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I am running Windows 7 x64 with 12GB of RAM

I often have multiple windows and a ton of tabs open. I use the extension Session Buddy to restore all my windows and tabs once the memory gets too high.

So my 12gb of ram will get up to around 93% used because of Chrome, now I can close chrome down and restore the same amount of windows and tabs and it will only use about 25% of memory, it then over time increases back up to the 90% zone after several hours.

It seems that when I close tabs, instead of freeing that memory up, it doesn't so that is why the huge increase of memory usage as new tabs are opened and closed it just adds up, this sounds like a huge bug in chrome.

Just for an example I just re-booted my system, I only have 1 window with 4 tabs open and in the task manager, it shows 29 chrome.exe processes

I then killed all chrome processes and opened a chrome window with just 1 tab, it made 27 chrome.exe processes.

Is this an issue that others have?

More importantly, is there a fix?

UPDATE I just read that each plugin and extension creates a chrome.exe process, I then couunted 24 extensions so that helps explain a portion of the large processes.

Still not sure about memory not being freed up though!

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    What does the "about:memory" page show? Also take a look at Chrome's task manager (press Ctrl+Escape).
    – Dracs
    Nov 19, 2011 at 21:18
  • Does it also happen with Firefox?
    – neverMind9
    Jan 28, 2018 at 8:31

3 Answers 3

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If you use Process Explorer or Process Hacker 2, how much Private Bytes are each Chrome.exe process using on average?

I monitor Chrome.exe's memory usage very closely on my 32 bit 4GB system, and what I find is that typically the only chrome.exe to bloat is the one containing the Flash plugin. When it reaches 700-900MB Private Bytes, I know it's time to close it via Chrome Task Manager and restart it.

You might also gleam some useful info by visiting about:memory in the Chrome address bar.

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  • Flash Private Memory: 273700k Share Memory: 29256k Total Memory: 302956k Private Virtual Memory: 277568k Mapped Virtual Memory: 27812kHi, I was looking in the process explorer, for Flash I had this
    – JasonDavis
    Nov 19, 2011 at 23:03
  • Do you know which one I should be looking at? And how many kto make a MB?
    – JasonDavis
    Nov 19, 2011 at 23:04
  • Also, I read earlier that if you use Chromium instead of chrome, that it has a new flash plugin that is supposed to be better on performance
    – JasonDavis
    Nov 19, 2011 at 23:05
  • Chrome tends to update to the very latest Flash plugin on a biweekly basis. 1000K = 1MB. Your Flash usage looks normal, I would investigate about:memory next.
    – Syclone0044
    Nov 20, 2011 at 0:28
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Right click on the extreme left and select the taskmanager option to see the memory consumption of the browser. You might have a lot of extensions which are taking up the space. Disabling a few will bring down the consumption.

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Programs (not only Google Chrome) and Windows processes (e.g. Svchost.exe) have the nasty habit of occupying, as time goes by, more and more memory (watch Task Manager) and are only very reluctant to release that memory. And opening a "ton of tabs" certainly does help to increase memory usage significantly. That also explains why after a fresh restart Chrome memory uses much less memory.

You need a program that regularly reduces memory usage of all those programs/processes. Reducing memory usage also means that Windows can postpone or eliminate writing data from the memory to the swapfile. There're a number of programs out on the internet that can help you with that.

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    That’s simply not true. Leaking memory is faulty behavior. Unfortunately, locating the bugs responsible is not an easy task in complex programs. There’s also no universal way to make a program reduce its memory usage.
    – Daniel B
    May 6, 2014 at 11:56
  • - Oh yes. I do know 2 preograms that are capable of reducing memory usage while Windows is running.
    – Willy2
    May 6, 2014 at 12:08
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    Yes, and forgetting to release memory is just that: a bug. Most programs that claim they reduce memory usage do so by reserving all memory for themselves then releasing it. This is counterproductive for multiple reasons and absolutely not helping.
    – Daniel B
    May 6, 2014 at 12:11
  • Windows contains an API that reduces memory usage. And that API is used by these 2 programs.
    – Willy2
    May 6, 2014 at 12:20
  • This is simply impossible. Interfering with other processes’ memory will cause problems. Sure, you can drop caches, but that’s counterproductive. Caches will automatically be pruned as memory demand rises. But just for the record, you could state the programs’ names.
    – Daniel B
    May 6, 2014 at 13:12

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