Tired of Chrome's crap

[Jackolantern]

So for the last couple of years it has seemed like Chrome has been going downhill to me. A lot of my friends and fellow web developer buddies have been noticing the same thing. It has mountains upon mountains of memory leaks. Even some that Google has admitted they can't fix. It got to the point where if I watched 3 YouTube videos in a row, the third one would start stuttering and slow down my whole computer until I closed and re-opened it. It is also a resource hog. At any time if you are on Windows, open the Task Manager and look at the Processes tab. I bet you have way more processes of Chrome running than you have tabs open. This supports the "re-open a closed tab" feature, but I think it could be done a lot better.

I have actually switched to Firefox Quantum. At first I was just part-timing with it to see if I could get used to the change. That lasted about 2 weeks and now it is my main browser. Its developer tools are at least on part with Chrome's. It feels a heartbeat faster and does seem to be beating Chrome in speed In pretty much every speed test I can find. Its built-in ad blocking tool works at least as good as AdBlock but it isn't detected on a lot of websites that try to hit you with a paywall if you use AdBlock (although regular AdBlock is available if you want to use that instead).

I was able to import everything from Chrome so I didn't lose my bookmarks, history or anything else. All-in-all I have been very happy about the switch. FFQ's footprint on my machine feels much smaller and it seems that it doesn't slow my machine down the way Chrome was.

If Chrome is working great for you, keep using it. But if you keep running into issues and feel like it could be doing better, give Firefox Quantum a try. If you don't like it, you can always just uninstall it and go back.

[hallsofvallhalla]

I am having major issues with Chrome as well. It has become slow and dang uses so much memory and for what? I may look into the firefox you mentioned.

[vitinho444]

I get the frustration of chrome using all resources it can, I can't say I've noticed though. I'm running an i5-6500, 8gb DDR4 and an SSD and I usually play games with chrome (facebook tab only) open and I don't notice any changes if I close it. I guess the reason keeping me in Chrome is the sync between devices only with 1 account. I have tons of bookmarks that I'm constantly adding/removing/editing and I need those to go from my desktop, to my tablet, to my phone and to my laptop as soon as they change.

I'll take a look if FF has that and will probably try it out

[Jackolantern]

I am having major issues with Chrome as well. It has become slow and dang uses so much memory and for what? I may look into the firefox you mentioned.

I would recommend checking it out. You could try to part-time it like I did and see what you think. I had been using Chrome for so long that it took me a few days to get used to FF (by the way, I keep saying "Firefox Quantum", but it isn't actually a different browser; it is just the version name of the latest version).

I get the frustration of chrome using all resources it can, I can't say I've noticed though. I'm running an i5-6500, 8gb DDR4 and an SSD and I usually play games with chrome (facebook tab only) open and I don't notice any changes if I close it. I guess the reason keeping me in Chrome is the sync between devices only with 1 account. I have tons of bookmarks that I'm constantly adding/removing/editing and I need those to go from my desktop, to my tablet, to my phone and to my laptop as soon as they change.

I'll take a look if FF has that and will probably try it out

It does have that feature, but it is synced to a "Firefox account" that you need to create. I will say that was the biggest negative to changing. I am already so plugged in to Google that it was essentially effortless to also sync all my browsers through that account as well. So I had to make a new account and set up FF on my phone to keep those two in-sync. Not the worst thing in the world, but for me it was well worth it.

Like I mentioned, though, if you are not having any problems with Chrome, stay with it. FF doesn't really have any features that make it an automatic switch versus a nicely-working Chrome. But Chrome was causing me a ton of headache. I am on a 16gb machine and at times, Chrome would be using over 8gb of memory. That is unacceptable for me for a browser to be using so much memory for a tab re-opening feature I rarely use. Write the freaking closed tab state to the SSD, Google! I will wait longer for it to start-up. I re-open a tab about once a week! At least give us the option to slow down tab re-opening by writing its state to storage. It seems like it just keeps eating up more and more memory the more it has. I have almost no doubt it would be using ~18gb if I had 32gb.

Sorry for the tangent. I would say if you have noticed no problems, stay where you are. You aren't missing anything if you are still happy with Chrome and the extra account needed for syncing is a negative. It is just that a lot of people these days are not happy with Chrome.

[vitinho444]

It's weird, my Chrome never got above 3GB of RAM, but a long time ago I've messed with the deep configuration of it so I might have something disabled that's causing that. I also take special care to extensions, only having Adblock active, no google docs bs and all that. But yeah if that tab re-open feature was causing you trouble that's stupid on their part to not have it base the usage of that feature on your browser usage.

I said I would try and I did, I quickly felt the inertia and came back to chrome. I felt like a fat guy having to get up to pick something that wasn't that useful in the moment. For me it's already a huge pain in the butt if I have to enter all my 2FA codes again

I'll stick with chrome until my cpu/ram starts to get weak, but at that point I'll probably just upgrade my pc (Although I don't agree with browsers getting more cpu/ram heavy!)

[Jackolantern]

(Although I don't agree with browsers getting more cpu/ram heavy!)

I'm not really saying that they are. I am just saying that, like a lot of other software today, they seem to use more when more is available. They get extremely wasteful with it. On my 16GB work machine, I have seen Visual Studio using up to 5GB of RAM by itself. That is supposedly more than the entire system RAM requirements to use it (4GB, although I think that requirement is kind of insane). Just because I have 8GB not being used at the moment doesn't mean I want all of the software on my system to cozy in and eat up to the standard 1GB free. It seems so common that it almost feels like maybe it is Windows' process scheduler that may be doing this, but then you see software that this doesn't happen with. Plus, it happens on other OS like MacOS.

[vitinho444]

Yeah but they do that because there are no actual limits. There should be a way to set those limits by ourselves if they fail to do so.

[hallsofvallhalla]

How in the h$ll could a browser use up 3 gig ram! Think about that. I could store an entire FPS game in that, all levels, textures, mods, ect..

[vitinho444]

How in the h$ll could a browser use up 3 gig ram! Think about that. I could store an entire FPS game in that, all levels, textures, mods, ect..

That was my point. It's stupid how the evolution of memory usage is going.

[Gunner]

Hah I thought I'm the only one, yes I had this as well.

Also, does anyone notice the recommended news thingy on chrome on android? Idk about chrome on ios.

Basically they show like a strip of lists of recommended clickbaity articles on new tab page... which is like.. wtf? I sometimes had to double check if I'm actually using chrome... lol