Google Chrome is finally getting an update that may prevent it from chewing on memory and causing instability on Windows 10 machines.
On its Chromium website, Google detailed how it has used a function called TerminateProcess to make exit processes on the Chrome browser much more “clean”. This basically translates to a smoother experience and a less prone browser to crash on Windows 10.
Google Chrome has long been known for its ability to occupy system RAM, especially when multiple tabs and windows are open in the application. This has the unpleasant side effect of not only slowing down the system, but potentially causing browser crashes.
We lost count of how many times Chrome stopped responding or crashed on the desktop on Windows 10 machines with 8 GB of RAM or less. For example, on a fifth-generation Surface Pro with a Core i5 processor and 4 GB of RAM, Chrome can consume a large proportion of its resources, making using the browser a very heavy and unstable experience.
In addition, after a long loan session with several Chrome tabs open, closing the browser can still leave some residual processes that consume system resources.
The TerminateProcess function is often used in Windows to unconditionally terminate a specified process and all of its threads. Think of it as a means of closing an application completely and preventing it from running anything in the background. This frees up all system resources that an application is taking up.
Therefore, making use of TerminateProcess should be a way for Google to allow Chrome users to close a selection of tabs or, in fact, the entire browser and immediately recover the computing resources it was using. And, in our understanding, it should make Chrome running smoother and with less resource usage in general.
The use of the TerminateProcess function in Chrome is still being tested by Google. But we wouldn’t be surprised if it was a new version of Chrome in 2021, although in practice you don’t notice the change, except for a more stable Chrome experience on Windows 10.