You're in the middle of something and a grey overlay appears: "Page Unresponsive — Wait or Kill pages?" Or a tab just freezes, and clicking anywhere on it does nothing. This usually means one page is consuming so many resources that the browser can't keep up. Here's how to deal with it.

Immediate fix: kill the offending tab

When the "Page Unresponsive" dialogue appears in Chrome or Edge, click Kill pages to close the frozen tab immediately. Your other tabs will continue working. In Firefox, you'll see a "Well, this is embarrassing" page with the option to restore or close the tab.

If there's no dialogue but a tab is frozen, use the browser's built-in task manager:

  • Chrome / Edge: press Shift + Esc to open the task manager. Find the tab using the most memory or CPU and click End process.

Why does this happen?

Common causes include:

  • A page with heavy animations, video, or a poorly written script
  • A page that has a JavaScript error causing an infinite loop
  • Too many tabs open, exhausting your computer's RAM
  • A tab that's been open for days, accumulating memory leaks

Reduce memory pressure

Close tabs you're not actively using. Chrome has a built-in memory saver feature that automatically puts background tabs to sleep — enable it at Settings > Performance > Memory Saver. Edge has a similar feature called Sleeping Tabs at Settings > System and performance > Sleeping Tabs.

When the whole browser freezes

If the entire browser is unresponsive (not just one tab), you may need to force-quit it entirely:

  • Windows: press Ctrl + Shift + Esc, find the browser in the list, and click End Task.
  • Mac: press Command + Option + Esc, select the browser, and click Force Quit.

Chrome usually offers to restore your previous tabs when you reopen it — click Restore.

Long-term fixes

If this happens regularly, consider adding more RAM to your computer, keeping your tab count manageable, and enabling the Memory Saver or Sleeping Tabs features. Disabling unused extensions also frees up memory.

If a specific site always freezes your browser, let us know which one and we can look into it.