Personalize Chrome performance

With Chrome’s performance settings, you can:

• Help active tabs run smoothly
• Prevent specific sites from being deactivated
• Extend your computer’s battery life
• Browse and search faster

Important: You can’t personalize your Chrome’s performance on mobile devices with iOS and Android. Learn other ways to speed up Chrome.

Manage performance issue alerts

To help improve your browsing performance, Chrome sends a notification that recommends tab deactivation. This notification appears when you experience poor browsing performance. To allow this change, click Fix now.

To turn this setting off:

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Performance.
4. Under “General,” turn Performance issue alerts off.

Tip: This setting is turned on by default.

Turn Memory Saver on or off

To save your computer’s memory and help active tabs run smoothly, Chrome deactivates tabs that you aren't currently using. When you access an inactive tab, it automatically reloads.

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Performance.
4. Turn Memory Saver on or off.
5. Select the Memory Saver tab deactivation level that you want:
   • Moderate: Get moderate memory savings. Your tabs become inactive after a longer period of time.
   • Balanced (recommended): Get balanced memory savings. Your tabs become inactive after an optimal period of time.
   • Maximum: Get maximum memory savings. Your tabs become inactive after a shorter period of time.

Tips:

• To help your active video and gaming tabs run smoothly, turn on Memory Saver.
• To show which tabs are inactive in the tab strip, turn on Inactive tabs appearance.
• When “Inactive tabs appearance” is on, the tab icon will be inside a ring .
• Some settings and activities on your computer may prevent tab deactivation.
  • Active audio or video (playback or calls)
  • Screen share
  • Page notifications
  • Active downloads
  • Partially filled forms
  • Pinned tabs
  • Connected devices (USB or Bluetooth)

Turn tab memory usage on or off

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Appearance.
4. To turn on or off Show memory usage:
   • Windows, Linux, and Chromebook: Under “Tab hover preview card,” turn Show tab memory usage on or off.
   • Mac: Turn Show memory usage on tab hover preview card on or off.

Keep specific sites active

To avoid a site from being deactivated, add it to your “Always keep these sites active” exclusion list.

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Performance.
4. To the right of “Always keep these sites active,” select Add.
5. From here there are 2 options:
   • Add current sites: Select from available sites that are currently open in a tab.
     1. Select the box to the left of the site you want to add, and click Add.
     2. To go back, select Cancel.
   • Add sites manually
     1. Enter the web address.
     2. Select Add.
     3. To go back, select Cancel.

Tip: The web address format for the manual site exclusion policy is: [scheme://][.]host[:port][/path][@query].

Here are some examples of how to add sites manually if you want to create an exclusion for:

• Entire domains and subdomains: Exclude the URL scheme. For example, google.com matches and prevents deactivation of subdomains like drive.google.com and calendar.google.com.
• Specific domains, but not any subdomains: Include a dot (.) before the URL host. For example, .google.com won’t match and prevent deactivation of subdomains like www.google.com, drive.google.com, and calendar.google.com.
• Specific subdirectory: Include the URL path. For example, www.google.com/finance matches and prevents deactivation of all Google Finance pages, but won’t prevent deactivation of the www.google.com main pages.
• URL host and query components: Asterisks (*) can be used as wildcards. For example, https://* matches and prevents deactivation of all https sites and youtube.com/watch?v=* matches and prevents deactivation of YouTube videos.
  • Wildcards for prefix, suffix, or substring matches of the URL host component aren’t supported. For example, *oogle.com or google.com/* won’t match and prevent deactivation.

Turn Energy Saver on or off

To extend your device’s battery, Chrome reduces its image capture rate and other background tasks. When Energy Saver is on, it works automatically whenever your device is unplugged, or when your battery is low. Energy Saver doesn't turn on when your device is plugged in.

Important: When Energy Saver is on, Chrome stops eligible CPU-intensive background tabs to reduce power consumption. Tabs that use video conferencing and play audio aren’t affected.

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Performance.
4. Turn Energy Saver on or off.
5. Select the setting that you want.

Tips:

• To resume tab updates or other important background activities, you can keep background tabs active during an individual session. To do this, next to the address bar, select Energy Saver Turn off now.
• To extend your device’s battery for a long road trip or plane ride, turn on Energy Saver.
• When Energy Saver is on, you may notice changes in gaming and video performance.
• Energy Saver is available on Windows, Mac, and Chromebook devices with a battery installed.

Turn Preload Pages on or off

To browse and search faster, Chrome preloads pages that you might visit. To preload pages, Chrome may use cookies, if you allow cookies, and may encrypt and send pages through Google to hide your identity from sites. Learn more about cookies.

1. On your computer, open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select More Settings.
3. On the left, select Performance.
4. Turn Preload pages on or off.
5. Select the setting that you want.

Tips:

• To preload some of the pages you’re likely to visit, select Standard preloading.
• To preload even more pages you’re likely to visit, select Extended preloading.

Related resources

• Speed up Google Chrome
• Reset Chrome settings to default
• Remove unwanted ads, pop-ups & malware
• Delete, allow and manage cookies in Chrome