You have a lot of choices, but we suggest starting with Opera, which has a particularly light footprint and is equally available on Mac and PC. If you keep running into problems when you open too many tabs, it may be worth it to consider switching to a different browser. Some browsers take up more RAM than others, while some use data more efficiently for a streamlined process. Fortunately, browsers have ways to quickly clear the cache when you need to, typically in the tools or settings section. That doesn’t directly affect your computer’s RAM, but it does affect how efficiently browsers use data, and when the cache gets too full, it can act a lot like it's running short of RAM. Your browser cache keeps a lot of temporary files around to help load certain sites faster. If you’re interested, we have a full guide on what you’ll need to do right here. The process is a little complicated – you’ll have to set a baseline, manually overclock, and carefully check your progress without overwhelming your RAM … and it’s really only possible on PCs. In some cases, you can overclock RAM like you would overclock a CPU. PC gamers are flocking to Windows 11, new Steam survey says The most common Slack issues and how to fix them If you have a number of apps set to automatically start when you first log in, now is a good time to check that list and see if you really need all of them running or if you can take some of them off the list. Select the apps that don’t serve a purpose and choose to quit them. You can check all activity, including background apps, by using the Task Manager on PCs. Many apps and processes can run in the background, where there may be little sign they are running even though they’re taking up RAM. Step 2: Shut down unnecessary background apps.

Save what you’re working on and restart to your computer, then resume to see if your speeds have improved. Both Macs and PCs may have background activity left over from apps you aren’t using anymore and similar issues that are eating up a significant amount of RAM that doesn’t really need to be used. If you’re not in the middle of any projects, a quick reboot can often fix small RAM issues. Here’s what to do to free up RAM fast and fix your issues.Īndrew Brookes/Getty Images How to clear up RAM on Windows But if your RAM numbers are low or you’re doing too much at once, you can run into problems. It’s the reason you can switch from your music player to your Steam app without having to give up one or the other - as long as you have enough RAM to handle everything, that is. RAM is a very important type of memory that your computer uses to juggle all currently active tasks.

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