RELATED: Why It's Good That Your Computer's RAM Is Full Empty RAM Is Useless RAMĪ lot of people see high RAM usage and think “Oh no! This is going to slow down my computer!” But that isn’t always true. Firefox has a slightly more technical one if you type about:memory in your address bar. Chrome even has its own task manager if you press Shift+Tab, so you can see how much RAM each individual tab and extension uses. Your browser has become, in a way, your operating system. While it feels like Firefox and Chrome are taking up a ton of RAM, part of that is due to that stuff all being under one umbrella…rather than split up among a bunch of different desktop applications. But the more you do in your browser, the less you do on your desktop. We’re doing more in our browser than ever, and those web pages and webapps take up resources (just like desktop apps that perform the same tasks do). RELATED: Chrome Is Your OS Now, Even If You Use Windows And that doesn’t even include getting notifications from any number of services, or using extensions to do things like send text messages or auto-fill passwords. Now you use your browser for reading email, managing your calendar, watching videos, editing documents, and even playing games. Remember when the web was just a bunch of static HTML pages with terrible backgrounds and the occasional animated GIF? Those days are long gone. Your browser does more than it ever has before. This is how computers have always worked. If you want the features they offer, you have to be willing to give up some of your precious resources for the features that make your life more convenient.

Using any extensions on top of that? They’ll eat up even more RAM. Extensions add even more features to an already feature-rich browser.

Why does firefox take up so much memory