5 Ways to Fix Google Chrome High CPU Usage

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser with millions of satisfied uses across the globe. It offers themes and extensions to make it even better. With lots of extensions available in Chrome web store, it helps in improving productivity and getting additional third-party features in browser. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. The browser is free and offers good experience. But many people usually face high CPU usage issue. Chrome is already notorious for eating lots of RAM, but high CPU usage almost put the system down. So, you must know how to deal with it. I already wrote an article to fix the high RAM usage of Google Chrome. You should also read for additional knowledge.

When Google Chrome face high CPU usage, it makes system slow and ruin your web browsing experience. It is because it starts eating your system’s RAM and engage the CPU a lot. You see lag and delay in switch from one application to other. Sometimes it takes much time in web page scrolling. Many times, this leads to blue screen of death.

Also see: How to Use the Google Chrome Task Manager

There can be many reasons why Chrome causes high CPU usage. So, there is no single solution to fix the issue. You need to check several things and perform fix according to that. If you are one of those facing this issue, you should read this article to learn how to Fix Google Chrome High CPU Usage. In this article I am listing best ways to fix high CPU usage by Google Chrome.

Ways to Fix Google Chrome High CPU Usage

If you Google Chrome is not working properly, you are facing lag and delay in response, your Chrome may have started consuming high CPU. You can confirm this by using task manager in Windows and Acitvity monitor in MacOS. Now here are few ways that you can do to fix Chrome high CPU usage.

1. Close unnecessary tabs and keep fewer tabs open

Every new Chrome tab starts a new process on your system. It means every single process puts additional burden on your CPU. If tab is heavy with flash content and lots of JavaScript code, it puts enough load on CPU. Now think if you have 10-15 Chrome tabs open in your system. It will surely put much load on the CPU. So, try to close all the tabs that you do not need any more. While Chrome has started suspending inactive tabs to free CPU and RAM temporarily. It is a good practice if you use fewer tabs by yourself. You will surely see improvements soon after closing few tabs. As soon as you close a tab, it stops a process and load on your CPU will be lesser.

Also read: Search Across All Tabs in Chrome

I also have habit of opening lots of tabs at the same. When I feel rise in temperature or any delay in mouse movement, I instantly close the heavy browser tabs that could affect the CPU usage.

2. Remove unnecessary extensions

Chrome offers option to install extension for boosting your productivity and adding third-party features on Chrome. But these extension may also be the reason behind the high load on CPU. There could the case when a poorly coded extension make your browser unresponsive and cause the high CPU load. Unnecessary extensions can also make your browser unresponsive. So, removing all the unnecessary extension is recommended.

Even if you disable the extension, it can use CPU. So, disabling the extension may not help. Remove all the extensions that you do not use. It will improve performance of your browser.

3. Disable hardware acceleration

Hardware acceleration allows Chrome to share heavy processing loads between your CPU and your GPU. If works fine but there could be cases when it causes chrome to use more CPU. SO, you can disable the hardware acceleration to see if it helps.

For this, go to settings -> Advanced -> System. Here you will see option “Use hardware acceleration when available”. Disbale this by clicking on the toggle button.

If you do not see any change in CPU load after disabling this option, you can re-enable it.

4. Check if any tab is secretly mining cryptocurrency

After the popularity of cryptocurrency, many people have started mining Cryptocurrency on the system of their website visitors. If you suddenly feel the high CPU load after visiting a website, it might be because of cryptocurrency mining. If a browser has CPU mining code install, your CPU usage will touch to 100% in seconds.

You can check if a website is mining cryptocurrency. If it does, close that browser tab. You can also use browser extensions to block cryptocurrency mining on your browser. You should also recommend your friends to keep a mining blocking extension in the web browser to avoid any such issue in advance.

Also read: How to Fix Shockwave Flash Plugin Crashes in Google Chrome

5. Reset Google Chrome

If you still face the issues after doing all these things, you can think of resetting your browser. After doing Chrome set, it will remove browser data including personal settings, cookies, bookmarks, and accounts. So, do not forget to keep a back of your browser data before performing reset.

For this, go to settings -> Advanced -> Reset.

After perming reset, your system should perform better. You can reimport your browser data from Google account.

Final Words

Here, I wrote all the ways that could help you in fine the high CPU usage of Chrome. High CPU usage also increases the temperature of CPU that could affect its performance. You can try all the methods I added in this article. I am sure you will see change in performance and CPU usage will be back to normal. The browser reset must be the last option. You should always try other options before performing the full browser reset. If you still face any problem, you can always leave a comment.

I have lots of article on Google Chrome. You should not miss any of those. Use top navigation or search for finding interesting articles.