How to see which Chrome tabs use the most memory

Why is it hard to tell which tab is using memory?

Chrome shows a memory figure in a tab's hover card, one tab at a time. With 30 tabs open, that's 30 hovers, and no totals.

You usually don't care about one tab anyway. You care whether "Research" or "Entertainment" is the group to close. So Takt adds memory up by tab group.

How does Takt estimate a tab's memory?

Takt runs a short script inside each tab and adds four parts:

Part	How it's measured
JavaScript heap	Heap in use, as Chrome reports it to the page
DOM tree	Number of elements × about 1.5 KB
Loaded resources	Decoded size of every file the page loaded
Canvas buffers	Width × height × 4 bytes per canvas

Treat the result as a ranking, not an invoice. It leaves out the browser's own overhead for each tab, so Chrome's figure for the same tab can differ.

Some tabs can't be measured. Suspended tabs have nothing running. Chrome pages (chrome://), extension pages and the Chrome Web Store don't allow scripts, so they appear under Unmonitored tabs. If a tab doesn't answer within 3 seconds, Takt shows its last known value.

What do the A–F health scores mean?

Each group starts at 100 points and loses points on four factors:

Factor	Condition	Penalty
Memory (group total)	Over 500 MB / over 200 MB	−30 / −15
Average idle time	Over 60 min / over 30 min	−20 / −10
Tabs with background activity	More than 3 / at least 1	−20 / −10
Third-party domains	Over 50 / over 20	−15 / −5

Grades: A is 90 or more, B 75 to 89, C 60 to 74, D 40 to 59, F below 40. A group using 300 MB with tabs idle 45 minutes on average scores 75: a B.

"Background activity" means the tab completed a network request in the last 60 seconds. "Third-party" means any domain other than the tab's own site and its subdomains. Common CDNs are counted separately, so they don't inflate the score.

What do I do once I've found the heavy tabs?

• Discard recommendations. Takt lists 5 tabs to unload, ranked by memory and idle time, with extra weight for background activity. It skips the active tab, pinned tabs and a tab that is alone in its group. Click Suspend to unload one.
• Close all on a group card closes that group.
• Hibernate a tab you want back later. See how hibernation works.

Can I cap how much memory a tab group uses?

Yes. In Settings → Memory Budgets, enter a group name and a limit in MB. Takt checks budgets every 15 seconds.

When a group goes over, you get a notification: the group, its usage, its budget, and "Suspending tabs in 10s — click to cancel". Ignore it, and Takt unloads that group's largest tabs until it's back under budget. It never touches the active tab, pinned tabs or tabs playing audio. Click the notification to cancel.

Budgets work from the same estimates, so they need All website access too.

Which permissions does the dashboard need?

None at install. You grant each one in Settings → Permissions and can revoke it there at any time.

Permission	What it adds	Without it
All website access	Per-tab memory estimates	Memory shows "—"
Network monitoring	Third-party domains and background activity (needs All website access too)	No network columns
System memory access	The system RAM bar	"System memory unavailable"

Network monitoring only sees requests made after you grant it. Reload open tabs to start counting. Takt reads request addresses and timing, not page content.

What the dashboard can't tell you

It estimates page memory. It doesn't read Chrome's process list, so it can't see GPU memory, extensions or the browser itself. If the system bar puts most of your RAM under "Other", that memory is going to other apps or to Chrome itself, not to what your pages hold.

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