Google Chrome "Helper" is eating all my memory!

For those of you who use Chrome, I'm sure you've encountered this annoyance. I've noticed that my computer starts to slow WAY down after I've been browsing long enough and I have multiple tabs open. When I check my resource monitor, I see several process labeled "Google Chrome Helper" each one taking up anywhere from a couple hundred megs to over a gigabyte of memory. And the longer I browse, the worse it gets. Eventually, these process end up consuming all of my physical RAM so then I end up relying heavily on Virtual Memory, which causes my computer to come to a frustrating crawl. I have 8GB of RAM installed, which I know should be a sufficient amount for what I do.

I've already researched this issue and everyone said the way to solve this problem is to go into the privacy content settings area and under Plug-in select "Click to Play" instead of "run automatically." which is supposed to prevent Flash-based content from automatically loading, if I'm correct. I did this but the problem is still persisting. Are there any other plugins or settings I need to disable? I just want to get rid of this stupid "helper" because it's definitely not helping me.

You can not turn off the Google Chrome Helper as it is an integral part of the browser and needs to run. Some solutions: Do not open so many tabs at once. Use a memory cleaning program (several are free in the Mac App Store). Switch to another browser.

I don't think that there is any option to turn it off, I recommend you to switch to Mozilla Firefox, it is the best browser anyway.

maximus95000 said:

I've already researched this issue and everyone said the way to solve this problem is to go into the privacy content settings area and under Plug-in select "Click to Play" instead of "run automatically." which is supposed to prevent Flash-based content from automatically loading, if I'm correct. I did this but the problem is still persisting.

Click to expand...

This is a nice solution if Flash is the issue but, as you've no doubt learned, this will only work if plugins are the issue. Chrome, however, uses a lot of upfront memory especially if you have a lot of tabs open. How much do you have open at any random moment?

tk-hasan said:

I don't think that there is any option to turn it off, I recommend you to switch to Mozilla Firefox, it is the best browser anyway.

Click to expand...

Best is a subjective call and truthfully, all browsers are pretty bad nowadays with memory usage.

Yes browsers are subjective, but it is fairly well documented that Firefox, after a period of bloat, is slimming down, while Chrome is bloating up. Lots of user dissatisfaction with Chrome in the last 6-12 months.

I don't doubt that Chrome is memory intensive but if you're going to make a case against subjective criteria, you need to provide objective evidence.

And, from here, Firefox might be better but that's like saying that an aircraft is smaller than an aircraft carrier relative to an ant.