How To Use Google Chrome Task Manager To Kill Problematic Tabs

When Google integrated task manager in the Chrome browser, many didn’t realize how useful it could be in a day-to-day work. The default or inbuilt Windows task manager is also useful to keep a tab on the running processes, which includes processes running under chrome browser as well. The principal idea for giving this facility was to give users a limited access to the processes.

Based on their judgment and experience, users can manually kill the unresponsive or troublesome process (process tree). However, the Windows task manager gives broad overview of the entire system, which often fails to deliver a granular detail. Whereas Google chrome task manger gives details at a granular level details albeit about chrome browser only.

There is a community which is weary of frequent Firefox crashing and its unresponsiveness. Many are victimized of indecent behaviour of the Firefox browser, which made them to switch to Google chrome. It is not only a better browser, but also offers many useful developer tools to give users complete control over the browser.

Even, we have shared some good alternatives of Google chrome which works on the chromium project (here are a few more browsers for Windows 8). However, we are here to discuss inbuilt task manager of chrome only.

A Little Background

The multi-process architecture of Chrome allows tabs to run as a separate processes. These are independent threads from the main thread, which also means that you can kill unresponsive tab or the tab that goes haywire. So instead of rendering the entire browser hung, you can kill this individual tab or process through the chrome task manger.

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How to Use Task Manager

Many users are unaware of Chrome task manager or how to use it efficiently. Let us show you how to use Chrome task manager in a much more efficient manner

Step 1. First of all, you need to know how to access the inbuilt task manager. Open the browser. Go to little wrench icon on the top right hand corner. Then go to Tools –> Task Manager. In lieu of above shortcut, you can use the keyboard shortcut: SHIFT + ESC. It will open the task manager for you instantly. If you find a little difficult to navigate using a wrench or setting option, you can use keyboard shortcut.

Step 2. This will open a chrome task manager in separate window. It will provide a list of all open extension, tabs, background process etc.

For example: We’re using Majestic SEO backlink plugin, SEOQuake SEO plugin and tweetdeck for chrome extension, which can be seen in the bottom side. Also it provides a list of all opened tabs.

Step 3. Whenever you find some resource hogging process, which you can observe manually under Memory column in task manager, you can select that process and click on End process to kill the unresponsive tab, extension or background processes.

For example: I have chosen new Majestic SEO Backlink Analyzer SEO plugin from the list. Just click/ select the name and then click ‘End Process’ to kill Majestic SEO plugin. It is just an example of how to kill any process, extension or non-working tab in the chrome through task manager. Majestic SEO is working fine on chrome without any hiccups.

That’s all. You can also click on Stats for nerds to take a more in-depth look about all the processes. By default, the chrome task manager shows statics of Memory, CPU and Network.

 

The Stats for nerds displays PID , Name, Memory and Virtual Memory detail of each and every opened thread. Alternatively, you can type chrome://memory-redirect/ in Google chrome browser to access it directly. Make no mistake, it is not a task manager or advanced version of it. Users can not kill processes or do anything from here. It merely gives an insightful detail about the processes and memory consumed by them.

Let me reiterate, you can directly access chrome task manager using SHIFT + ESC keyboard shortcut. So that sums it all! Hope you can now get rid of all your Chrome problems with the help of the Task Manager. If you have any problems regarding the same, do let us know in the comment section below. Till then, stay tuned to Genius Geeks blog for more such useful tips and tricks!