How to Enable Memory Saver Mode in Google Chrome

Google Chrome is notoriously memory-hungry. If you are a power user who regularly keeps dozens of tabs open simultaneously (spreadsheets, web apps, and research articles), Chrome can easily consume gigabytes of your system’s RAM. On older laptops or budget desktops with only 8GB of memory, this aggressive consumption will cause the entire operating system to stutter, freeze, and become unresponsive. To solve this problem, Google recently introduced “Memory Saver” mode, an aggressive tab-sleeping feature that automatically frees up RAM from tabs you aren’t actively using.

How Memory Saver Works

When Memory Saver is enabled, Chrome monitors your browsing habits. If a background tab sits idle for an extended period, Chrome will forcefully evict the website’s data from your physical RAM, putting the tab to “sleep.” The tab remains visible in your tab bar at the top of the screen. When you finally click back to it, Chrome instantly reloads the page. This prevents background tabs from endlessly hoarding memory while you work in a different window.

How to Enable Memory Saver Mode

You can activate this optimization feature directly from the main Settings menu.

1. Open your Google Chrome browser window.
2. Click the three vertical dots (the main menu icon) in the extreme top-right corner of the browser.
3. From the drop-down menu, click on Settings.
4. In the left-hand navigation pane of the Settings page, look for the speedometer icon and click on Performance.
5. The very first section at the top of the Performance page is labeled “Memory.” Locate the toggle switch for Memory Saver.
6. Click the toggle switch so that it turns blue (On).

The feature is now active. As a visual indicator, when you click on a tab that has been put to sleep, you will temporarily see a small speedometer icon on the right side of the URL address bar, confirming that memory was saved.

How to Whitelist Important Websites

Memory Saver is aggressive. If you are using a web-based chat application (like Slack) or streaming a live dashboard, putting the tab to sleep will disconnect you. You must instruct Chrome to never sleep these critical websites.

1. Directly beneath the Memory Saver toggle, look for the section titled Always keep these sites active.
2. Click the Add button.
3. Type in the root domain of the website you want to protect (e.g., slack.com or youtube.com).
4. Click the Add button to save it to the whitelist.

Chrome will now aggressively sleep all background tabs to save RAM, except for the specific domains you explicitly protected.