A new version of Chrome, currently in beta testing, allows better management of the memory used by each tab opened in the browser. Here’s how to activate this new option.
Chromium continues to be enriched with options allowing it to improve its speed and make it lighter. Recently, an option offering him the possibility of closing his tabs much more quickly was introduced. Even earlier this year, Google added a new option to Chrome to better manage the memory used by the browser on computers.
If this “memory saver” thus offers the means to manage the occupation by the active tabs and those which are inactive, it lacks even more control possibilities. Thanks to this option, it is certainly possible to suspend inactive tabs, but there is only a way to activate or deactivate it in the browser settings. Nothing else. The new Chrome beta (currently available on the Canary channel) offers more control for everyone.
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Chrome offers you to better manage the memory used by all your tabs
To take advantage of this new option, you must first download the Canary version of Chrome (link below). Once this version of the browser is installed on your PC or Mac, enter the following command in the address bar:
chrome://flags#high-efficiency-mode-time-before-discard
You should have access to many possible settings, as in the screenshot above. Therefore, you have the means to manage the idle time after which the RAM saver pauses a tab. By default, this was set to 2 hours, which may seem really too long for a very small configuration equipped with 4 GB of RAM, or even less. Now you can set it for 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 half hour, 1 hour, etc.
This option is currently available from Chrome Canary 115. As mentioned above, this is an experimental version of the browser, intended in particular for developers. Currently, the stable version is edition 112. You will have to wait until July 2023 to see a final version of Chrome 115 arrive, and therefore to take advantage of this new feature within the edition distributed to the general public.
