Most operating systems come with a built-in task manager to monitor and manage running processes and tasks. The Google Chrome OS is no exception. It comes with an intuitive and easy to use task manager, which you can use to view and kill any process and check their PID (Process ID), CPU and memory consumption, network statistics, etc. Let’s dig deeper and see how we can use this great utility.
How to use the Task Manager in Chromebook
Open task manager on Chromebook
You can launch the task manager using two main methods; the keyboard shortcut and the browser settings.
From the keyboard, use the combination SEARCH + ESC keys. In earlier versions of Chrome OS, we could use the SHIFT + Esc combination, although it still works for some Chromebooks. When used, others will give you a notification telling you to use the Search + Esc to open the task manager.
Chromebook Task manager
From the browser, click on the three buttons at the top-right -> More tools -> Task manager.
Browser Task Manager
You should see the Chrome OS task manager window open.
Chromebook Task manager window
Understanding the Chromebook Task manager
By default, the task manager window will only show five columns:
- Task
- Memory footprint
- CPU
- Network
- Process ID
However, that is not all. You can add more columns by right-clicking anywhere and clicking on the item you want to add. These other columns include:
- Profile
- Swapped memory
- Image cache
- Script cache
- CSS cache
- GPU memory
- SQLite memory
- NaCl debug report
- JavaScript memory
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- File descriptors
- Process priority
- Keep alive count
Add new rows
End Processes and Apps with Task manager (Force quit/Kill)
The first process which you will most likely see is the Chrome browser. You cannot end this process, and you will even notice the ‘End process’ button is disabled.
Chromebook Task manager
To end a process or an android application, click on it and hit the end process button at the bottom. Remember to be careful with the system processes. You can also end an open Chrome tab, Chrome application, or extension too.
Force Quit an open tab
An exciting feature is that you can also access an open tab or extension from here by merely double-tapping/clicking on it.
Open a tab/extension
You can kill multiple processes by holding down the Shift/Ctrl key and selecting the process or applications you want to end.
End multiple processes
That’s it! I hope this article has given you a clear guide on how to use the Chrome OS, Task manager. You can now terminate any troublesome applications and processes.
