too many Chrome tabs hobbles machine

Question

too many Chrome tabs hobbles machine

I'm a person who likes to have a LOT of browser tabs open (typically 100). And I use Chrome. Understanding that this is a huge load, I installed an extension called "The Marvellous Suspender". It seems to do what it's supposed to do, so that most tabs are "suspended" at any given time; Activity Monitor doesn't show a "memory pressure" problem (green graph, typically 6.5 out of 8 GB of memory used). Yet, my machine is suffering; very slow response in many different ways.

I'm running now with about 15 tabs and it's like night and day. (Yet I'm still using 6+GB of memory).

Why are the 100 tabs bringing the machine to its knees, when Activity Monitor doesn't seem to show a problem ?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Nov 10, 2022 4:48 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,324 points

Nov 10, 2022 5:38 PM in response to RustyQShackleford

Chrome is a known resource hog.

Perhaps it is not a memory problem but a CPU problem. What is its total CPU load when you experience the problems?

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

155,864 points

Nov 12, 2022 4:49 AM in response to RustyQShackleford

Most likely, all those Google-related processes and "helpers" you probably see in Activity Monitor are doing what they are designed to do, which is to continually harvest and upload the information on your Mac so that Google can sell it. It's not as though they make that a secret.

The solution is to uninstall Google.

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Answer 3

Nov 10, 2022 6:42 PM in response to Barney-15E

There top two "helpers" (processes Chrome opens for every tab) were 34 and 18% (presumably of user CPU, not total), so I have to assume all 100 of the tabs add up to close to 100%.

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Answer 4

Nov 10, 2022 6:23 PM in response to Barney-15E

It's certainly higher. Just re-loaded that 100-tab session and Activity Monitor said system/user/idle = 17/34/50%. With the 15-tab session, system and idle are single digits. Is 50% too low ? Doesn't seem like it should be.

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Answer 5

Nov 10, 2022 7:17 PM in response to Barney-15E

Also, I just loaded the 100+ tabs on my mid-2012 Mac Pro (3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon), and it's not even breathing hard. Has 24GB of RAM, but probably no more proc'ing power than the Air (the one I'm having trouble with).

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Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,324 points

Nov 10, 2022 7:52 PM in response to RustyQShackleford

I guess I never thought the Air line was particularly powerful. I thought they were just for basic email, document generation. I may have gotten the wrong impression, though.

Does it get hot when it happens? Past Macs would throttle the cpu to cool them down. I don’t know if that’s still a technique.

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Answer 7

John Galt

Level 10

155,864 points

Nov 11, 2022 6:25 PM in response to RustyQShackleford

When a Mac's CPU indicates 50% idle its performance starts to become noticeably slow.

With the passage of time expect it to get worse as the Goolag constantly updates all its information-harvesting processes in the background. Google doesn't care if it means you have to buy a new Mac every year or two, and I suppose Apple won't mind either.

If you are required to use Google products buy a Chromebook. For what they do, Google should buy one for you and pay you to use it.

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Answer 8

Nov 11, 2022 8:41 PM in response to John Galt

Yes, this is another factor I've noticed - that things get worse with time (since Chrome was started and/or the computer re-booted). In fact, with the 20 tabs I'm running, the machine is still doing fine. But the CPU idle percentage is definitely dropping (typo when I said it was single digits, with 15 tabs, above).

What's the best to clear that out ? Empty cache ?

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