Mini-hack: To increase free RAM, replace the regular application with … Chrome

It’s a painful fact that once Android smartphones have reached 6GB or 8GB of RAM, PCs with only 4GB of RAM are still plenty. This list includes devices that are not cheap, such as the 2017 Surface Pro or the Surface Laptop: both models start at 4GB of RAM.

With an increasing number of applications / services running at the same time, 4GB of RAM can cause serious shortage. For example, I’ve just opened very “normal” apps like Outlook (mail), Microsoft Teams (task manager), Skype (chat), Spotify (listen to music) and a BLANK browser tab that I use. My RAM usage has reached the 9x mark. Just open one or two more websites, I will quickly “overflow” of RAM, the application will have to be temporarily written to the swap memory on the hard drive causing extremely slow jerky annoyance.

Just a few “normal” apps …

… that RAM has reached this level.

Fortunately, we have an extremely useful solution that comes from … Chrome. Yes, it’s the well-known app that consumes RAM that will save me RAM in a way that few people think of: with web-based applications, stop using the full version and switch to the web version.

As a result, by moving a few applications onto the web interface, this is the result I get (using Microsoft’s Chromium version of Edge instead of “genuine” Chrome). The RAM usage is only at 75%, and most importantly Windows does not need to use the swap memory on the hard drive anymore.

Put it all in the browser …

… is to immediately limit the overflow of RAM!

Of course, this is only applicable if your application already has a web interface. Some complex tasks (such as creating a playlist on Spotify or reviewing Review in Words) are also only possible / should only be done through the full application interface. However, those are all special, quite rare situations. If you’re still stuck with a machine that only has 4GB of RAM and often crashes when performing normal office tasks, give this a try!