Google Chrome is the king of web browsers but if you’re here it’s probably because the king has gone a bit insane. Is Chrome running slow, crashing, freezing, or not even loading? Are web pages not loading anymore? Is your browser experience getting slower every day?

If you’re experiencing any of those Chrome problems, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to show you how to troubleshoot and resolve common Chrome problems that make you feel like Google hates Macs.

Some fixes will be easier than others but none require advanced knowledge.

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If you’re ready to fix Chrome, let’s begin!

Is it your Mac or Chrome that is slow?

Chrome isn’t an independent entity, it’s a part of a whole Mac system. So before you deal with Chrome, make sure the problem isn’t in your macOS. A quick example — the outdated system caches causing your Chrome plugins to crash. Or is your Mac gasping for free space?

A clever path is to give your macOS a good cleanup, first. We like CleanMyMac X app for this purpose as it finds and cleans all redundant & conflicting files across all your folders. So, take 2 minutes to tidy up your Mac with CleanMyMac X, and let’s move further.

CleanMyMac is available for a free download here — this app is notarized by Apple, so no worries.

Common Chrome problems on Mac (and their fixes)

Mac battery draining fast

Chrome is known for its fast performance, which it gets by using your Mac’s CPU more than other browsers. But more CPU usage means more battery drain. If you use your laptop on the go, this can become a huge issue. What good is performance if your battery is completely drained and you can’t turn on your Mac?

If Mac battery life is important to you, then there’s a simple trick that should be a big help. Often there is a tab or an extension that is hogging your resources and burning through your battery life by itself.

Follow these steps to find the offending site or extension:

1. Open Chrome and choose Window in the top menu.
2. Click on Task Manager.
3. In Task Manager, click the Memory Footprint column to sort them.

Now you can determine what sites and extensions use up the most memory in Chrome. You can still visit one of these sites but maybe don’t leave it open in a tab anymore. Also, remember that even sites that aren’t memory hogs can still be a battery drain if you have a lot of tabs open.

Close resource-hungry and unnecessary tabs and the time you get from a battery charge should start to improve.

Chrome is running slow

Does Chrome on your Mac feel like browsing through a swamp? If browser responsiveness is slowing, it’s time to drain the swamp.

Why is Google Chrome so slow? We mentioned earlier that Chrome is resource-heavy, especially on your CPU. Chrome is fast when your Mac has the resources available, but when they are limited, and Chrome is demanding more than your Mac can give – swamp time.

The tip from the previous section will help a lot, but if you’re still experiencing slowness, there are other fixes you can turn to.

Let’s start by focusing on the cache. Chrome loves storing lots of your web browsing data. At first, it can help speed things along, but soon Chrome’s pockets are being weighed down by cache, particularly if your Mac is low on space or memory.

To manually delete your Chrome cache on Mac:

1. Open Chrome and choose Chrome in the top menu.
2. Select Clear Browsing Data.
3. Check the history, cache, cookies, and other types of browser data that you want to delete.
4. Click 'Clear data.'

Again, there’s another method for clearing out your cache, cookies, browser history, autofill form data, and a whole lot more. You can use the free version of CleanMyMac X. There’s surely no easier way to manage not just the cache that’s slowing down Chrome, but also your privacy and security — if these things are important to you (they should be).

To delete Chrome cache and other browsing data with CleanMyMac X:

1. Download the free edition of CleanMyMac X and launch the app.
2. Go to the Privacy tab and select Chrome.
3. Select what you want to clean.

Or you can even use CleanMyMac X’s System Junk cleanup tool that not only removes Chrome cache files but also gets rid of “temporary” files that clog up your system. So, hopefully, your browser will get a bit snappier.

Сhrome using significant energy on Mac

“Chrome using significant energy” may be a sign of general memory overload on your computer. Try opening your Activity Monitor and check off a few memory consumers.

1. Open the Launchpad and type in Activity Monitor in the search bar.
2. Now, sort by Energy and use the [x] button to quit a process.

Disable background synchronization

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There’s another setting that may help you out. Sadly, it’s buried too deep in Chrome’s Preferences but according to many users, it should greatly reduce energy consumption by Chrome.

1. Open Chrome and go to Settings (the 3-dot icon on in the top right corner).
2. Select Privacy and security > Site Settings.
3. Scroll down and click “Background sync.”
4. Use the slider to disable the background sync.

What does it do? It stops the websites from communicating with your Mac (even after you’ve left that site). Why was it enabled by default is a different question.

Chrome keeps freezing

Your browser is not just slow as a snail but keeps freezing? A spinning circle appears for a while? This is ordinary trouble with web browsers after continued use. And it may relate to the problem with the browser cache.

We've already told you how to remove the Chrome cache, so just go to the previous section and choose the way that works best for you: manual or easy one. Hopefully, this will help you to get rid of the spinning beach ball and fix the freezing issue.

