The specialists of DebugBear have made an analysis of popular Chrome extensions and have found out some of them are using too much of the resources of your computer significantly slowing down the work of your browser. Unfortunately, the majority of Chrome users are not even aware of this popular problem.
What is wrong with power-consuming extensions for your browser?
As you can imagine, the problem with the extensions for your browser which are consuming too much energy is pretty similar to the effects of desktop programmes installed on your computer. At the same time, this can appear more confusing as it is happening on the browser.
Generally, power-consuming extensions will reduce the time of loading of various websites while you might not understand what the real reason is. In many cases, the Internet users just assume the problem is with the Internet signal which is usually not the case. That is why it is crucial to understand the differences in the energy consumption for different browser extensions.
By the way, according to the analytics of the DebugBear team, the most resource-consuming extensions for Chrome can reduce the speed of loading by dozens of times.
What was taken into the analysis?
The analysis conducted by DebugBear took the top one hundred of Chrome extensions installed by the users of this popular Internet browser. The list of the extensions checked by the specialists included Avira Password Manger, Loom and LastPass. Then, the team checked the loading processes for simple websites as well as complex websites as well as the way it is affected by these extensions.
The general result of the experiment showed that the most energy-consuming extension for Chrome is popular Evernote Web Clipper. While used during loading simple websites, this Chrome extension added 368 milliseconds for processing the information. Even though it does not seem like something serious, the situation worsens when several extensions are working simultaneously.
The specialists of DebugBear also checked the chrome extensions on a more complex websites. It turned out that Dark Reader is currently the most energy consuming extension for Chrome among the top extensions. You might be using such an extension yourself. It is very popular for changing the websites into a so-called dark theme for more comfort of reading information on your screen. Unfortunately, The extension adds nearly 2.5 seconds to the loading time of complex websites. Again, you can imagine this time will be extended once several extensions are working at the same time.
Other extensions significantly increasing the time of loading of simple websites on Chrome are Loom for Chrome, Avira Password Manager, Clever, Ghostery, LastPass, Rakuten Get Cash Back, Save to Pocket, QAvira Browser Safety, Shimeji Browser Extension, AVG/Avast SafePrice, Norton Password Manager, Skype, MetaMask and Dashlane.
When it comes to the complex websites, the majority of extensions among the top one hundred extensions did not add too much of loading time. Apart from Dark Reader, the most significant change in the loading time was noted for Honey.
The analysis of a larger sample
The team of DebugBear went even further analysing the top thousand of Chrome extensions. You might assume this means many of these extensions are not particularly popular, however, it is not true. For Chrome, the top thousand of extensions includes exclusively those extensions which have been installed over 100 000 times.
With an enlarged sample, the result of the analysis conducted by DebugBear showed that the most resource-consuming extension for Chrome is Ubersuggest which is a marketing tool. This extension currently has over 200 000 people. Unfortunately, Ubersuggest reduces the speed of loading for both complex websites and simple one. The average time of loading this extension is adding is nearly 1.6 seconds.
When it comes to the top thousand of most energy-consuming Chrome extensions, many other extensions besides Ubersuggest can increase the time of loading for simple websites dramatically. The extensions following Ubersuggest are ProWritingAid, Meow, The Cat Pet, MozBar, Allitools Shopping Assistant, eHOY English, True Key by McAfee, Magical – Text Expansion and many others.
What is the meaning of such a research?
As it has already been mentioned, many people are not aware of the fact their problems with loading various websites are the result of the installation of too energy-consuming extensions for their browsers rather than a symptom of problems with hardware or Internet connection. At the same time, this problem can be easily omitted and every Internet user can control it.