Google Chrome will now shame resource-hogging tabs

Google Chrome is gaining new performance controls to deliver the best browsing experience. The changes include a new “Performance issue alert” and improvements to the Memory Saver mode.

These enhancements should allow you to quickly free resources from heavy tabs that bog down overall system performance.

Google Chrome will alert you to deactivate heavy tabs

Over the years, Google has released several updates to Chrome to reduce its overall resource usage. An update released in February 2023 specifically reduced the browser’s memory consumption on Mac. Despite this, Safari on Mac remains the superior and more power-efficient browser. But Google remains committed to making Chrome as fast and efficient as possible.

As part of this goal, Google Chrome is gaining a new Performance Detection tool, as highlighted by the company on The Keyword blog. The browser will show a “Performance issue alert” notification when it detects that deactivating specific tabs can speed up the browsing experience on the current tab. You just need to click “Fix now” from the alert window, and Chrome will automatically deactivate the tabs to free up resources.

This feature is enabled by default, so don’t be surprised if Chrome starts showing you alerts to unload inactive tabs.

Chrome’s Memory Saver gains new modes

Chrome offers a built-in Memory Saver tool that helps reduce its resource consumption by unloading inactive tabs from memory. This feature is now getting even better, with three modes: Moderate, Balanced, and Maximum.

Balanced is the default and recommended mode, which automatically unloads inactive tabs from memory after an “optimal period of time.” To save most memory, switch to Maximum mode, which will deactivate tabs as quickly as possible.

If you use Google Chrome on your Mac, you can find these new performance-related options under Settings > Performance.