Speed up your Chrome browser with these extensions
Chrome is known as the fastest browser but for some people the fastest is not enough. On top of that, Chrome is also very memory consuming and may lead to a slower browsing experience on low-end devices. Fortunately there are many Chrome extensions available that will speed things up for you exponentially.
From faster page loading to faster navigation there is an extension for just about everything. Below we have compiled a list of the five best Chrome browser extensions to help you browse faster.
NavigUp
Old but still good. NavigUp is a very simple plugin that creates a new keyboard shortcut that allows you to navigate to the original address of a web page. So if you use Google to navigate to a specific webpage you can press Alt+1 to "go one level higher" to the URL above.
Think of it as a "back" button but for navigating within a specific website. Before that you have to scroll the address bar and delete parts of the address to visit the top domain on a site here you can do it with a simple shortcut.
Speed-Up Browsing
This relatively unknown but very good extension speeds up browsing by adding missing cache control headers. Cache-Control headers are instructions in HTTP that basically help send and pull data in and out of Chrome's cache faster.
The idea is that once you visit a site and cache images from that site on your computer, the site will load faster the next time you visit it. With fast browsing it basically "fills the holes" in your cache making sure that it loads faster than just using the default cache in Chrome.
FasterChrome
Now that's an interesting concept. By default Chrome runs several background services to preload website data and speed up browsing — from cookies to cached images on previously visited websites.
But FasterChrome does something smarter. It tracks mouse movement and if you hover on a particular site link for only 65 milliseconds it starts preloading the site to which that link leads (saving an estimated 300 milliseconds per link clicked).
Yes this consumes some more bandwidth than before, but not much, and with prolonged use you will really feel the difference in your browsing speeds.
uBlock Origin
It is steadily becoming known that uBlock Origin is the clear successor to Adblock. It is a much newer application that is built on more modern technologies and therefore less draining of your system resources than the old, worn out Adblock. Crucially it uses less RAM which will have a special effect on those using older hardware.
In terms of features, they are also excellent. In addition to being packed with ad blocking, whitelisting, etc. functions, it has additional built-in features such as the one that allows you to suspend background tabs in Chrome while browsing your current page which again reduces memory usage.
You will need to grant a lot of permissions to run uBlock to its full potential but when that is done, it is arguably the single most important extension in speeding up your browsing experience.
Web Boost
It uses a Web Boost algorithm is simple for this purpose. It comes with website building blocks that are stored on your computer. These blocks are used by most of the popular websites and with this extension activated there is no need to download these blocks every time you load a web page.
The extension claims that this method may result in pages loading three times faster. It took 1.23 seconds to load the homepage of this site with this extension enabled as it usually takes more than 2 seconds. In addition to that, it also blocks ads and spy services which also helps in speedy page loading. Don't worry about privacy. The extension is open source.
I had no problem with this extension during 2 weeks of use. However if you find any web page not loading properly try disabling the extension on that page and reload (click on add button to disable).
The Great Suspender
A slower computer leads to a slower browser and if you use Chrome and have a lot of tabs open there is a good chance that you will have a smooth experience. This is where The Great Suspender helps by suspending all tabs that have not been used for a specified period. It's common to open multiple tabs and use a few of them frequently.
This extension will automatically suspend these tabs and free up all the memory they were taking. When you want to access this tab just go to it or click in the middle (customizable) to reload it. You can also suspend a tab or multiple tabs manually with just two clicks. I have been using this for over a month now and it does wonders for me.