How to find which tab a particular Chrome process refers to

I often have 6 or 7 separate Chrome windows open, often with 5-10 tabs in each. When I look at Windows Task Manager, I see each chrome.exe process, with some using a large amount of memory. How can I find which particular tab the process refers to? I want to know which one uses the most memory and close that tab instead of having to close every Chrome window. Is there any way to get this information? This is on Windows Vista, but it is the same on other versions of Windows as well.

George

Posted 2010-04-22T23:07:23.090

Reputation: 403

(6 or 7) * (5 to 10) = (30 to 70) Why in Torvalds' name do you have so many tabs open at one time?!? – jamesbtate – 2010-04-23T02:39:20.530

6only 6 or 7 with only 5-10 tabs? Ha ha. This is perfectly normal for creative people doing research juggling many projects who get interrupted to deal with other things. Puddingfox is obviously just a beginner :P – DarenW – 2012-11-08T17:20:09.823

Answers

Press Shift+Esc to bring up the Chrome Task Manager under Windows, or select it from the Window menu under MacOS. It will tell you how much memory and CPU each tab uses, and its process id if you enable the process id column. You can also switch to a tab by double-clicking it, or kill its renderer process.

If there's still a sneaky process that isn't showing in Chrome's Task Manager, you can launch Chrome with the command line switch --task-manager-show-extra-renderers (from the Command Prompt or a shortcut under Windows, or from the Terminal or an Applescript under MacOS), but my current experience (2019-07-13) suggests that this may cause Chrome to sometimes crash, at least under MacOS.

Hugh Allen

Posted 2010-04-22T23:07:23.090

Reputation: 8 620

Awesome. Just what I was looking for. Thanks. – Pistos – 2013-11-05T17:39:15.933

Use the Shift+ Esc shortcut key to bring up the Task Manager,

or go to the wrench icon and go to Tools -> Task Manager.

You'll be able to see the CPU usage of every tab and plugin as well as memory usage.

Chrome Task Manager

Chris Thompson

Posted 2010-04-22T23:07:23.090

Reputation: 4 765

The TM came up for me with the "Page" column as wide as the window. Had to stretch the window to see the good stuff. – DarenW – 2012-11-08T17:28:50.660

-2

Chrome should have a separate process for each tab. Find the Chrome process that is using up the most CPU porwer (using task manager) and kill it.

Pubby

Posted 2010-04-22T23:07:23.090

Reputation: 334

3There is usually a master process, and that one often takes up the most CPU. If you kill that process, you risk killing the entire browser. Better to just use the built-in task manager, which shows stats for each tab. – nhinkle – 2011-10-10T05:48:34.640

1And, in addition to what nhinkle said: Chrome does not necessarily have a separate process per tab. That's just one of the options. There are others, and you've no idea how the questioner has xyr Chrome configured in this regard, since xe hasn't provided that information. – JdeBP – 2011-10-10T10:04:28.913

1So when I looked at the Task Manager, there was just a single Shockwave Flash process that was taking up the whole CPU, but I can't tell through which tab it is running. – Uri Laserson – 2011-10-10T16:09:14.003

1What part of Chrome does not necessarily have a separate process per tab. is so unclear to you that you persist in looking for a single tab to be associated with this process? End the process and you'll discover, from an unslaught of little sad pictures, the harsh truth that your Shockwave Flash process is doing all of the Flash plug-in work for every tab that has Flash on it. – JdeBP – 2011-10-11T14:38:23.213