Boost Your Web Browser Speed

Slow Browsing? Here's Help.

Several factors can contribute to poor performance when browsing the Web. If you've already read my articles on how to measure or improve your Internet speeds, then we can focus on your Web browser, whether it's Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge or Opera.

Let's start with memory. Like any other program, a browser needs enough working memory (physical RAM) to do its job without constantly swapping data to and from the virtual memory pool on your hard drive. Close unnecessary programs while using your browser, to free up RAM and minimize disk-swapping.

If your system is short on RAM, consider adding more. I recommend a minimum of 4GB of RAM for most users. My article How to Upgrade Memory to Boost Performance will show you how to find out how much RAM memory you have now, and how to easily add more.

Some browsers need more working RAM than others; Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are notorious RAM hogs, especially if you keep more than 5 tabs open. Opera and Firefox have made some big strides in recent years on conserving RAM. If you typically surf with just 1 or 2 tabs open, it won't matter much which browser you use. But if you like to have 5, 10 or 20 tabs open at once, switching to Firefox could make a difference.

RAM “cleaners” and “optimizers” are often recommended to free up idle RAM, defragment RAM, and generally make the most of available RAM. Such utilities may be marginally effective on older PCs running Windows 98, XP, or Vista, but Windows 7, 8 and 10 have very good memory management modules. Third-party utilities don’t make an improvement that’s worth the extra overhead, complexity and the risk of malware they add to your system, in my opinion.

Can I Get (rid of) an Extension?

Browser extensions, plugins, and add-ons of all kinds can hog RAM and waste processor cycles, slowing down the rendering of Web pages. Toolbars are the first things to get rid of; most are unnecessary and they often report your Web activities to their creators. Browser extensions also tend to accumulate and persist long after you have stopped using them. Review your list of extensions and delete those you don’t regularly use. Here's how:

Chrome: Click the options button (three dots on the top right of the browser window), then More Tools, then Extensions. A new tab will open and show all your browser extensions. From there, you can disable or remove any of them. ALSO, Chrome's built-in Task Manager is a useful tool to see how much memory and CPU each of your add-ons and open tabs are using. Press Shift-Esc to open the Task Manager

Firefox: Click the options button (three horizontal bars on the top right of the browser window), then Addons. A new tab will open and show your browser extensions. From there, you can disable or remove any of them with just one or two clicks. You'll also need to click the Extensions, Plugins, and Themes tabs on the left side of the screen to check for unwanted items in each of those categories.

Internet Explorer: Click the gear icon (on the top right of the browser window), then Manage Add-ons. A popup will open and show your browser extensions. Right-click an entry in the list to disable it.

Edge (WIndows 10): Click the three dots in the top right corner of the browser windows, then click Extensions.

Cache, History and Other Factors

Emptying your browser’s cache of locally stored Web content can speed things up, even though the purpose of caching locally is to speed things up. A lot of files that get cached are used infrequently; their presence just gives the browser more files to sort through when searching for a cached copy of requested content, and that slows things down. Caching made a big difference back in the days of dial-up modems when Internet speeds were measured in kilobits per second. It makes far less sense now if your average download speed is 50 or 100 megabits per second.

Regularly clearing the browsing history will help keep it filled mostly with frequently-visited URLs. You don’t have to remember to clear cache and history. Most browsers have a setting that does one or both each time you close a browser, so you always start it up with a clean slate.

The home page that your browser opens automatically each time it starts may be slowing you down. If it’s a “content-rich” page full of video or audio files or lots of little images and frames, it can take quite a while to load every time you start your browser or hit the “Home” button. Consider switching to a simple, fast-loading home page (I prefer Google.com) or none at all.

I mentioned this in the sidebar, but there are times when your browser gets borked and just needs a complete reset. My article Should You Reset Your Web Browser? goes into detail on how to get that done.

Every request for a Web page requires multiple DNS lookups, so the speed of your DNS service is a critical factor in browser performance. My article, Speed Up Web Surfing With Alternate DNS explains how to find the best alternate DNS service for your system; how DNS works; and identifies some reputable, reliable alternate DNS services.

And that brings me to one final point. Most of the time when browsing seems slow for me, the problem isn't my computer, my connection, or my browser. It's the website on the other end of the wire. If you're trying to access a popular website, or download the latest version of a hot program at the same time as 100,000 other people, you'll probably have a frustrating experience. Unless a website is built to handle massive spikes in traffic, it will slow to a crawl as it tries to give each user a tiny slice of attention.

But following the steps I've outlined here are still a good idea, to ensure that nothing under your control is slowing you down online. Your thoughts on this topic, and other browser speedup tips are welcome. Post your comment or question below...