How to access the Task Manager in Google Chrome

Most people think of Google Chrome as a simple web browser, but the truth is that it has to do many tasks that aren’t altogether different from what the proper operating system does.  So it’s no surprise that Chrome is equipped with its own task manager. It also happens to be a powerful tool to diagnose and fix many desktop Chrome issues that crop up!

Using the Chrome Task manager is pretty easy and once you know it’s there, you’ll wonder how you ever dealt with Chrome’s occasional speed bumps without it. Just follow the steps below and you’ll be on your way to being a power user in no time.

How to open the Chrome Task Manager

1. With Chrome open, first click the three vertical dots at the top right of the Chrome Window
2. Now, highlight ‘More tools’.
3. Then click ‘Task manager’.

Now you’ll see the Task Manager window pop up, it should look like this.

Making sense of the Chrome Task Manager

At first the Chrome Task Manager might be a little hard to understand, but once you know what you’re looking for it’s all very simple.

Under ‘Task’ you’ll find the name of every discrete process Chrome is handling. Its ‘Memory footprint’ is of course how much RAM it’s using at the moment. ‘CPU’ tells you what percentage of your overall processing power is being used by that task. ‘Network’ tells you how much bandwidth a process is using.

You can get more information columns added to the Task Manager by right-clicking a task and choosing additional categories. However, these default categories are enough for the most common Chrome troubleshooting. By looking at these numbers, you can often tell which tasks is using up all your resources and kill it. To do that, simply click on the task and then click the big blue ‘End process’ button at the bottom right of the Task Manager. Now say goodbye to that troublesome piece of code!

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