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I have 6 GB memory on my MacBook Pro but after some time I started Chrome, it ate up around 3-4 GB of my memory. Is there any way to limit the memory usage of Chrome?

P.S. for Mac, it seems there's no way to set the start-up arguments for Chrome, nor have a "purge memory" button in the task manager. So the usual ways for Windows don't apply for Mac.

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Are you running a ton of addons? – Simon Sheehan Dec 11 '11 at 23:30
Macs are very different from Windows PCs in terms of memory management. Are you experiencing any performance problems? Which version of chrome do you have? How many tabs are open? – slhck♦ Dec 11 '11 at 23:31
17.0.963.2, around 20 tabs and 10 plugins – iJay Dec 12 '11 at 13:52

migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 11 '11 at 22:44

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Actually on a mac there is a nifty little command for the command line that will attempt to purge the unused inactive memory.

purge

I have run into the same problem. That is only a temporary fix though.

NOTE: When you enter it don't worry if it seems as if your comp froze, that is normal as far as I have noticed, and will go away once the purge program has finished.

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up vote 1 down vote

Because of the way chrome forks a new process for each tab, it can report that its using more than its actually using. Some memory is shared between the chrome processes. Check the about:memory link in chrome, to see how much memory is actually being used.

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