Chrome and Edge freeze on macOS when closing

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Level 2

196 points

Chrome and Edge freeze on macOS when closing

Description of the issue: When I close Chrome on macOS, it often freezes for about 10 seconds, and by that I mean the cursor turns into the loading icon and the screen is unresponsive. This issue seems to have started within the last several months. I'm guessing there is some processing going on when Chrome closes but I don't know what that would be.

The issue was last encountered today, on the latest version of Chrome (143.0.7499.170) on the latest version of macOS (Tahoe 26.2) on my 2024 MacBook Air. This issue also happens to a lesser extent with Edge on macOS, where similar troubleshooting was tried. It doesn't happen with Chrome or Edge on Windows, only Mac.

Troubleshooting: I had already tried the following:

1. tested in incognito

2. disabled hardware acceleration

3. disabled preload pages

4. reset settings

5. ensured "Delete data sites have saved to your device when you close all windows" was not selected

6. used a new Chrome profile

7. did a clean reinstall of Chrome (i.e. deleted the Chrome folder from ~/Library/Application Support/Google/ and reinstalled).

None of those worked. Any way to prevent this issue from happening since it slows things down?

Note: I originally posted this issue on the Google Help community for Chrome. It eventually was closed with a recommended answer although I hadn't confirmed resolution. I tried to post the above on the Google Help community as a new thread, but a short while later it got marked as a duplicate, although it clearly wasn't since I said the issue was unresolved and I had listed all the troubleshooting I had tried, which included all the suggestions from the so-called "Product Expert" in the original thread. I resubmitted, substantially changing the wording, and it got marked as a duplicate again, so I am reaching out via other avenues for help.

MacBook Air 13″

Posted on Jan 4, 2026 1:48 PM

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Answer 1

MrHoffman

Level 10

145,885 points

Jan 4, 2026 2:15 PM in response to Connor Hawke

Google is an immense advertiser and data-collection and location-tracking entity, with sidelines in mail, browsers, phones, and search. Google apps tend to be resource-intensive, and all doing who-knows what.

As alternatives to the Google apps including their Chrome browser, do any of Chromium or Vivaldi or ungoogled-chromium web browsers work for your Chromium-based browser needs? Or the Firefox-based browsers, or Safari? Not sure about Edge, which is Chromium-based, but what Microsoft has happening with it?

To review the macOS install for potential problems involving Chrome and Edge, please download and run (free) EtreCheck, and share the results to the clipboard. Then open a new reply here, and press the Additional Text button that looks like a printed page, and paste and post the hardware and software configuration report here. From that, we can get a little more detail about what is installed and what is running here.

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