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Chrome Might Not Eat All Your RAM After Adopting This Windows Feature

Google’s Chrome browser is far and away the most popular way to browse the web, which is surprising when you consider its abysmal memory management. It’s not uncommon for Chrome to gobble up multiple gigabytes of RAM in Windows, which can make devices with limited memory hard to use. There may be hope on the horizon, though. A new feature in Windows 10 might allow Google to streamline Chrome, and we know it works because Microsoft is already using it. 

Microsoft used to shy away from open source projects, but when the time came to replace the Edge browser, Chromium was the easy choice. The Chromium project is the basis for numerous browsers like Opera, Brave, and of course, Chrome. Microsoft moved quickly to develop a new version of Edge that used Chromium. It announced the project in late 2018, and just over a year later, Microsoft had a final version ready for download. 

Chromium Edge rolled out to almost all Windows 10 computers in the recent May 2020 update. According to Microsoft, this update also implemented a new memory management feature in Edge known as SegmentHeap. In the latest version of Windows, developers can opt into SegmentHeap to lower the RAM usage of a program. Microsoft says it already added support to the new Edge browser, and it has seen a 27 percent drop in the browser’s memory footprint. 

Chrome memes are so common because we’ve all experienced it.

As anyone who’s used Chrome regularly can confirm, Google’s browser has a way of running away with all your RAM once you get past a handful of tabs. However, Google has taken note of the new SegmentHeap functionality in Windows. A new comment in the Chromium open source project suggests the addition of SegmentHeap support on Windows. The comment notes that devices with higher numbers of processor threads will benefit the most, but everyone should get some RAM back. Testing individual machines with modified Chrome executables shows that SegmentHeap could save several hundred megabytes at least. 

Google is still in the earliest phase of adding this feature to Chrome. It might appear in the Canary build soon, followed by a Dev channel release. It will take at least a few months after that for SegmentHeap support to arrive in the Stable channel that most people use.

Chrome Might Not Eat All Your RAM After Adopting This Windows Feature - ExtremeTech 

11 Replies

I hope FireFox does the same thing. I am using FF exclusively for the time being and Brave when applicable. But FF uses sometimes over a gigabyte of RAM.

I noticed the same thing..but I had too many extensions running. I reduced to two..Ublock Origin and Privacy Badger. Check it out..

Chrome does not use that much memory for me. Perhaps that adblocker is feeding on all your cookies for some rival agency.

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Well it must for other people..or why introduce the feature?

I don't use Chrome..or anything from Google if I don't have to. I use Firefox and Opera.

If I did have Chrome I would reinstall it

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kingfish wrote:

Well it must for other people..or why introduce the feature?

I don't use Chrome..or anything from Google if I don't have to. I use Firefox and Opera.

If I did have Chrome I would reinstall it

I use Chrome as world+dog all based on it. I only use one security tool I detest the hijacking my browser for mining coins.

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I never met world dog ...do you talk to him often?

kingfish wrote:

I never met world dog ...do you talk to him often?

guess you flunked english literature, world+dog is a idiom that means everyone and even their pet dog have been involved


@hardcoregames_ wrote:

kingfish wrote:

 

I never met world dog ...do you talk to him often?

Guess you flunked English literature: "world + dog" is an idiom that means everyone, even their pet dog, has been involved.


Haha, it's funny.

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Ray_AMD
Community Manager

I use Edge and it's miles ahead of the competition in performance and memory usage.

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Maybe it just meshes better with all that telemetry baked into Windows 10 that collects everything you do. LOL

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fyrel
Miniboss

I've been using Chrome Canary for years don't have any memory issues.

I still have Edge on my system for when the nightly build doesn't work but that's pretty rare these days.

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