It's easy to accumulate a dozen browser extensions over time — a password manager, an ad blocker, a grammar checker, a few shopping/coupon tools — without realizing how much combined background overhead they add. Most run on every page you visit, regardless of whether you're actively using them at that moment.
Step 1: check Chrome/Edge's built-in Task Manager
This is the most direct way to actually see which extensions are using the most resources, rather than guessing:
- In Chrome, press Shift + Esc (this opens Chrome's own Task Manager, separate from Windows Task Manager). In Edge, it's accessible via the three dots menu → More tools → Browser task manager.
- This shows a breakdown by tab and by extension, including memory and CPU usage
- Sort by CPU or memory to immediately see which specific extensions are the heaviest
This is genuinely the fastest way to identify the actual culprit — rather than disabling extensions one at a time and guessing, this shows you real, measured resource usage per extension right now.
Step 2: disable or remove the worst offenders
- Go to your extensions page (
chrome://extensionsoredge://extensions) - For any extension showing high usage in the task manager, either disable it (if you want to keep the option to re-enable later) or remove it entirely if you don't actually use it often
Common categories of heavy extensions
- Ad blockers — genuinely useful, but they scan and filter content on every single page load, which has a real (if usually modest) performance cost.
- Shopping/coupon extensions — many of these constantly check pages against databases or inject content, adding overhead on every page even when you're not shopping.
- Grammar/writing checkers — these scan text fields across every page you visit, which can add up if you have several other text-heavy extensions also running.
- VPN browser extensions — can add meaningful overhead, especially lower-quality free ones.
A practical approach going forward
Rather than removing everything, a reasonable middle ground: keep extensions you use daily, and for ones you use rarely, consider removing them and just reinstalling when you actually need them again — most install in seconds, so there's little cost to not having something installed "just in case."
If performance issues persist with all extensions disabled
If you've disabled every extension and the browser is still slow, the cause is likely elsewhere — too many open tabs (each tab consumes memory even if inactive), an outdated browser version, or a system-wide resource issue rather than anything extension-related. At that point, it's worth checking overall system performance via Windows Task Manager rather than continuing to focus on the browser specifically.