Other ideas to try:

• Close all tabs
• Restore settings (Settings > Advanced > Reset settings)
• Log out from all your Google accounts and log in back again.
• Try browsing in an incognito window and see if that helps.
  
• Reinstall Chrome from scratch

Some services, like Dropbox, Alfred, and notably, Google Drive are constantly self-updating in the background. As in the previous step, you can use Activity Monitor and force-quit these processes.

Google Chrome is not responding

However, if your browser is not responding at all and you can't open the menu to clear the cache, browsing history, or delete extensions, try to force quit Chrome and then launch it again.

There are a few possible ways to force quit Google Chrome. Here is our comprehensive guide 'How to force quit Mac applications' that offers five different ways to deal with unresponsive apps. Pick your favorite one.

There are is a number of background plugins operating invisibly on every Mac. They could be various helpers, updaters, and everything else that supports the main application. For example, Chrome itself has an updater app that constantly communicates with the server. So, once again, go to your Activity Monitor and scan through your open processes. Try quitting anything Google-related there.

Another idea to try is to free up your RAM (random access memory) in the Terminal. This should unfreeze your Chrome, at least temporarily.

1. Open your Terminal app (you can find it via the Launchpad search).
2. Now, paste in sudo purge into the Terminal window.
3. Hit Enter

See if Chrome is feeling better now.

Google Chrome keeps crashing

Chrome freezing is one thing but crashing? That’s a much bigger issue as it’s a sign that something is broken. But what do we do with things that are broken around here? We fix them!

Probably the most common cause of crashes is a byproduct of one of Chrome’s strengths – its constant stream of exciting extensions. They make our browser experience more enjoyable and productive, but occasionally one of these extensions will be corrupted or introduce a bug that causes Chrome to crash.

Here’s what you should do to find a problematic Chrome extension.

1. Update your browser

Make sure Chrome is updated to the latest version. A new update could very well include the fix that will stop Chrome crashing.

2. Run a Safety check

The latest version of Google Chrome has a feature called Safety check. Go to Chrome Settings and select “Safety check” from the menu on the left. Press “Check now.” The browser will run a quick check to determine whether Google Chrome is up-to-date and protected from threats.

3. Turn off browser extensions

If that didn’t work or everything was already up-to-date, you can manually turn off your extensions and turn them back on, one at a time. This way, if the crashing goes away until a certain extension is turned back on – that’s when you’ve probably found the problem.

To manually disable and remove Chrome extensions:

• Open Chrome and go to Window > Extensions.
• Disable a few extensions or click Remove to completely delete them.
• Relaunch Chrome.

Spend some time using Chrome without extensions and then slowly turn each one back on until your crashing returns. When you think you have the culprit, simply click the Trash can next to that extension in Settings > Extensions.

An even easier way to manage your extensions is with CleanMyMac X. You get more control over all your extensions, even those from other browsers, and disabling and removing them is as easy as can be.

/slingplayer-for-mac.html. To disable Chrome extensions the simple way:

• Click on the Extensions tab in CleanMyMac.
• Click on Chrome Extensions and disable as you like.

Chrome won’t open

Here’s the list of hacks you can try if you want to repair Chrome. When Chrome won’t open, the easiest is to restart your Mac. But that could be a bit disruptive. So here you are, some alternatives:

• Press and hold Command + Q — this will quit Chrome.
• Press Option + Command + Esc — opens a Force Quit pane.
• Uninstall Chrome and download it again.

If that doesn’t help, there’s a possibility that the problem is Google folder permissions.

Web pages not loading in Chrome

“Aw snap!”

This is Chrome’s custom message for when a web page fails to load. If you get this cheeky little message or any other loading error, chances are you’re going to fail to see the funny side.

The reasons for Chrome not loading pages can be wide-ranging and hard to pinpoint, but we’ve collected a checklist of fixes for you to work through.

• Check your internet connection.
• Update Chrome.
• Restart your Mac.
• Remove Chrome extensions (for steps see 'Google Chrome keeps crashing' section).
• Disable or relaunch hardware acceleration

Hardware acceleration is supposed to speed up your Chrome at the cost of your Mac's hardware resources. But quite often this feature crashes things.
Hardware acceleration is found here:
Chrome > Settings > Advanced > System

If you’re still unable to load web pages, a reset or reinstall of Chrome may be needed. We cover that very fix in the next section.

Chrome update failed

Chrome won’t update? Some users have experienced the frustration of Chrome refusing to update on a Mac. The first step would just be patience, but if days have passed and you’re still not getting anywhere, a reset or reinstall of Chrome may be in order.

To reset Chrome manually:

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• Launch Chrome and go to Preferences
• Scroll to the bottom and click on Advanced Settings.
• Scroll to the bottom and click on Reset Settings.
• Read the pop-up and Reset.
• Relaunch Chrome and try to update.

