Browsers slow down gradually — extensions pile up, caches grow, and bad habits creep in. The good news is that a thorough clean-up usually brings speed back close to out-of-the-box levels.

Close unnecessary tabs

Every open tab consumes memory and CPU, even when you're not looking at it. If you have dozens of tabs open, close what you're not using. Browser memory usage scales almost linearly with tab count.

Audit and remove extensions

Extensions are the single biggest cause of slow browsers. Every extension runs code on every page you visit.

  1. Open your extensions page (chrome://extensions, edge://extensions, or Firefox's Add-ons menu).
  2. Disable extensions you don't actively use. You can always re-enable them.
  3. Remove ones you no longer need entirely.

Three or four focused extensions is a reasonable maximum. Twelve is too many.

Clear your cache

A cache full of old files can actually slow page loads instead of speeding them up. Press Ctrl + Shift + Delete, select Cached images and files, set the time range to All time, and clear.

Check what's using CPU

Chrome and Edge have a built-in task manager. Press Shift + Esc to open it. Sort by CPU or Memory to see which tab or extension is hogging resources. End any process that's using an unusual amount.

Toggle hardware acceleration

Go to Settings > System in Chrome or Edge and toggle Use hardware acceleration when available. On some computers enabling this speeds things up; on others (particularly older or low-end graphics cards) it causes slowness. Test both ways.

Update the browser

Outdated browsers often run slower due to missing performance improvements. Check for updates under the browser's Help or About menu and install any available update.

Check startup programs

If your browser is slow only at startup, look at which programs launch at boot. Open Task Manager > Startup apps tab and disable anything non-essential.

If the browser is still slow after all of this, the problem may be your computer's overall performance rather than the browser itself. Ask us and we can investigate further.