Chrome is notorious for eating RAM. If you're a developer with 20+ tabs open, you've seen Chrome use 4-8GB of memory. Here's how to fix it.
Each Chrome tab runs in its own process. This is great for stability (one tab crashes, others survive) but terrible for memory. Add a few extensions that each use 50-200MB, and you're looking at 8GB+ easily.
Go to chrome://extensions and check each extension's size. Remove anything over 5MB that you don't use daily. Replace bloated tools with lightweight alternatives.
Tab suspenders automatically "freeze" tabs you haven't used in a while. The tab stays in your tab bar, but it uses zero memory until you click on it. This alone can save 60-80% of Chrome's RAM usage.
Most developer extensions are unnecessarily large. A JSON formatter doesn't need to be 3MB. A color picker doesn't need analytics tracking. Look for tools under 50KB — they exist.
FlowKit's collection of 66 extensions — each under 50KB, designed specifically to be memory-efficient.
FlowKit — 66+ free browser extensions for developers. Zero tracking. Open source.