Member-only story
Is your Chromebook freezing up on you? This might help
I have recently been having issues with my Chromebook freezing up, and having to reboot it to get back to normal. It would do this over and over again. Fortunately, your Chromebook has a built-in diagnostic tool that can monitor your battery, CPU, and memory usage in real-time. You can access it by clicking the everything button (formerly known as the search button), and typing in ‘diagnostics’. Or you can go the long way and click on the three dots at the upper right portion of your Chrome browser, and then click Help, and then about Google Chrome, and then Chrome OS settings, and then click Diagnostics. I would highly recommend pinning this tool to your shelf.
I used this tool and discovered that something was eating up my CPU usage as well as my limited memory. Fortunately, except for Android Apps, there is nothing else to run on a Chromebook but the Chrome browser. With a swipe of 3 fingers on the trackpad, I could easily see if any other program was running without my knowledge.
And then it occurred to me…. When was the last time I checked up on my Chrome extensions? As it turns out, it had been a while. I had 4 extensions that I had on as active that I don’t even use at all. I also had an extension gone rogue that had violated Google’s terms, so I immediately uninstalled that one. To check on your extensions, click on the icon of your browser that looks like a puzzle piece, and then click on manage extensions.
After I completed this task, I discovered that my CPU usage went down considerably (along with its temperature, which is a nice feature to have that I was not even aware of previously).
My available memory also increased slightly. I found that after I completed this task, web pages started to load up quite a bit faster than they did before.
The moral of the story is to keep tabs (no pun intended) on your Google Chrome extensions. Not only will reducing them make your computer faster, but it will also help your battery last longer between charges. Needless to say, the other main cause of slower performance is often having an outdated version of Google Chrome. While you are going to the About Chrome OS section, it would also be a good time to check if you have the latest version of Chrome OS installed on your Chromebook.
