I can suggest qutebrowser.
Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#12I use Firefox but it's a memory hog too. To be fair, websites are the memory hogs imo.
Sadly I don't think you can have the full web experience without sacrificing a couple gigs of ram if you have several tabs open at once.
I know it's not open source but on a Macbook I would expect Safari to be the lightest browser.
If you really want open and still like Chrome, you could try ungoogled chromium here : https://chromium.woolyss.com/
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#13Also, if you run with tons of tabs open, try "The Great Suspender" chrome extension.
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#14I can suggest qutebrowser.
I checked it out but not really interested in the keyboard-focused controls. I may try it out when I have more time to learn it.
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#15Are we really complaining about browsers on a computer with 8gb of RAM?
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#16Dillo if you don't need javascript... hehe
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#17I can recommend the great suspender extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...
after a few minutes inactive tabs gets killed - works for me very well - you can also exclude sites.
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#18Also, if you run with tons of tabs open, try "The Great Suspender" chrome extension.
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Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#19Are we really complaining about browsers on a computer with 8gb of RAM?
I think the source of OPs problem is the type of websites he is visiting rather than the default memory usage patterns of a browser, but....
8GB really isn't that much memory at all when it comes to the resource hogging that is occuring at every level of the stack. Win 10 is using like 4GB RAM at idle these days and one Youtube tab takes the other 4 :)
Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?
#20Unfortunately most of the options that come to mind are not available for MacOS.
I know this isn't what you asked, but if I wanted to reinvigorate a 2012 Macbook Pro I would look install something like Lubuntu on it, which focuses on being lightweight, and would run Falkon or Midori.