Note: Resetting Chrome will not remove your bookmarks, history, and saved passwords. A manual reset can be a bit scary, but as a workaround, you can use CleanMyMac X to reset Chrome without losing any data.

Reset Chrome with CleanMyMac X's free tool:

• Open CleanMyMac X
• Go to Uninstaller tab and find Google Chrome in the list
• Click Application Reset in the dropdown menu next to the Chrome icon.

If the browser is still not updating, download the latest installation file from the web and reinstall Chrome.

More tips to troubleshoot Chrome

Your Chrome browser should now be running great, but wait; there’s more! To improve your future browsing experience we’re sharing some of our favorite Chrome settings. Try these out and fall in love with Chrome even more.

Enable Prefetch

Want your web pages to load even faster? Go to Settings > Privacy and security. Here, select 'Cookies and other site data.' Toggle on 'Preload pages for faster browsing and searching.' This enables 'page prefetch' and makes Google Chrome load pages faster. Now the system will store the page and automatically load it the next time you visit the website.

Use shortcuts in Chrome browser

You’d be amazed at how much faster you can surf the web and get things done by learning just a few key shortcuts.

For example:

Command + t = new tab
Command + h = hide Chrome
Command + r = reload web page

Find the full list of commands at the official Google Chrome Support page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my Chrome keep freezing?

Usually, this is caused be caused by outdated browser caches. Open Chrome’s Preferences to delete recent browser data.

Why does Chrome use so much memory?

Chrome is in a constant back and forth with Google’s servers to process your data. You can help it by optimizing memory usage on your Mac. Use the Mac tune-up app, CleanMyMac X, to free up RAM and you disable heavy memory consumers. Lee enfield serial number search.

How can I speed up my browsing experience?

As a first step, try removing all the unnecessary extensions in Chrome. Also, try to not use more than 2 memory-heavy services, like DropBox or Google Drive at a time.

That’s it. Hopefully, these fixes have made your web surfing better than it’s ever been. It just goes to show that even drastic problems like Chrome crashing can be solved with a little know-how and helpful apps like CleanMyMac X.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

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This is a story I never had any intention of writing. Dropbox updated its file-sync application for Mac last month, and the new version contains an annoyance that I would like to eliminate.

I figured this wouldn't be difficult, let alone newsworthy: I'd contact Dropbox, explain the problem, and find out if there's any way for me to change the annoying behavior. If there wasn't, I'd recommend that they make a small change to their app, and hopefully my message would be passed along to their development team and they'd eventually make a change.

Instead, I learned something both frustrating and fascinating: there are numerous Dropbox support employees who apparently have never used their company's Mac application and do not understand how it works. As a result, Dropbox's users have to explain to Dropbox employees how Dropbox's application works on the Mac.

As a division of labor, it probably makes sense for some support reps to specialize in Dropbox for Windows, or Dropbox for Mac, or Dropbox for mobile devices, etc. But when Dropbox rolled out a major change to its Mac application, it had support reps replying to Mac users without knowing what they were talking about. I don't blame the individual support reps—Dropbox the company needs to make sure its employees are prepared to answer user questions, especially in advance of major changes that will inevitably lead to a rise in user complaints. That didn't happen this time.

Dropbox wants to be front and center

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To summarize, the problem is this: Dropbox now opens a new file browser and an associated Dock icon every time it starts, even if you don't want it to. If you're not familiar with Macs, the Dock is the line of applications on the bottom of the screen (or the side, if you've moved it in the settings) and serves the same function as the Windows Taskbar. If my computer restarts or if Dropbox restarts, the new Dropbox window that I don't want pops up in the Dock:

This isn't a huge deal, as I can quit Dropbox's new file browser and get rid of that Dock icon each time my computer starts up. I'm not going to stop using Dropbox—I've been paying the company $138 a year for 2TB of storage and for 12 months' worth of file history, which saves all deleted files and revisions to files. (It's going up to $158 next time I get billed, in February.) It's worth it to me because Dropbox still works great, while the alternatives have always been unreliable or disappointing in other ways when I've tried them. I'll get into that more later in this article.

But the Dock icon and window is a major change in how Dropbox presents itself to users. Dropbox has always been the kind of application that is there when you need it and gets out of the way when you don't. Dropbox's syncing and file-sharing features are integrated with the Finder (the Mac file manager), and there's a little icon in the Mac's Menu Bar at the top of the screen for when you need to change a setting.

But now, Dropbox wants to be front and center at all times. The company built its own file browser to replace what's already available in the Mac Finder, and it opens that new file manager every time Dropbox starts. We wrote about it last week when Dropbox started rolling it out to more users. I've had it for more than a month since I somehow ended up in Dropbox's Early Access program.

