I forced Android Chrome to freeze inactive tabs and saved my phone from constant slowdowns

Since late last year, when my computer experienced major memory issues, I have gone out of my way to preserve as much RAM as possible.

My practices eventually led me to be more careful with Google Chrome on Android.

In my experience, the downside of using Chrome is that, while it performs well, it can be a glutton for system resources, such as RAM and CPU.

While I am a big advocate of using multiple browsers to avoid relying on a single one, there are still plenty of users who want to stick to just one.

Plus, Chrome on Android is a decent choice, since it is usually one of the default options on many smartphones, including budget-friendly to excellent mid-range models.

And if you own multiple Android devices, all your data, like your saved bookmarks, saved passwords, and reading list, transfers over without any issue, which is my favorite aspect of using this web browser and why I keep it installed on all my devices.

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Chrome tabs are destructive to your RAM

Some smartphones only have 4GB of RAM to work with

If you're running at least 12GB of RAM on your smartphone, you are probably not overly worried about your RAM usage.

But even budget options will still run between 4GB and 8GB, with some virtual RAM options.

Though if you're low on storage space, virtual RAM isn't very helpful, since it reserves internal storage for RAM.

So then you are left with options that require you to actively manage your apps, background processes, and sessions to keep your phone from slowing down.

But when you actually want to use your apps, suspending or closing them isn't an option.

You can aggressively manage your Chrome app's cache by opening your device's app management settings and selecting the clear cache option, or by restarting your Android phone to clear system memory.

None of those options is ideal, as they are only temporary fixes unless you have an underlying software problem with your phone.

You can change some of the behavior that can lessen its hold on your CPU/RAM by opening Chrome settings while in the app, tapping Privacy and security, then tapping Preload pages.

Choose the No preloading radio option. This prevents Chrome from expending resources on predicting which web pages you might visit next.

If you are spending a lot of time browsing and researching the same topic, this feature might be useful.

But if you are opening Chrome to check one or two web pages, it is a waste of your device's CPU, and it drains battery and data. Chrome preloads predicted web pages in the background.

In my experience, the short-term speed gains have never been worth it compared to the subtle battery drain my phone experiences.

Take advantage of Chrome's tab group freeze mechanic

Create a controlled, lightweight tab group

I ran these tests on a Samsung Galaxy A25 5G, which has only 6GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage.

While the phone is great for general use, it can be noticeably slow when multiple apps, including Chrome tabs, are open simultaneously.

So then you are left with tab management options and settings to keep your phone running smoothly while you're leisurely browsing.

Thankfully, Chrome can automate this for you without you having to close tabs manually.

When you create a tab group, the browser will freeze tabs after a couple of minutes (usually around five) when they become inactive.

This prevents your phone's RAM and CPU usage from going haywire while you're managing your groups.

But when you expand the group, it becomes active again, which can be a bit of a challenge if you are working with too many tabs in that same group.

Outside of skimming the fat from your tab group (using fewer tabs).

You can still make a few tweaks to prevent these tabs from using more system resources than necessary.

This disables auto-refresh on your tabs and keeps background syncing off in Chrome.

Just note that this will affect performance, as it requires you to manually refresh your app.

But if you want to prevent unnecessary background syncing, open Google Chrome, tap the three-dot icon to access the settings, then tap Site settings.

From there, tap Background sync and then choose Don't allow closed sites to finish sending or receiving data.

The other method is to force Chrome to freeze your tabs with the built-in automatic settings. It's a little cheesy, but you can create a null tab group to default to when you need Chrome to freeze them temporarily.

Chrome has a setting that automatically moves tabs to the inactive section (freezing) them, but the minimum you can set is 7 days.

This workaround forces Chrome to change a tab group to inactive.

First, you'll need to know how to manage tab groups. To create a tab group in Chrome, open the tab switcher menu and open any web page.

For this, I decided to avoid web pages with a high number of graphics so they wouldn't use as many resources. I use WebPageTest.org.

Remember, this method is a bit niche since you're essentially creating a minimal tab group to freeze your other tabs, so you can go back to them when you need to, while Chrome is open (in most cases, you should just kill Chrome's background processes to relieve your RAM/CPU usage).

When you have a tab or two open, open the tab switcher menu and tap-hold on a tab.

Since you likely want to keep this tab group in your back pocket to freeze your inactive tabs temporarily, you'll want to ensure Chrome doesn't accidentally remove it.

You can do this in one of two ways: either pin the individual tabs and then recreate the tab group each time, or save the group to your bookmarks (my preferred method).

After you have comfortably created your tab group, switch to this null tab. Anytime you need to pause Chrome, it will automatically freeze your inactive tabs in your other group (think of it like how apps are treated on Android).

Tabs freeze when collapsed properly (you can close them, which is a sure way to free up your RAM/CPU usage, but then you'd have to reopen the whole group from your bookmarks), bypassing the need to wait.

Take advantage of Chrome's reading mode

Another practice you can try to make your browsing experience feel less sluggish is to enable Chrome's reading mode.

When you navigate to a website that has a lot of images and ads that take away from the reading experience, you can enter reading mode from the three-dot (More) menu section on Chrome.

This is a great option if you are using a really slow Fire tablet but still want to use the bigger screen to catch up on your news feeds or browse forums without anything impeding it.

Even if you don't necessarily use Chrome (Fire tablets require extra steps to install it), reading mode/view is available in many browsers, including Amazon's Silk Browser.