3 quick and easy ways to speed up your browser

March 6, 2024

By Kim Komando

Gotta be honest. I don’t have a lot of patience for spinning wheels and loading progress bars. I’m busy! I know you are, too, so let’s fix your slow browser.

Whether you’re a Chrome lover or a Firefox fan, you’ve got options. These tips are fast and easy, too. You can thank me later — and use all your saved time to do something else … like forwarding this email to a friend! 

Put the pedal to the medal

Nerd term for you: Hardware acceleration. It means speeding up your browser using the hardware available: The memory, processor, and whatever graphics you’ve installed. Most browsers offer this helpful little tweak.

• In Chrome settings, it’s under the System tab. In Edge settings, it’s under System and Performance, and in Firefox, you’ll find it on the General tab in Settings (it’s called “recommended performance settings” here).

For my Mac friends on Safari, Apple already switched on hardware acceleration for you.

Close your tabs

I know, duh. But it makes such a big difference, folks. If you’re done browsin’, close it. You can move your cursor up to that little X — or just press Ctrl + W (on Windows) or Cmd + W (on Mac) to close the tab you’re in.

Need more speed? Right-click on a tab header to get extra options. Most of the time, you’ll see an option to close every tab except your current one and to close all the tabs to the right. Boom! Gone.

Still not satisfied? You’re hard to please, but I’ve got you — hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and click on multiple tabs to select a whole bunch at once. Now hit Ctrl + W or Cmd + W and they all vanish.

When you snooze, you win

Think of snoozing a tab as putting it down for a nap. It’s still there but inactive. That frees up memory for the rest of the stuff you actually need.

• In Chrome, open the Settings pane, then Performance and turn on Memory saver. You can specify sites that never go into this sleep state.
• On Edge, open up the browser settings, then System and performance > Save resources with sleeping tabs. Choose the amount of time to wait before tabs become “inactive” sites that should never be snoozed.

🐌 There are probably lots of things in your life that are annoyingly sluggish — your teenagers in the morning, the IRS — but your browser doesn’t have to be one of them.

🤣 Right now, my brain is like a web browser. I’ve got 21 tabs open. Five have crashed, and I can’t figure out where the music is coming from.