official background on Chrome features and updates, Google’s Chrome documentation is a useful reference: https://support.google.com/chrome/
5) Clean up site data strategically (cache and cookies without breaking everything)
“Clear cache” is common advice, but doing it randomly can backfire by forcing websites to re-download everything, which temporarily slows browsing. The smarter approach is targeted cleanup: clear what’s bloated, keep what’s useful, and remove site data only when it’s causing slowdowns or weird behavior.
When to clear site data for better Chrome speed
Targeted cleaning helps when:
– Chrome is slow to load a specific site (even on good Wi‑Fi)
– A site gets stuck in login loops
– Pages load with broken layouts or missing elements
– Storage usage has grown over time
How to remove data for one problematic site
1. Settings → Privacy and security.
2. Site settings → View permissions and data stored across sites (or similar wording).
3. Search for the domain (for example, “news” or “video”).
4. Delete stored data for that site only.
If one site is a chronic resource hog, deleting its stored data can reset it without forcing every other website to reload assets from scratch.
Practical example:
– If a video streaming site constantly buffers or the UI stutters, clearing only that site’s data often fixes it while preserving logins elsewhere.
6) Switch DNS to a faster, more reliable provider (often overlooked)
Sometimes “Chrome is slow” is really “name lookups are slow.” DNS is how your browser finds the server for a web address. If your ISP’s DNS is sluggish or unreliable, page loads can feel delayed even when your connection speed is fine.
Enable Secure DNS in Chrome
1. Settings → Privacy and security.
2. Security.
3. Look for “Use secure DNS.”
4. Choose a provider.
Common options may include Google, Cloudflare, or your current provider. If you’re unsure, try Cloudflare first, as it’s widely known for speed and reliability.
This tweak doesn’t change your laptop’s hardware performance, but it can improve perceived Chrome speed by reducing time spent waiting for sites to start loading.
How to tell if DNS is your issue
DNS-related slowness often looks like:
– A long pause before the page begins loading
– After it starts, the page loads quickly
– Multiple sites show that “starting” delay, not just one
If that sounds familiar, DNS changes can be one of the highest-impact fixes with the least effort.
7) Audit extensions and enable “on click” access for the ones you keep
Extensions are one of Chrome’s greatest strengths, but they’re also a common reason laptops feel slow. Some extensions run background scripts on every page, inject content, or constantly sync. Even well-made extensions add overhead, and a few poorly optimized ones can wreck Chrome speed.
How to find and remove heavy extensions
1. Chrome menu → Extensions → Manage Extensions.
2. Turn off anything you don’t recognize or no longer use.
3. Remove extensions you haven’t used in a month.
A good rule: if you can’t explain what an extension does in one sentence, it probably shouldn’t have access to your browser.
Watch for extension red flags:
– “Read and change all your data on all websites”
– Frequent updates from unknown publishers
– Sudden changes in browser behavior (search engine, new tabs, pop-ups)
Set extensions to run only when you need them
Even if you keep an extension, you can often reduce its impact by limiting when it runs.
– Pin only the extensions you actively use (Extensions icon → pin)
– Use site access controls (in extension details) to limit it to specific sites
– Prefer extensions that offer “only when clicked” behavior for page actions
Example:
– A grammar checker might be useful in email and docs, but unnecessary on every news site. Restricting its site access can noticeably reduce background activity.
If you do nothing else in this article, do this: remove unused extensions. It’s one of the most reliable ways to improve Chrome speed immediately.
Quick checklist: apply all seven settings in under 15 minutes
If you want a fast, no-fuss plan, follow this order:
1. Enable Memory Saver in Settings → Performance
2. Disable “Continue running background apps” in Settings → System
3. Use Chrome Task Manager to end the worst tab/extension offenders
4. Reduce aggressive preloading/prediction features
5. Clear site data for the one or two sites that are consistently slow
6. Turn on Secure DNS and pick a fast provider
7. Remove extensions you don’t use and restrict the rest
You’ll get the biggest gains from steps 1, 2, and 7, but the combined effect is where your laptop starts feeling genuinely lighter and quicker.
The best part about these tweaks is that they don’t require a new laptop, a fresh install, or risky downloads—just smarter defaults. Start with Memory Saver and the background-app toggle, then spend five minutes auditing extensions and using Chrome’s Task Manager once you notice a slowdown. After that, fine-tune DNS and preloading to match your network and workflow. If you want help tailoring these settings to your specific laptop, workload, or set of extensions, reach out at khmuhtadin.com and get your Chrome speed tuned properly for how you actually browse.
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