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How many Chrome tabs can you have on 32GB M1 Pro
- Thread starter yurkennis
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Step 1: Stop using Chrome, if you don't like Safari use Firefox
Step 2: Learn to use bookmarks instead of loads of tabs open at the same time
Step 3: See step 2
Step 2: Learn to use bookmarks instead of loads of tabs open at the same time
Step 3: See step 2
I am very interested in an in depth comparison like this for our company. Especially if we can save $400 - $800 per laptop if the 16GB performs well enough against the 32gb.
I work in tech as a Product Manager and the chrome tab limit is the biggest pain to everyone in the company. We use a lot of google docs/slides/etc. it is not uncommon to have 5-10 windows, each with at least 10 tabs and one or 2 of those with 20-40 tabs.
The workflows include slide creation that is based on 10-15 other documents. writing requirements docs that need 10-20 other docs and maybe 10-20 websites. some of those websites are actually webtools, sql query engine front ends, dashboards, etc.
Could we be more organized. Yes. but what i just described is 1 slide deck and 1 document being produced. We write 2-3 requirements documents concurrently every month and maybe 2-3 slide decks concurrently every week. Just figuring out what to close is a 9-5 job. The way we address closing them is by including them as links in other documents. This makes it manageable.
"bookmarks" is not a solution. Drive/box or document launch pads are better.
None of this includes when I need to design or code myself. Also, this is the same way I work on my side projects and side hustles.
I work in tech as a Product Manager and the chrome tab limit is the biggest pain to everyone in the company. We use a lot of google docs/slides/etc. it is not uncommon to have 5-10 windows, each with at least 10 tabs and one or 2 of those with 20-40 tabs.
The workflows include slide creation that is based on 10-15 other documents. writing requirements docs that need 10-20 other docs and maybe 10-20 websites. some of those websites are actually webtools, sql query engine front ends, dashboards, etc.
Could we be more organized. Yes. but what i just described is 1 slide deck and 1 document being produced. We write 2-3 requirements documents concurrently every month and maybe 2-3 slide decks concurrently every week. Just figuring out what to close is a 9-5 job. The way we address closing them is by including them as links in other documents. This makes it manageable.
"bookmarks" is not a solution. Drive/box or document launch pads are better.
None of this includes when I need to design or code myself. Also, this is the same way I work on my side projects and side hustles.
I've never performed the above test with 16GB. However my experience with 32 vs 64 is: it doesn't matter how many tabs you keep open, what matters is how many you frequently switch between; how sensitive you are to tab refresh time when switching to long-unused tab.
For decision like yours, I heard people set up a real-life test with head-to-head comparison. Like your most RAM-demanding employee lives a week with 16GB, then a week with 32GB, and after that tries to explain the differences. Ideally in a blind test etc etc.
It’s entirely based on the websites, the JavaScript they run, how many ads are shown and more. This is equivalent to asking how many programs can you have open at once. Are the small programs or large? What do you have loaded in the application? 1kb file vs 100mb file?
I have an average of 100 + every day as lots of different contexts have to be check and multi tasked.
The wider ones scope of information/ data the more one has to prance through a lot like bloody shuttle launch.
Any do updates / compares on this front? esp compared to newer Wintel laptops?
The wider ones scope of information/ data the more one has to prance through a lot like bloody shuttle launch.
Any do updates / compares on this front? esp compared to newer Wintel laptops?
i do a lot of my work in confluence, Jira, sharepoint, and some other, mostly internal, sites. I am usually working on 5-6 projects at once and have 10-20 tabs open for each project plus a few others. Last I checked I had around 200 tabs open in the browser. Many of those are all pages that I return to repeatedly during the day. Having to use bookmarks and reopening pages would add a lot of friction to my workflow.
I use Firefox for this and a plugin called Panorama that organizes tabs into groups. I have groups setup for each of my projects and for a few other topics. I can switch between the groups and the only tabs shown are in that group. The tabs are not reloaded when I switch between groups so, if I am doing edits in one, that state is unchanged. It is a little like having separate windows with tabs in them but a lot easier to manage.
This may not make sense to other people but it helps me do my work efficiently and effectively. The RAM used is not that high, if more RAM is needed unused tabs can be swapped to disk cache and then reloaded when needed without losing anything. Browsers work really well with disk swap as the tabs make a useful chunk of data to swap.
Do you also have a bunch of other extensions running? As I have quite a many in Chromium/ Chrome.
PS: Which MacBook are you using with 200 odd tabs?
Until recently it was an Intel MBP with 16GB of RAM. The RAM was not a problem, even running Outlook, Excel, Word, and that Firefox setup. I’ve never seen the “out of memory” error that some people report. The fans would spin like crazy whenever I used an external display though due to GPU usage, which is most of the time. I’ve recently upgraded to a 14” M2 MBP with 32GB RAM. Much nicer.
I don’t think that browsers are a good test of RAM usages. It is true that many sites, including Macrumors forums, can allocate large amounts of RAM, but the OS does a good job of juggling tabs in and out of swap space. You would want an app that used a large amount of unified RAM like a VM to really put pressure on the RAM.
I'm curious about two things:
1) Does the memory use vary by site?
2) For those who need to keep that many tabs open: Are you using some sort of battlestation monitor setup, where each subgroup of tabs is assigned to a different monitor? Or if not, would you love to have one?
1) Does the memory use vary by site?
2) For those who need to keep that many tabs open: Are you using some sort of battlestation monitor setup, where each subgroup of tabs is assigned to a different monitor? Or if not, would you love to have one?
I would be interested to know how browsers handle scripts in lower tabs. Obviously a UI-type script (like that ancient one that makes your cursor drool sparkles) would have to be idle if the tab is obscured, but other scripts might have a good reason to run in the back. I would kind of like to have a script control switch of some sort on the browser.
I'm curious about two things:
1) Does the memory use vary by site?
2) For those who need to keep that many tabs open: Are you using some sort of battlestation monitor setup, where each subgroup of tabs is assigned to a different monitor? Or if not, would you love to have one?
RAM usage can vary wildly by website, depending on how the site was built. A basic HTML site would use minimal RAM, but once you add advanced CSS, Java/Javascript, or other elements to the site, that can increase the resources being used by the browser.
There are use cases where you need to maintain groups of specific pages, often switch between groups, and don’t necessarily want to unload and reload pages during the day. I have found surprisingly little downsides to it and it helps my work where I am working on multiple projects during a day and frequently in and out of each. The visual clutter is limited to a single window and the RAM usage has little apparent impact.
It may drive to a little crazy to find that I don’t use File/Open dialogs any more than I have to. I keep tabs open in Finder for Downloads and for each of my current projects. When i want a file I go there and either double click the file or drag and drop it on the app I need to use. I dislike using the file dialog box to have to navigate folders multiple times a day.