OneTab: Easily Keep Collections of Tabs without Keeping Them Open They all do different things, but you can easily get by with one or two of the options. There are three essential extensions here-and the best part is that you don’t need all of them. Now that you’ve gotten rid of a bunch of extensions you don’t use, let’s add a few that can do some good.
Not only will this free up RAM by killing background processes, but it’ll make for an overall cleaner system. If you don’t know what it is or it’s something you don’t use, get rid of that sucker! Smash that remove button to kill it with fire. ?? Scroll through and take a look at each extension or app. You can also type chrome://extensions into Chrome’s Omnibox. To see which extensions you have installed, fire up a new tab in Chrome click the menu > More Tools > Extensions. And a lot of that stuff could be running in the background, eating up RAM.
If you like to experiment with various apps and extensions, there’s a chance you could have a whole gaggle of crap you’re not using. Best Practice: Get Rid of Unused Extensions and Apps If you’re not using something or it’s not crucial that it stays open all the time, kill it! Try to refine your workflow only open what you need, keep everything else closed until that time comes. The same goes for any background apps you may have running-use them sparingly. I’m not suggesting everyone is going to have six pinned tabs, but the point is still the same: adjusting your workflow is essential when switching to a system with less memory.
That’s a perfect example of things that you might need to adjust when you switch from a Windows or Mac computer to a Chromebook. Why? Because Gmail uses an absurd amount of RAM. On my Pixelbook, which has half the RAM of my Windows machine, I only have two pinned tabs: Trello and Facebook Messenger.
Background tabs, apps, and services all take up precious RAM-and some of these things can use an absolute ton of the stuff.įor example, on my Windows machine, I have six always pinned tabs: three Gmail accounts, Trello, Google Play Music, and Facebook Messenger. It should probably go without saying, but you should close stuff that you’re not using. This is a twofold approach that consists of one part best practices and one part Chrome extensions. Having the option to kill processes and free up RAM when you need to is great, but there’s a better solution: be proactive. Just click the process, then the “End Process” button-boom, dead. If it’s an application or tab running in the background that you don’t need, you can kill it here, freeing up precious RAM. Click the “Memory Footprint” button until it shows a down arrow to sort by most used.įrom there, you can start to pinpoint what’s eating up your system’s RAM.
Once it opens, you’ll get a good snapshot of your system’s current state, including memory, CPU, and network usage. Alternatively, you can fire up the Chrome browser, click the three-dot menu in the upper right corner, and then choose More Tools > Task Manager. Just hit search + escape on the keyboard to bring it up. Now that you’ve determined your RAM situation needs a closer look, it’s time to turn to Chrome OS’ built-in task manager.
RELATED: How to Monitor Your Chromebook's System Resources with Cog To See What’s Using Your RAM: Use ChromeOS’ Built-in Task Manager If it’s full, it’s probably time to see what’s eating it up. The RAM graph is pretty straightforward-it tells you how much RAM your system has, along with how much is in use.
If you feel like your system is getting sluggish and suspect that full RAM may be culprit, go ahead and fire up Cog. For this purpose here, of course, we’re going to focus on RAM. It displays CPU, storage, RAM, battery, internet activity, and more data all in real-time. It doesn’t get frequent updates, but it’s still a super useful utility for checking your system’s stats. Cog is one of my favorite Chrome OS applications.