Google Chrome gets quick way to see how much memory each tab is using

Abner Li | Nov 7 2023 - 4:47 pm PT

After adding a Memory Saver earlier this year, Chrome on desktop platforms (Mac, Windows, ChromeOS, etc.) will now report “Memory usage” when you hover over a tab.

In addition to page name and domain, the card that appears when you hover over a page in the Tab Strip now shows “Memory usage.”

Top comment by bambobo

Liked by 28 people

I know people rail on Chrome for being a "memory hog", but I think many users don't realize how memory-hungry web pages and apps have become. It's weird to me how people complain about memory usage yet expect to have dozens of tabs open while simultaneously wanting to switch seamlessly between tabs without disk swapping. Like, what do you expect? Of course your browser is going to suck up memory when you have YouTube and Instagram and Spotify and Office and Gmail and Apple and Steam and DoorDash and whatever else open at the same time.

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This simple feature lets you see what pages are particularly taxing your system and is much more convenient than going to the three-dot overflow menu > More Tools > Task Manager. (In brief testing, the Memory Footprint doesn’t align with the hovercard.)

This builds on Chrome’s Memory and Energy Saver modes. The latter limits background activity and visual effects, like animations, smooth scrolling, and video frame rates. The Memory Saver works by freeing up memory from inactive tabs. Those pages remain visible in the Tab Strip and reload when you navigate back.

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You can enable (or disable) both from Settings > Performance. There’s also the ability to “Always keep [certain] sites active.”

We’re seeing Memory usage in the tab hover cards on the stable channel with Chrome 119. It’s been slowly rolling out in recent weeks for Mac, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS. If it’s not yet available for your browser, set this flag to enabled: chrome://flags/#memory-saver-memory-usage-in-hovercards.