It's frustrating when Google Chrome keeps crashing. Whether you can't even get Chrome to open or it crashes on certain websites, you might be tempted to switch to another browser.

But you don't have to do that just yet. We'll show you fixes for common Chrome crashes, hangs, and freezes so you can get your browser back to a stable state.

Google Chrome Keeps Crashing: Basic Troubleshooting

When Chrome starts crashing or freezing, you should first try completely restarting it. To do so, click the three-dot Menu button at the top-right of Chrome and choose Exit. Then reopen Chrome after a moment and see if the issue improves.

Note that if you just click the X in the top-right corner, Chrome can continue running in the background (if you've enabled that option). To turn this off, go to Menu > Settings. Choose Advanced from the left sidebar to show more settings, then click the System entry.

Here, disable Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed if you want Chrome to close completely when you click the X in its window.

Next, you should look at how much you have open in Chrome. If your computer is low on RAM (which is often a problem due to Chrome's high memory usage), it may cause websites to crash. Try closing all tabs you're not using, pausing any Chrome downloads, and quitting any unnecessary programs running on your computer.

To help with this, press Shift + Esc to open Chrome's task manager. This will give you a breakdown of everything running in Chrome so you can close the heaviest users.

Chrome Task Manager Windows Dark

If none of the above fixes seem to work, you should restart your computer. As you probably know, rebooting fixes a lot of issues, and could clear up any temporary quirks with Chrome.

Finally, it's a good idea to check for Chrome updates at Menu > Help > About Google Chrome. New versions can patch up bugs, including those that affect memory usage.

Google Chrome Keeps Freezing: Advanced Fixes

If the first steps above didn't clear up your problem, continue on to some further troubleshooting methods.

Disable Some Chrome Extensions

You should next check your installed extensions on the Menu > More tools > Extensions page. Disable or remove anything that you don't actively use. Having too many extensions can bog down your browser, while malicious extensions can interfere with Chrome's normal operation. See our guide to managing browser extensions for advice.

Chrome Extensions Menu Dark

If you have a lot of extensions and don't want to disable them all manually, try opening an incognito window at Menu > New incognito window, or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + N. By default, extensions can't run in incognito windows. As a result, browsing while incognito makes it easier to determine if an extension is what's causing Chrome to freeze or crash. Disable them one by one until you locate the culprit.

Scan for Malware

While not all Chrome crashing issues are caused by malware, it's worth ruling out before you proceed. A malicious program could mess with your browser's security or network settings and cause connection problems.

Chrome has a basic built-in malware scanner. But you're better off scanning with your computer's antivirus suite, plus Malwarebytes for a more thorough check.

Try Another Browser

If Chrome is freezing only when you try to load a specific site, you should confirm whether the issue is isolated to Chrome or happens across all browsers. Open another browser, like Firefox or Microsoft Edge, and see if that website gives a similar error.

Firefox Can't Connect Message

If the other browser doesn't load the page either, that specific site is probably having issues. You'll need to wait for the site owners to fix the problem; consider contacting the website admin via social media to let them know. In the meantime, there are some workarounds to access sites that won't load.

However, if the website loads fine in other browsers, the issue lies with Chrome. Continue with the steps below for more troubleshooting.

Disable Hardware Acceleration

Hardware acceleration is a feature that offloads heavy graphical tasks to your GPU instead of your CPU. Enabling this can help Chrome run more smoothly, but may also cause issues in some cases.

If you're still experiencing Google Chrome freezing after trying the above fixes, you should toggle hardware acceleration and see if it makes a difference. To do so, go to Menu > Settings > Advanced. Find the Use hardware acceleration when available toggle and change it to the opposite setting.

Chrome Hardware Acceleration

Try Another Profile and Reinstall Chrome

If your issues persist at this point, your copy of Chrome may have serious issues that cause it to keep crashing. You should try creating a new browser profile to check for corruption with your current one.

To do this, click your profile picture to the top-right of Chrome and hit Add to create a new user. You'll need to set a name and profile image for it.

Chrome Create New Profile

If that doesn't fix anything, you should reset or reinstall Chrome. As a first step, you can use Chrome's built-in reset function to get to a fresh state without reinstalling.

Head to Menu > Settings > Advanced > Reset and clean up > Restore settings to their original defaults to use this tool. As Chrome says, this will reset everything aside from bookmarks, history, and saved passwords.

Give this a try first. If Chrome keeps freezing even after a reset, you should fully remove the browser from your system and reinstall it. Head to Settings > Apps > Apps & features and find Google Chrome in the list.

Click it and choose Uninstall. Then download a fresh copy of Google Chrome and see if that helps.

Windows Uninstall Chrome Dark

Google Chrome Keeps Freezing on Every Website

If Chrome displays a connection error for every website you try to access, you likely have an issue with your internet connection. For that, we recommend following our simple steps to diagnose network problems.

Google Chrome Won't Start at All

Have an issue where Chrome won't open in the first place? First, make sure it's not running already by checking the Task Manager. Use Ctrl + Shift + Esc, or right-click on an empty part of the taskbar and choose Task Manager, to open it.

Choose More details at the bottom if needed, then open the Processes tab. If you see Google Chrome or chrome.exe listed here, right-click that entry and choose End task. You may need to end multiple processes if you have several Chrome profiles open.

Chrome End Process Task Manager

After closing Chrome out completely this way, try to open the browser again. If this isn't the problem, your antivirus or some malware might be blocking Chrome. Try temporarily disabling your antivirus to see if that lets Chrome open. If you haven't already, see the "Scan for Malware" section above for suggestions on getting rid of any infections.

Should Chrome still fail to open, try restarting your PC. After that, your best bet is to uninstall and reinstall Chrome, per the above instructions.

Google Chrome Crashed: Fixing Specific Errors

Chrome Site Cannot be Reached

The above troubleshooting tips should work for the majority of Chrome crashes or similar hangs. For other cases, let's discuss a few common Chrome error messages and what you can do to fix them. In some cases, we've written dedicated guides to fix them.

Common Chrome errors include:

  • ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED: The web address doesn't exist. Check for typos in the URL.
  • ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED: The website didn't let your browser connect. This may be caused by using a VPN, so try disabling it.
  • ERR_CONNECTION_RESET: Your connection was interrupted mid-loading. Try refreshing the page.
  • ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT: The page took too long to load. This is either because it's exceptionally busy, or your connection is too slow.
  • Your Connection Is Not Private: You'll see this when a page that's expected to be secure doesn't have a secure connection.
  • Aw, Snap!: This usually displays when a webpage caused Chrome to crash for some reason. It may be due to a plugin issue, or a lack of resources.

Always try refreshing the page with Ctrl + R or the Refresh icon to the left of the address bar when you see these messages, as they may be temporary errors. You can also use Ctrl + Shift + R to ignore the cache and reload a fresh copy from the website.

As mentioned above, you should try an incognito window to open websites that display errors. Because these windows don't save cookies or other browsing information, they're a useful troubleshooting tool. If a site works in incognito but not normally, clear your browsing data.

When Chrome crashes, you can enter chrome://crashes/ into your address bar to view information about them. Unfortunately, this doesn't provide any useful information to you, but you can send the crashes to Google for investigation.

Chrome Crash Reporting Dark

Chrome Crashing and Freezing Issues Solved

Since you do a lot in your browser, it's incredibly frustrating when it doesn't respond properly. No matter the cause of your Chrome problem, hopefully these troubleshooting instructions helped you solve it.

Usually, it comes down to a bad extension, lack of resources, or misconfigured setting.