Speeding Up Chrome by Shutting Down Plug-ins

When using Chrome there are often times when it feels slow, you’ve cleared your cache and even restarted and it’s not made a difference.  The thing that could be to blame is plug-ins.  When we use Chrome we add more and more plug-ins because they seem useful, whether it’s ones that install themselves such as Microsoft Office plug-ins or even plug-ins that you chose to add but have no use for anymore.

When you get too many plug-ins and your Chrome starts acting slow, it’s time to get rid of a few.  The reason for wanting to stop them having access can be to speed up Chrome itself or just because you need a performance boost and these plug-ins are just taking up too many resources which just can’t be afforded.

Loading the Plug-in List and Disabling Them

Chrome actually has a shortcut that you can put into the browser bar to load the Plug-in list and that is to type “about://plugins” this will open up the internal Chrome page with a list of all the plug-ins that you have loaded into Chrome.  You will notice under the name of the plug-in there is a brief description of it and the chance to disable and restrict the plug-in from working anymore.  If there is an update needed you will also see this next to the plug in details.

To disable the plug-in it’s simply a case of clicking disable and the plug-in will no longer have access to Chrome.  Be aware though that when you disable the plug-in you will lose its functionality meaning you won’t be able to use it again.  If this has a detrimental effect on your browsing then simply turn it back on and the functionality will start to work again.

There are plenty of options hidden away in Chrome to play with, ones like the Plug-in list are very useful to use and let you improve the performance of your browser.  Don’t be afraid to play with the options to experiment, but use common sense, “Abode Acrobat” is the PDF viewer so if you want to view those files in your browser you will have to have that one turned on.  The names of the plug-ins give you as the user a good hint at what functionality they are providing.

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