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My laptop’s fan used to kick in barely ten minutes after I sat down to work. While the sound of the blazing fast fan spinning beneath the keyboard, I used to wonder why this was happening. I wasn't running a heavy game or doing a resource-intensive task — for my sins, I had just Google Docs and a few other tabs open. Turns out it had nothing to do with the hardware, and the real culprit was sitting quietly in my taskbar.
A glance at the taskbar and systray made me realize that my browser wasn’t just running my open tabs, it was running a bunch of hidden processes I never asked for. Thankfully, there is an easy solution to fix this and finally get Chrome to give back some of the resources it likes to hog.
My browser kept working long after I closed it
Chrome continued processing in the background for hours
The first thing I checked was that Chrome wasn’t actually closing when I clicked the X button. Chrome has a setting called “Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed.” And the thing is, it is turned on by default, so extensions can continue to sync, and notifications keep coming through.
Chrome's own documentation states that a Chrome process starts at sign-in and continues to run even after all windows are closed. I found mine running quietly for hours after I thought I had closed everything down.
To stop Chrome from running when you close the window:
- Open Google Chrome.
- In the address bar, type chrome://settings/system. This will open the System menu directly. Alternatively, you can click the three-dot icon in the top-right, select Settings from the drop-down menu, then tap System in the left pane.
- Turn off the Continue running background apps when Google Chrome option.
For me, this feature was turned on. I pushed the toggle to off and noticed fewer Chrome processes lingering in the system tray. This is a solid reason why your laptop may get warm even when you aren't browsing or using it.
Extensions were quietly eating my CPU
Extensions didn't stop working just because I wasn't clicking them
Another feature hogging my CPU resources was the extensions that I was using to make my browsing easier. I use a handful of extensions needed for work, plus a few I’ve forgotten about. Every one of them, active or not, loads at startup and can keep a background page running.
I opened Chrome’s Task Manager with Shift+Esc and sorted by CPU. Two extensions I hadn’t touched in months were sitting right at the top of the list, doing absolutely nothing for me. If you don’t know, Chrome’s Task Manager is different from Windows' Task Manager.
Chrome’s task manager shows you exactly what each tab, extension, and background process is doing to your CPU and memory in real time. It is one of the most underused tools in the browser.
After I found the culprit extensions, I didn't just disable them; I removed them entirely by heading to chrome://extensions. If you want a more permanent fix rather than manually looking for shady extensions every month, there are extensions built specifically to stop Chrome from hogging memory and CPU. It does so by suspending or grouping tabs you aren't actively using.
Chrome was burning CPU to guess what next I’d click
Preloading pages isn’t as free as it feels
Chrome has a feature that predicts which page you are likely to click next and starts loading it before you actually click it. This makes the page feel instant when you get there. It is called Preload Pages, and you can find it inside chrome://settings/performance.
According to Google, Standard preloading loads some likely pages well in advance, while Extended preloading is far more aggressive about it. With the latter, Chrome is speculatively rendering pages you might never actually open, which is costing real CPU and memory.
This shows up more when you keep multiple tabs open. The best way to fix this issue is to dial back from Extended to Standard. You will instantly notice that the CPU usage has calmed down.
Seeing the full picture changed everything
While performing the above tweaks, it helped me get the hang of what Chrome uses, but I still wanted to confirm whether that is the real picture I am seeing. This is where I came across Glances, an open-source tool that gives you a transparent picture of what’s using what. It tells you exactly every process your browser normally keeps hidden from you. This is much better than the built-in Chrome tool, as I was also able to view some renderers and utility processes I didn't know existed.
Of course, none of the changes were as dramatic as you may want to believe. However, when stacked together, I reduced unwanted CPU usage. If your laptop also feels warm, and you are tired of tweaking Chrome’s settings for a snappier browsing experience, you should go through the whole list and see the difference.
