When you click the red ‘X’ in the corner of the Google Chrome window, you might assume the browser completely shuts down. However, by default, Chrome is designed to stay alive in the background. It silently docks itself in your system tray to keep running specific extensions, receive notifications, and ensure the browser opens faster the next time you click it.
While this is convenient, it means Chrome can continue consuming massive amounts of RAM and draining your laptop battery even when you think you aren’t using it. If you want to ensure that closing Chrome completely halts all of its processes and instantly frees up your system resources, you must explicitly block its background privileges.
How to Completely Block Chrome Background Apps
You must dive into the advanced System settings to disable the background execution toggle.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner and select Settings.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, look near the bottom and click on System.
- In the main window, look at the very top option labeled Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed.
- By default, the toggle switch next to this option will be blue (On). Click the toggle switch so it slides to the left and turns grey (Off).
The change takes effect immediately. To verify, close all your Chrome windows. Then, open your operating system’s Task Manager (or Activity Monitor on Mac). You will see that every single chrome.exe process has been violently terminated. From now on, when you close your browser, your computer’s RAM and CPU are 100% liberated.