You can use the Mac's Command-Q shortcut to quit the file browser, and the new Dropbox window and Dock icon will disappear—as long as you've also disabled the Mac feature that shows recent applications in the Dock. You can fix the other major problem by going into Dropbox settings and choosing 'Open folders in Finder' instead of 'Open folders in Dropbox.' That way, if you click the Dropbox Menu Bar icon and then click a file, it opens in the Mac's native file manager instead of Dropbox's own file manager. You have to change the setting because Dropbox's new app automatically switches the default from the Finder to Dropbox's new file browser.

Dropbox does keep syncing in the background after you quit the new file manager, and the useful Menu Bar icon will still be there. But you have to do this every time you restart your Mac, or every time Dropbox restarts. No matter what settings you choose, the new file browser and corresponding Dock open every time Dropbox starts. I suspect many people will just leave it in the Dock because they may not realize that Dropbox will continue running normally even if you 'quit' the file browser.

So what does this have to do with Dropbox support employees? Well, it turns out they don't know that it's possible for Mac applications to run without a Dock icon even though that's exactly how Dropbox worked for a decade. And they've been giving bad advice to users who want to change back to the old way of doing things.

Because multiple Dropbox employees are making this mistake, I assume this is a failure at a higher level. Dropbox made a major change to how its Mac application works, but it doesn't seem to have fully explained that change to its support reps. You'd think Dropbox would make sure its support reps have a baseline understanding of how its Mac app works and how the Mac Dock works before they have to respond to Mac users, but that hasn't been the case.

Explaining the Dropbox app to Dropbox employees

Check out this support thread that began a month ago with the title 'Can't remove Dropbox icon from Mac OS Dock.' The user who started the thread wrote:

On the Mac, in the past, I've liked just having a small discrete Dropbox icon on my menu bar to monitor things and then accessed my files from the Finder.

After a recent update to the 'new' Dropbox, the Dropbox application itself now opens itself and slaps a big Dropbox icon in my Dock which I don't want there.

Trouble is, if I select to not open Dropbox on login, then the menu bar icon also doesn't appear and syncing doesn't take place at all.

How do I stop the Dock icon appearing on startup?

Thanks!

Dropbox Client For Mac Problems Solving

Pretty simple request, right? Except the Dropbox employee who responded told the user that it's impossible for Mac apps to not have a Dock icon, even though that's simply not true.

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The Dropbox employee responded:

[W]hile it would be worth noting that all active programs will appear on the Dock while they are open, kindly note that it will not be possible to remove it from there without removing the app altogether. From there, I've already made sure to note your thoughts in my report internally, since this would be some great feedback for our team devs.

The statement that 'all active programs will appear on the Dock while they are open' is false, as many Mac applications just appear in the Menu Bar and work in the background. That's how Dropbox worked until a month ago, that's how Dropbox's competitors still work, and yet some Dropbox employees think it's impossible. Many other Mac apps that can appear in either the Dock or Menu Bar let you disable the Dock icon, and Dropbox could easily do this by adding a checkbox to its app settings.

There's another strange response from a Dropbox employee in that support thread, in which the support rep suggests disabling Dropbox's ability to start up automatically upon logging in to the Mac. Yes, that would prevent the Dock icon from appearing, but it would also prevent Dropbox from working at all.

I contacted Dropbox on Twitter on June 13 and was told that there is no way to disable the launching of the Dock icon. The Dropbox employee who responded to me in that tweet did seem to understand the problem, but my further attempts were all answered by employees who don't understand how the Dropbox for Mac app works.

I contacted Dropbox by email on July 9, and an employee responded the next day with the following suggestion:

If I understand correctly, your current issue is that the Dropbox desktop application dock icon is getting in the way when using your device, is that correct?.. As dock icons are associated to the settings on your Apple device, doing a quick internet search as to 'how to hide dock icons' might possibly yield the results you are looking to achieve.

Dropbox Client For Mac Problems Windows 10

Similar to the Dropbox rep in the support thread, the Dropbox employee responding to me seemed to think that it's impossible for a Mac app to operate without a Dock icon unless a user finds some unsupported hack that changes how the app works. While it's possible to hide some Dock icons by editing each app's info.plist file, this didn't work when I tried it with Dropbox. And it's better for the app to support Dock hiding officially because a user messing around with how an app works can lead to unintended problems.

I responded to the Dropbox employee and explained that Dropbox never opened a Dock icon until recently, that there is no way for me to change how the Dropbox app works, and that Dropbox's development team should surely know that it intentionally made this change. I also asked the employee if he has used the Dropbox for Mac application recently because I wanted to make sure I could talk to someone who understands what the Dock is and how it works.

In his next email reply, the Dropbox employee did not answer whether he has ever used Dropbox for Mac. But, he told me, 'As you mentioned there is no way for you to hide the Dropbox dock icon, I have passed on your feedback to my development team for you.'