How Chrome Extensions Can Drastically Impact Your Browsing Speed

The Impact of Chrome Extensions on Browsing Performance

Web browsers offer a remarkable advantage through extensions, allowing users to enhance their browsing capabilities. However, this added functionality often comes at a cost, notably in performance. Recent analysis of 5,000 popular Chrome extensions revealed significant slowdowns in browsing speed, with certain exceptions worth noting.

The research team at Debugbear conducted thorough assessments, focusing on CPU processing and website loading times to unveil the implications of using these extensions.

Key Insights from Extension Performance Tests

Here are the most revealing findings regarding how Chrome extensions affect browsing speed:

Even basic websites experienced a delay of 500 milliseconds or more due to specific extensions.
A striking 86% of the analyzed extensions carried a negligible effect on the performance of simple websites.
Only 1.7% of the extensions tested caused processing delays of 500 milliseconds or more on simple sites.
On complex websites, particularly those loaded with scripts and elements, processing delays could surge up to 2000 milliseconds.
The cumulative effect of multiple extensions can significantly exacerbate these delays, resulting in a noticeably sluggish experience.
Extensions recognized for their high processing times include: Honey Automatic Coupons, Klarna Pay Later, Monica – Your AI Copilot, and Capital One Shopping, among others.
Interestingly, content blockers tend to enhance website processing speeds.
This performance impact isn’t limited to Chrome; it can affect any Chromium-based browser or Firefox as well.

Website Load Times: The Hidden Lag

Impact of Chrome Extensions on Browsing Speed

The presence of browser extensions often leads to longer website load times, especially if they are programmed to activate during the initial page loading. This phenomenon can impede user interaction.

Extensions can contribute an additional 1000 milliseconds to the loading times of straightforward websites.
Although most delay interaction post-load is under 50 milliseconds, a minority of extensions can create more substantial lag.

Such delays are perceptible, causing customers to experience a longer wait before the full content of a webpage is visible.

Advantages of Content Blockers

Content blockers generally enhance website performance, particularly on pages laden with advertisements. Their effect on CPU usage and page download speed is noticeably beneficial.

Some content blockers can reduce processing times that initially extended to over 50 seconds down to just a few seconds.
Many of these extensions shrink the page load size from upwards of 40 MB to under 5 MB.
Most also mitigate overall memory consumption, optimizing resource usage.
Notable performing extensions include: uBlock Origin, ScriptSafe, and Privacy Badger, with AdBlock Plus showing relatively poorer results.
AdBlock Plus performs suboptimally due to its “acceptable ads”program, which allows specific ads to appear when active — this can be disabled for better performance.
ScriptSafe excels primarily because it blocks JavaScript by default, thus curtailing excessive load times.

Further Observations on Extensions

The study also evaluated the storage utilization and overall impact on browser functionality:

A vast majority, 86.6%, of Chrome extensions require less than 10MB of storage.
A mere 2.2% of these extensions surpass 50MB in storage needs.
Six extensions, which have over a million users, significantly disrupt the back/forward cache functionality: these are LastPass Password Manager, Avast Online Security, and a few others.

Conclusions and Recommendations

While the installation of browser extensions is a common practice for enhancing web browsing, it’s vital to recognize their potential to slow down websites’ processing and loading times. Although content blockers can serve as a remedy by limiting the load of JavaScript-heavy content, users may still experience delays due to particular extensions.

Extensions that delay website loading by one second or more should be scrutinized; users might want to explore alternatives that offer a more fluid browsing experience. Limiting the extensions to specific sites or enabling them “on click” can also help mitigate performance issues.

How about you? Do your browser extensions affect your web browsing experience? Share your thoughts!

Additional Insights

1. How do Chrome extensions impact website performance?

Chrome extensions can significantly affect website performance, often leading to increased load times and slower CPU processing, particularly on complex sites laden with scripts and advertisements.

2. What types of extensions are most resource-heavy?

Notorious resource-heavy extensions include popular shopping helpers like Honey and Klarna, as well as privacy tools that may engage in constant background operations, which can slow down browsing.

3. Are all content blockers beneficial for browsing speed?

While most content blockers improve browsing speed by preventing non-essential scripts from loading, some, like AdBlock Plus, may not perform as effectively unless specific features are adjusted, such as disabling “acceptable ads”.

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