BRAVE Memory usage is SO HUGE, how can we improve this?

Hi dear community and support,

I tried to check everything, deactivate extensions, just leave one tab open,… nothing lowers the amount of processes open and memory usage. Why ?
How can we improve this for lower RAM laptops ? or for everybody.
This memory usage is so huge it is really bothering.
Can some devs give tips here if we can deactivate stuff in the motor, stuff we don’t need for our simple surfing ? Thanks, cheeers

PS: if someone can recommend a better browser, as private, then shoot please. Thanks in advance

#memory #memoryusage


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Try normal mode, but with all extensions disabled. restart browser and then find the possible problem extension

Do Shift + Esc when the Brave window is active, this will open the browser task manager. Look what is using resources.

I don’t know the amount of tabs and windows and what kind of extensions you have or how long you’ve used the browser and for what in this session. But the CPU usage is definitely high. RAM usage isn’t really high, unless there is nothing else open than what your screenshots show.

The thing about RAM usage and why RAM usage benchmarks and tests are s t * p i d* is that when you have free RAM and it can be used for something good you want it to be used, not just left unutilized. Not utilizing RAM when it can be used for good is handicapping programs for no good reason.

What you do want, though, is smart memory allocation behaviour. You want programs to utilise free memory when it has a purpose but also be able to discard it when it’s not and free up memory for itself or other programs when needed, so that you don’t run out or run into performance problems because of swap.


*For some reason the word s t * p i d is not allowed, as if it can only be used towards people and not to describe a concept or an idea.

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@saar is exactly correct.

Also, recent releases have the ‘Memory Saver’ feature which you can enable at brave://settings/system if it helps you.

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Buy more memory, memory is cheap… and if you have 91% with only 830MB reported by Task Manager (which is not the real usage of memory anyway), then you should get more memory, you can literally but 8gb for like $20, which should be the minimal for most people who don’t use their computer for anything heavy like a 3D program.

I mean, look at all your extensions, each extension will use a different process = consume more memory, you are using Google maps which will have to use a lot of GPU rendering to have a better experience = GPU process will consume more memory.

You are proving this by having the Private mode window opened, you didn’t enable your extensions to run in private mode so that’s why the memory is lower, if not, extensions would open TWICE, one for ‘normal’ windows and then for Private mode, regardless if you have only Private window opened, but the resource consumption of the ‘normal’ extension will not be as high since it will not be used and just be there because it is necessary.

So the problem is how you want to use the browser with tons of extensions and heavy websites but your memory is too low to handle modern web standards.

Memory usage is complicated because not memory used is memory wasted, but also, going to 91% you are at the borderline of start using your disk which means your computer will go to slow mode unless you have a fast SSD.

Plus another issue with Brave, is that loading tons of Adblock rules will consume more memory than the browser should, it is not much, like 50-100MB memory more than Brave would consume without any list and only uBlock for example (or without it), that’s a problem with Brave for loading more than 140K adblock rules.

By default Brave consumes a tiny little more memory than Edge for the same site, but consumes less CPU in general although the rendering seems a bit slower in Brave, like going to twitch and scrolling down the list of channels, will load slower and felt laggier in Brave.
I found that Win11 2022 seems to improve memory usage across.

But memory is pretty normal 600-1200MB… it’s not “huge”, all MODERN browsers will use similar amount of memory depending how heavy the website is, that’s what modern web technologies do, unless you disable JS, then your usage will pretty much be the similar on any MODERN browser you use.
Like I said, memory is there to be used, the more memory a program uses the better, then the OS is in charge of managing it the best.

But disable extensions, because if you go to Shift+ESC which is the internal task manager, you will see how much each extension consumes, then we have each utility process, and even Site isolation and sandboxing contribute to more security but also higher resources usage.

Edge browser seems to be the only modern browser trying to improve things, maybe Chrome since it lacks more out of the box good stuff compared to Edge and Brave. After that, any other browser, Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox are terrible in their resources usage, if not you can try one of those niche forks that are managed by 1 person and hope it doesn’t die tomorrow.

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