I forced Android Chrome to freeze inactive tabs and saved my phone from constant slowdowns
Android Police 2026-06-22 12:30:11
Context: The author, Faith Leroux, a writer at Android Police, has been managing memory issues on their devices since their computer experienced problems last year. They have been optimizing their use of Google Chrome on Android to conserve RAM and CPU resources. The author, using a Samsung Galaxy A25 5G with 6GB of RAM, found that Chrome's performance can be improved by tweaking its settings.
Key Facts
- The author has been optimizing Google Chrome on Android to conserve system resources, such as RAM and CPU, as they can be a glutton for these resources despite the browser's good performance.
- The Samsung Galaxy A25 5G, used for testing, has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and can become noticeably slow when multiple apps, including Chrome tabs, are open simultaneously.
- Disabling Chrome's preloading feature can help reduce CPU and RAM usage, as it prevents the browser from expending resources on predicting which web pages the user might visit next.
- Creating a tab group in Chrome allows the browser to automatically freeze inactive tabs after a few minutes, which helps prevent excessive RAM and CPU usage.
- The author suggests forcing Chrome to freeze inactive tabs or disabling background syncing to prevent unnecessary resource usage, which can be done by accessing Chrome's settings and toggling certain options.