Firefox or Chrome: Browsers have improved dramatically over the past decade. They are much faster and much easier to use. But while browsers may seem perfect, they often suffer from problems like memory leaks and high CPU usage.
You've surely come across this:
If you leave a browser with many tabs open for a long time, it will slowly start using more and more memory, but it also makes excessive use of your computer's CPU. Your only solution, of course, is to close the application, or close the tab that is causing the biggest problem.
In modern browsers, you can simply close the tab that is using high CPU usage.
Below we will see how you can find this tab.
Chrome
Chrome has its own process manager. On Windows, if you open the process manager, you will probably see a lot of Chrome exe running in parallel. There is one exe for each tab. In the unlikely event that Windows is not reporting memory or CPU usage correctly, or you are not seeing all of your tabs, you can use Chrome's Process Manager.
Open a Chrome window and press Shift+Esc together to open the process manager. You will see a list of all the tabs you have open and all the extensions you have installed in your browser. You can sort the processes (short) by high to low usage. Select the tab that is using high CPU usage and click End Process to close it.
Firefox
Firefox doesn't have its own task manager like Chrome, but it does have a built-in tool that shows performance statistics for tabs and add-ons. Open Firefox and type the following text into the address bar.
about:performance
This page will give you a list of all your open tabs and add-ons installed in your browser. To see performance statistics for an add-on or tab, click the “more” button next to the tab or add-on.
You will see the CPU usage and you can close or refresh the tab directly from this page. You cannot sort the tabs by usage, so you will have to search for the tab with high CPU usage.
Windows Task Manager
Of course you can always use the Windows task manager to find the tab that is consuming a lot of memory or CPU.
Make sure you group the processes by type and then sort the column by CPU usage.
With Firefox, the task manager will only report CPU usage for the current tab. You will need to separate the tabs into windows while observing the task manager.
With Chrome, the Windows Task Manager will show you memory and CPU usage for individual tabs, but it won't show the tab titles. So you might close a tab you need.
