Make Google Chrome even faster

Chrome is a great browser. It is still not as fast as Mozilla Firefox. At least not out of the box. There are many things you can change to make Google Chrome run faster and smoother, including: flags, advanced settings, extensions, and browsing data.

Flags

Chrome has many experimental features that are hidden. They hide these features figuring that if you do not know they are there, you probably should not be messing with them. They do want anyone to start messing around and destroy their browser.
These hidden features are called flags.

To access these flags, open your Chrome browser. In the address bar, type "about:flags" (or "Chrome://flags"). There are a few that are worth trying to change.






1. Override software rendering list (Enable)
2. GPU compositing on all pages (Change drop-down menu from default to enabled)
3. Threaded compositing (Change drop-down menu from default to enable)
4. Disable accelerated 2D canvas (enable)
5. GPU-accelerated SVG filter (enable)

On the flags page, below each option, there is a short description of what each of these do. The descriptions are pretty good and should help you understand why you are making these changes. There are many more things that could be changed, but these seem to have the biggest affect, and are the safest to change. If any of these seem to be a problem for your system, just go back to "chrome://flags" and change them back.


Advanced Settings
The settings section in Chrome has a few things that can make it faster. Unfortunately, some of Chrome's default settings seem to make Chrome slower so we will change those.

To access the advanced settings, open your Chrome browser. In the address bar type "about:settings" (or "chrome://settings"). Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Show advanced settings...". This will extend the page giving you access to more settings. Go to the Privacy section and make sure the following settings are disabled (unchecked):
1. Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors
2. Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar
3. Predict network actions to improve page load performance
4. Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google

Extensions and Plug-ins
There are many extensions that get added to Chrome without people knowing it. Or people add them and never use them.
To check your extensions, go to "about:extensions" (or "chrome://extensions"). Look through your list of extensions and remove the extensions you do not plan on using. Next, look through the list for extensions you are not using now, but may use in the future. Disable these extensions by unchecking them.

Plug-ins work the same way. Go to "about:plugins" (or "chrome://plugins") and disable all the ones you do not use. If, for any reason, you need one in the future, you can go back and enable it again.


Browsing Data
From your web browsing, there are many things that are saved through the Chrome browser. These include: passwords, browsing history, download history, and cookies. All of these among other things can slow down the browser. Chrome has a built-in way of removing these files.

Click on the Chrome menu in the top right corner of the browser window, click tools, then Clear browsing data. Alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+Shift+Delete and the dialogue box will open. Once that window opens, select what you want to delete. The default settings are fine. Change the drop-down menu to (the beginning of time). Then click "Delete browsing history". That should clear up a lot of information and make your browsing much faster.