Chrome is arguably one of the fastest browsers available right now. But it’s not without its own issues. Sometimes Chrome seems to slow down for no reason. Whether general lag in the entire Chrome UI, or slowness in the page loading, these problems cause the Chrome to slow down considerably.

In this article, we’ll go through seven fixes that you can try to speed up Google Chrome if it’s running slow.

Update Chrome

It’s a good idea to check if Google Chrome is up-to-date. That should help fix any bugs or glitches preventing Chrome from working optimally. Chrome will automatically download and install updates for you, but only when it isn’t open.

On your Google Chrome, click the menu button in the upper-right corner. Then select Help > About Google Chrome.

The browser does install new updates on its own eventually, but you can open the Chrome menu, point to Help, and select About Google Chrome to apply them even faster.

Google periodically releases updates for Chrome to improve features and solve possible errors or problems. These are installed automatically unless we have this function disabled, to be carried out manually. This means that users won’t always have the latest version available.

It’s a good idea to check if Google Chrome is up-to-date. That should help fix any bugs or glitches preventing Chrome from working optimally.

Reset Chrome

If despite everything we continue to have performance problems, we can choose to reset the browser settings to return to its original settings. This would help to solve these mishaps with its performance.

We can access the configuration section by opening the Chrome://setting page. Subsequently, we move to the bottom and, in the right column, click on “Advanced settings”.

Finally, all that remains is to click on the option “Restore the original configuration defaults”. After this, the browser will return to its original state, which should end up solving the issue.

Remove unnecessary Chrome extensions and apps

Chrome extensions can create conflicts that result in slow file downloads. Try disabling them. To do that, select the Extensions icon to the top-right of the Chrome window and select Manage Extensions. Follow by turning off the switches next to each active extension.

• Another way is to simply paste “chrome://extensions” in your search bar in Google Chrome to see and manage your extensions.
• Now delete an extension by clicking the “Remove” button. You can remove an extension by clicking the toggle to the right of an extension so that it turns white.

If that helped improve the download speed, reactivate the extensions one by one until you figure out the one causing the issues.

You can remove all unnecessary extensions to speed up your Chrome. If that doesn’t work, you can also try to fix the problem by deleting the browser bookmarks.

Turn off hardware acceleration

The Google browser is compatible with the hardware acceleration function, which allows our computer to perform certain tasks that are usually performed with the CPU to be performed by the GPU.

This is something that serves to improve performance, although sometimes it can also cause issues, so we can have to disable it.

To do this, click on the icon with the three dots at the top of the browser and click on the “Settings” section.

This will open a new window where we will click on “Advanced” on the left and then on “System”. Now in the right panel, we click on “Use hardware acceleration” when it is available so that the button remains gray.

Restart Chrome and check if it now improves the speed.

The hardware acceleration feature of Chrome speeds things up in most cases, but it might cause Chrome to run slow sometimes.

Enabling hardware acceleration allows your browser to rely on the GPU, not solely the CPU to render web pages. In most cases, it will speed things up.

Reopen your Chrome. See if the Chrome slow issue is resolved. If not, try resetting your browser settings.

Close unnecessary tabs and background apps

If too many tabs are open in your Chrome browser, you should keep only one tab and close others unless they are very necessary.

Next, you need to check the apps running in the background on your computer and close unnecessary ones.

1. Press Windows + I to open Settings.
2. Select Privacy.
3. Scroll down in the left sidebar to choose Background apps.
4. Locate to pick which apps can run in the background.
5. Turn off the apps that are not necessarily needed.

You can also turn the switch to Off under Let apps run in the background.

For convenience, you might open new tabs with previous tabs open most of the time, especially when you search for some information or prepare for your paper. It is common to have more than 10 tabs open at the same time.

However, each tab opens in its own process on your PC, and each open tab consumes some resources. So, your Chrome will consume lots of resources if too many tabs are open at once, and this will slow the browser of course.

You can check how many resources Chrome consumes in Task Manager by just pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc keyboard shortcut to open. You will be prompted for permission. Click Yes to open Task Manager.