Google Chrome is a household name because of its mostly snappy performance. Yes, ‘most’ is flexible. Over time, we noticed that Chrome became sluggish. If clearing browser data and resetting Chrome fails – you may need to check for experimental features called flags. In this article, we will show you 9 such flags to make Google Chrome faster.
Flags on Chrome appear on a hidden page. This is because turning the wrong flag on can ruin your browsing experience. Therefore, we recommend that you read this article carefully to enable the correct flags that improve speed and performance on Google Chrome.
What is the flag in Chrome
Flags are an experimental set of features and configurations on Google Chrome. They are not intended for ordinary users but for developers.
If you are developing a web application, you obviously have to make sure it runs well on Google Chrome. Of course, this will need you to test the app’s behavior on a per-configuration basis of Google Chrome. And the flags menu on Chrome allows you to do all of these tests and experiments by enabling and disabling many of the micro-level features on Google Chrome.
However, some flags are safe to use and enhance the browsing experience. We have reviewed such flags and have explained in detail how they will help you. But before getting there, let’s understand how to open the flags menu on Google Chrome.
In the address bar of Google Chrome, type ‘chrome://flags’. This is all you need to do to get to the flags page. It may seem overly technical at first, but don’t worry because we have an easy-to-follow process for enabling useful flags.
But how do we find useful flags and enable and disable them in the long list of flags? Read our next section to learn more.
How to enable the Google Chrome flag
Step 1: Go to chrome://flags.
Step 2: Enter the name of the flag you want to find. We have recommended the best ones in the next section.
Step 3: Once you find the flag, click the drop-down menu next to it.
Step 4: Now click Enabled to enable the flag.
Step 5: Now, you will be asked to restart Chrome for the setting to take effect. Just click Relaunch.
Now that we have learned how to enable flags, it’s time for us to start finding and configuring some useful flags that will help make Chrome faster.
9 best flags to speed up Google Chrome
Here is a list of nine flags to improve your browsing experience on Google Chrome. Read the description to understand what each flag does and how it can affect Chrome. Once you understand and feel the need for it, you can go ahead and enable the same feature. For convenience, we’ve added a quick link to open these flags on Chrome.
1. Experimental QUIC protocol
An online protocol is how two applications can exchange information over the internet. QUIC is an experimental protocol developed by Google. The goal of this protocol is to reduce latency and congestion compared to TCP, which is the protocol used online. Therefore, enabling QUIC can help improve your browsing speed.
chrome://flags/#enable-quic
2. Parallel download
Consider a situation where you are downloading a large file on Google Chrome and it takes a lot of time. When you enable Parallel Download, the large file will be split into different parts. The downloader will establish multiple connections to different servers and download parts. This has the potential to speed up downloads on Chrome.
chrome://flags/#enable-parallel-downloading
3. GPU Rasterization
By default, Chrome will not use the GPU to process and render media. If your PC has a powerful GPU – you can enable the GPU rasterization flag. This will make sure your GPU also performs some tasks and thus, improves some efficiency in performance.
chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization
4. Override software rendering list
You may have a powerful GPU on your system, but sometimes Chrome won’t be able to use GPU acceleration for various reasons. This is usually due to Chrome not being able to recognize and activate the GPU driver.
When you enable ‘Override Software Rendering’, this will force Chrome to use GPU rendering instead of the default rendering engine. Therefore, this GPU acceleration can enable better browsing performance.
chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist
5. Fuzzy Search for Tab Search
We’ve all had a case where we opened hundreds of tabs on Google Chrome and couldn’t find a particular tab. And to get around this, there’s a tab search option on the Google Chrome toolbar, the arrow pointing towards the bottom next to the minimized icon.
To make search results even faster, you can enable the ‘Fluid Search for Tab Search’ flag. It allows you to search for terms that are similar to your intended search query, but not the exact phrase. For example, if you’re searching for the Google Calendar tab, you can type ‘GC’ and it will return search results that include the Google Calendar tab.
chrome://flags/#tab-search-fuzzy-search
6. Forward and backward cache
The back and forward buttons on the Google Chrome toolbar are the fastest way to navigate between the web pages you just visited. If you are someone who loves this feature and uses it all the time, you will appreciate this flag.
Enabling the ‘Caching for Forward’ flag will cache the web pages you have recently visited. This will ensure you can instantly go to the last website you visited on the same tab or forward a web page.
chrome://flags/#back-forward-cache
7. Photo scanner doesn’t copy
The GPU has a temporary memory called VRAM. This only works with GPUs. In some cases, especially if you are using an older version of RAM, your VRAM will be significantly faster. This will also be useful if your RAM is quite low in size.
If you enable the ‘Do not copy point scanner’ flag, Chrome will use VRAM for tasks and speed up your browsing experience.
8. Smooth scrolling
Have you ever noticed slow scrolling on content-heavy web pages? We are sure you have. So do we, even on PCs with good internals. Thankfully, there is a fix for this problem in the flags.
If you enable the Smooth Scrolling flag, you can experience a much smoother and faster scrolling experience. When you enable the flag, it adds a few lines of code to the back end of the web page (CSS, React, etc.), which can improve your navigation experience through animation.
chrome://flags/#enable-zero-copy
9. Show autofill predictions
We all visit websites that require us to fill in personal information for shipping, registration, etc. One way to speed up this process is to enable the ‘Show Autofill Predictions’ flag. With this flag enabled, you’ll get predictions to populate unnamed fields with existing autofill information stored in Chrome.
chrome://flags/#show-autofill-type-predictions
Here are some flags to make Google Chrome faster. However, if you’ve accidentally enabled the flag or want to completely disable it for whatever reason, here’s how.
How to reset Chrome flag settings
While you can turn off individual flags, it can be quite a hassle to find or even remember what you turned on in the first place.
You can quickly turn off all the flags at once using the ‘Reset All’ button provided on the main page of the flags.
We hope you have a good understanding of how to enable and use flags on Google Chrome. In case you have some questions, you can check out our FAQ section.
Chrome Flag FAQ
1. Is Chrome flag safe?
Yes, the Chrome flag is safe to use. However, turning the wrong flags on can make your browser unstable, so we recommend enabling only those flags that you are fully aware of.
2. Is the Chrome flag available on a Mac?
Yes, Chrome flags are available for the following platforms—Chrome for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and Chrome OS.
3. Some flags are not available on my Chrome. What do I do?
Not all flags are available to all users as it depends on the device you are using and your Chrome version number. The best thing you can do is make sure to update to the latest version of Google Chrome.
Get the best out of chrome://flags
As long as you use it correctly, Chrome flags can greatly enhance your browsing experience. We hope this article helped you use flags to make Google Chrome faster. Always update to the latest version of Google Chrome to never miss any new set of flags.
Categories: How to
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