Chrome running super slow

[bdurfee]

I just got a new-to-me MacBook Pro (17") and upgraded to Yosemite. (It's my first Mac.). I love it. I develop web sites so I added Firefox and Chrome. Chrome has the Hangouts and Microsoft Office for Mac extensions.

Chrome immediately ran ridiculously slow (with the little spinning circle). I couldn't even type more than two or three characters in the address bar without the spinner. Therefore, I disabled all the extensions. It is still unusable.

Oh, btw, the only time this ever happens is within Chrome. I don't have problems with other software so I think it is limited to Chrome.

I need to use it for testing web sites, so I'd like to get it working. Any ideas?

 

[chscag]

I use Chrome as my default browser and have no problem with it running slow. Are you using the 64 bit version of Chrome for your testing? I use Version 42.0.2305.3 dev (64-bit).

 

[harryb2448]

Ad how much memory in the MBP and how much free space on the hard drive?

 

[bdurfee]

8GB RAM. Plenty of HD space. I don't store any data on the 500GB drive and I havent installed many programs.

This afternoon, I uninstalled Chrome and reinstalled it. It ran like a dream until I accessed gmail which has Google hangouts open in the side window. When I saw what happened I realized it did the same thing last time. Once the Hangouts extension was installed, Chrome hangs up. Disabling the Hangouts extension doesn't fix the problem.

I also isolated the symptom. The beach ball appears when typing anything into Chrome -- in the address bar, a form on a web page, etc. As long as I'm not typing something in, it seems to do well.

Suggestions?

 

[bdurfee]

I tried a few more things including disabling Hangouts. I also checked my HD. I have 435GB available out of 500. After verifying that, I pulled up Activity Monitor. It said Chrome was occupying over 7GB of memory. I got it shut down, uninstalled, re-downloaded it, and then reinstalled. (Hangouts was completely disabled at this point.)

When it started running, it acted like normal, and I thought perhaps the problem was fixed. Activity Monitor showed it running at a little less than 600MB memory. The window was already showing this site so I logged in. It started slowing down. I clicked in the address bar and got the beachball. I looked at Activity Monitor and it had increased back up to nearly 7GB memory.

So for whatever reason, Chrome is suddenly blowing up the memory. It runs fine on my windows computers. Please forgive mentioning the "W"-word here.

I'm not sure what to check next.

 

[lclev]

Something is really off. I am running Chrome now and it is using 93mb. Chrome helper is using 81mb.

I have Ghostery and Adblock Pro as extensions along with Google Drive. Google Drive is using 76mb. All together that is nowhere near 600mb.

I have no idea what you mean by handouts in chrome. I am stumped - sorry.

Lisa

 

[harryb2448]

Well why not try Mail and see what happens and disable Gmail? The Mail app will be in the Apliation Folder.

 

[bdurfee]

I have no idea what you mean by handouts in chrome. I am stumped - sorry.

Lisa

Hangouts is Google's chat/voice/video app.

 

[lclev]

That explains it - thanks! I don't use them which is why I had no familiarity with the term.

Lisa

 

[Slydude]

I just re-installed the hangouts extension in Chrome and my numbers aren't nearly as high in Activity Monitor as yours are. I was running something on the order of 200 - 300 Mb with the Hangouts extension. I didn't try starting a hangout to see what that did to memory usage.

I did notice that there seemed to be multiple instances of the Google Helper (don't remember the exact name) but I included those in the 200 - 300 Mb ram estimate.