Sixty tabs open, the fan is running, and switching tabs has started to stutter. You look at the task manager and the browser is the biggest thing on it by a distance. Here is why that happens, what the browser can already do about it, and the one fix that actually removes the cost rather than shrinking it.

This applies to Chrome, but Edge, Brave and the other Chromium browsers work the same way, and Firefox is close enough that the advice carries over.

Why every open tab uses memory

A tab is not a picture of a page. It is the page, running.

  • Each site runs in its own process, for security and stability: one site cannot read another’s memory, and one page crashing does not take the browser with it. That isolation has a cost, because each process carries its own overhead.
  • Each page keeps its working state in memory: its scripts, the layout, decoded images, and whatever the page has loaded since you opened it.
  • Many pages keep working in the background. A mail client checks for new messages, a dashboard refreshes, a chat holds a live connection, a video sits buffered. Those are web applications, and they cost far more than an article you finished reading.

So the memory a browser uses grows roughly with the number of tabs, and much faster with the number of heavy tabs. Twenty tabs of articles is a different load from twenty tabs of web apps.

It is also worth knowing that a browser using a lot of memory is not automatically a problem. Memory that is free is doing nothing, and browsers use what is available and give it back when the system needs it. It becomes a problem when your computer starts slowing down.

How to see which tabs use the most memory

  • Chrome and Edge: press Shift+Esc to open the browser’s own task manager. Click the Memory column to sort by it. You can select a tab there and end its process.
  • Firefox: type about:processes in the address bar for the same kind of list.

Usually two or three tabs account for a large share. Closing or sleeping those does more than closing twenty light ones. While you are there, look at extensions too: each one that runs in the background takes memory as well.

Put inactive tabs to sleep with the browser’s own settings

All three browsers can unload tabs you are not using. The tab stays in the tab strip, but its page is cleared from memory; click it and the page loads again.

  • Chrome: Settings, Performance, then the Memory Saver setting. Chrome makes inactive tabs sleep and reloads them when you go back. You can list sites that should always stay active.
  • Edge: Settings, System and performance, then the sleeping tabs setting, where you choose how long a tab must be unused before it sleeps and list sites that should never sleep.
  • Firefox: unloads tabs on its own when your computer runs low on memory. about:unloads shows the tabs in the order Firefox would unload them, with a button to unload one now.

Turn this on before anything else. It is free, it is already installed, and for most people it is a noticeable improvement.

What sleeping a tab does, and what it does not

Sleeping is a good trade, and it is useful to know exactly what you are trading.

  • It frees memory, not attention. The tab is still in the strip, still squeezing every other tab narrower, still waiting for a decision.
  • Coming back costs a reload. Usually a second or two. A page that does not keep its own state - a half-filled form, an unsaved draft - may not come back exactly as you left it, which is why it is worth excluding the sites where you type.
  • Browsers are cautious about what they sleep, and a tab playing sound or one you are using is left alone. That is right, and it also means the heaviest tabs are often the ones that stay awake.

How to make the browser run better with many tabs

A few habits help as much as any setting:

  • Close the heavy tabs you are not using. The task manager tells you which ones they are.
  • Turn off extensions you do not use. Each one is code running alongside every page.
  • Keep tabs you return to in one window, and close the windows you opened for a single task when the task ends.
  • Restart the browser occasionally. A browser that has been open for a week has a week of history in every tab. Set it to reopen your previous tabs on startup first, so nothing is lost.

Close what you will not need, with a time to come back

The memory problem is mostly a tab problem. Most of the sixty tabs are open because closing them feels like losing them: the article you will read tonight, the page to check on Friday, the form you will finish next week. Sleeping them makes them cheaper. Closing them makes them free.

What you need is a way to close a tab and know it is coming back. That is what Latr is built around.

Put a time on a tab and close it. “Tonight”, “Friday 9am”, “in 2 hours”. Closed, it uses no memory at all. At that time the page reopens on its own, at the line you stopped reading, with a notification beside it.

Sleep what you want to keep open. For the tabs that should stay in the strip, Latr can put a single tab, a whole window, or every inactive tab to sleep in one press. It never sleeps the tab you are on or a tab playing sound, and it never closes anything: a sleeping tab stays where it is and reloads when you click it. Manual sleep is free. Sleeping tabs automatically after 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes unused is part of Latr Pro.

Set a limit per window. Choose a number between 10 and 40, and a new tab past it opens in a new window instead of crowding the one you have (free). With Pro, the oldest tab in the window can go to sleep instead.

Let the forgotten ones go. An optional, off-by-default setting saves and closes tabs you have not looked at for a day, up to 20 at a time, into Latr’s library where they can be found again. Pinned tabs, the tab you are on and tabs playing sound are never touched.

Reading your tabs needs a permission Latr asks for the first time you use one of these, not at install. Everything except the automatic sleep and the oldest-tab option is free, there is no account, and it works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox.

Turn on the browser’s own sleeping tabs today. Then, the next time a tab is open only so you will not forget it, give it a time and close it.