How to Speed Up a Slow Browser

I am especially satisfied with my M1 MacBook Air (2020), which I have been using for almost three years now. However, I regret not having gone for the variant with 16 GB of RAM. The M1 MacBook Air Basic with 8 GB of RAM is much faster, fresher and lasts longer than the MacBook Air Intel that I used before it, but the most recent laptop sometimes slows down when I open too many browser tabs. Fortunately, I did troubleshooting and solved the problem, and I am here to share what I learned with you. So, if Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari or other browsers slow down on your computer, try some of this tips to stifle this problem in the egg.

Identify what causes the slowdown

This is the most difficult part of a slowdown in the browser, because very often, there is no final answer to what the root problem is. It could be because you have an old and slow computer, or because you have too many open tabs that you never close, or because an extension interfers with something or a combination of several factors. To reduce the list of possible problems, I recommend the Golden Rule of Troubleshooting: Manage one thing at a time.

This means that you should start by leaving all other applications, running a single browser with a single tab, then see if the slowdown is still present. If your browser works well when you have one or two tabs open and slows down once you open several tabs, this may indicate a problem with the browser. If the browser works well alone, but slows down when you have other applications in progress, the problem could be with a different application, or it could be a material limitation.

If, after a certain troubleshooting, your browser is really the problem, then here is what you can do to remedy it.

Use your browser task manager

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Video streaming or web applications can cause browser slowdowns, but the easiest way to confirm this is to use the integrated task manager of your browser. Yes, your browser generally has a distinct task manager, which allows you to see which of its tabs cause problems. In Firefox, access it as simple as pressing Notchy. Alternately, you can click on the three -line button in the upper right corner and go to More tools> task manager. You can even type on: processes in the address bar to do the same thing.

In Chrome (and derivatives such as Edge and Brave), you will have to press the three -point button in the upper right corner, then access to More tools> task manager. Unfortunately, Safari does not have a integrated task manager, but you can open the Activity Monitor application to your Mac and type Safari in the search bar to display the process linked to each open tab and determine which causes a slowdown.

The opening of the browser task manager is one thing, but it is also important to know what to search once you have opened it. The task manager of your browser shows you the use of the processor and the RAM of each tab, and you can use this information to determine the problem. If a tab takes too many things, close the tab to see if that makes a difference. Usually that does the trick.

Unused tabs

This brings me to my next advice: please, just close these tabs that you opened five years ago. You will never arrive and you don’t lose anything by closing them. This applies to me as much as for anyone, so I will be the first to admit my sins. I had a Persona 5 Game guide opened three years ago, when I played the game for 120 hours for the second time. I stopped playing the game before reaching the real end (for a second time), but I always had the game guide tab open until a few months ago. He did nothing or consume too much resources, but when my browser slowed down, I had to let him go. I accepted that I will probably never finish the game, nor read one of the different articles that I opened in my other older tabs, or watch one of these videos that I wanted to arrive. The closure of all these inactive tabs has contributed to considerably accelerate my browsers.

If you are still not ready to abandon your tabs, you can also easily save all the open tabs in Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Remove unused extensions

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I love to use browser extensions to add useful features to my internet experience, but the additional steps they ask for your browser can sometimes cause slowdowns. This is particularly true for the extensions that you no longer use, and the removal of unused and potentially heavy extensions is good for performance (and your intimacy, because extensions often require access to all your open pages). To quickly remove an old extension, open the About: Addons Page in Firefox, Chrome: // Extensions page in chrome and its derivatives, or click Safari menu bar button and access Settings> Extensions.

I also found some value in deactivating extension only on specific web pages. As a person who suffers from migraines, I count on Dark Reader to force each website to open up in dark mode. Light backgrounds trigger my headache, which often ruin whole days, so I have to be careful with the brightness of the screen and how the web pages appear. However, Dark Reader slowed down some tabs, and I found that deactivating it for these specific web pages helped solve the problem.

Restart the browser (and your computer)

Sometimes the solution to a slowdown is such a simple restart, which will give defective processes a chance to correct yourself. You can try to leave the browser, restart your computer and start the browser again to see if your problem is solved. It’s quite easy to do, but it is easy to forget the simplest and most obvious solutions, so I thought it was worth mentioning it here as well.

Update your browser

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The problem is not always your computer, open tabs or extensions. Sometimes it can be a buckt in the browser code, which could cause memory leak or use too much of your processor resources to execute the application. You can do nothing to solve this problem, except to ensure that your browser is updated to its new version. Most browsers are generally good enough to update yourself, but if you notice that you are on an older version, you can also update manually.

I will start with my essential browsers. To update Firefox in Windows, click the three -line button in the upper right corner and select Help> On Firefox. On Mac, hit the Burn button in the menu bar and select About Firefox. You can update Chrome (or its derivatives) by selecting the three -point button, then clicking Help> on chrome.

To update Safari on your Mac, you have to update MacOS itself. Click on the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and go to System settings> General> Software update.

Reduce announcements and follow -up

Advertisements and trackers increase on almost all websites, which tends to increase pages loading times and can also cause browser slowdowns. You can counter this using an adblocker such as Ublock Origin on Firefox and Chrome, and one of the many good adblockers for safari. You can also consider using an integrated VPN with ADBLOCK or a good DNS service such as NextDNS. One of these alternatives should reduce the frequency to which the sites called home and how many trackers and other heavy elements of resources are loaded on web pages, which has a direct effect on the performance (and safety) of your browser.

Cookies and data erase

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You can also see an improvement in performance by eliminating cookies and browser data. Know that this will force you to connect to your websites commonly visited the next time you visit them, and could also erase the history of your browser. If you agree with this, you can try this as another option to speed up your browser.

In Firefox, click on the three -line button in the upper right corner and access Settings> Confidentiality and security. In the Cookies and data Section, select Clear data … And confirm when asked. Then go to History Section and click Clear story ….

In Chrome, click the three -point button in the upper right corner and access Settings> Confidentiality and security> Delete navigation data. Go to Advance Tab, check all the options you want to erase and select Delete data.

In safari on your Mac, go to Safari Menu bar menu and select Clear story … To remove navigation history. Then go to Safari menu> Settings> Confidentiality> Manage website data …. Here you can either select and delete data from individual websites, or select everything and delete everything.

Check the room temperature

Ambient temperatures increase around the world. Especially in summer, you could use your computer in a hot room and feel slowdowns accordingly. Modern computers have an integrated thermal cut, and if a device becomes too hot, it will slow down at first, before stopping entirely to protect your machine. But this will not only slow down your browser. Everything you do on your computer will work more slowly than usual if it is too hot where you are. You can try to use a laptop, air conditioner or other methods to cool your computer. You will see an immediate improvement in performance once the computer is working at a lower temperature.

Consider upgrading your computer

Finally, if none of these solutions works in the long term, the problem can simply be with the equipment you use. Even cheap upgrades like replacing a hard drive with an SSD or adding more RAM could help, but in many cases you may want to get a whole new computer. I don’t like to tell anyone to spend more money to solve problems, but sometimes it’s really the only option.

The purchase of my M1 MacBook Air was a solid decision in 2022, and at the time, even if my friends and family members cut to help, I could not afford the variant of 16 GB of RAM. The next time I buy a computer, I will make sure it has a little more RAM than I need, so that the slowdowns of the browser and other performance problems are not surface, at least during the first years of the life of the computer.