How to hunt down which tab or webpage (on Google Chrome) used a lot of memory?
I already know Google Chrome was using a lot of memory for a badly behaving webpage. The issue was I don't know which webpage was doing that.
Sometimes after a day or two, possibly some webpage on Google Chrome might be using a lot of memory.
- Some webpage might not be intentionally broken or harmful but it could be the analytics or the ad system having a lot of memory leaks in their code
- Eventually, the Macbook swaps memory to disk and if unchecked, complaints of hard disk space running low arrive.
Using trail-and-error, if I close all tab and wait 2 - 3 minutes or quit entirely, then the hard drive all of a sudden gains back 2GB.
Is there a way to hunt down which webpage is eating up so much memory, other than by trail-and-error?
Chrome has a task manager that will be handy in case you have too many tabs to simply close them manually and note when memory reclaims.
- https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- At the top right, click the vertical "dot dot dot" icon.
- Select More Tools and then Task Manager.
- Click “Memory” to sort tasks by memory usage. - Tip: Look for any items labeled "Background page."
- Select the task you want to close.
- Click End Process. - Note: Any unsaved work in your task will be lost.
I would also run vm_stat 1 and watch the OS memory allocations and freeing so you can watch the effects as you close tabs and see tasks free in the app.