Which tab is "Google Chrome Helper" running on?

Question

In MacOS in the Activity Monitor Google Chrome extensions show as "Google Chrome Helper". These often take up much of the CPU time. Is it possible to determine which tab a given Google Chrome Helper process is running on?

Other people have suggested setting the plug-ins run mode to "Click to play". It seems that this doesn't cover all instances of the helper, since I already have it set to click to play. As you can see from the image below, there are MANY instances of this helper running. Anyway this doesn't get to the heart of the question- which tab is the process running on.

Answer 1

Chrome's built-in Task Manager (accessible from Menu > More tools > Task manager) will show you a per-tab resource utilization.

If case the culprit is extension code or a plug-in running in a normal tab, you won't be able to identify it with only that; extension entries in the Task Manager are only for background pages of extensions.

You may be able to investigate further with Dev Tools profiler.

Answer 2

I have quite a good experience with this "Google Chrome Helper" and how to debug the notorious problems on Mac.

1. CHROME EXTENSION

In this case go to the 3 dots you find on the right upper side of your browser and then More Tools > Extensions, here you can have an overview of all your extensions.

Deactivate all of them and relaunch Chrome.

If the issue is resolved we can now point out that the issue was related to one of your Extension. But what extension? You can now reactivate one by one while you have your Activity Monitor open and see when the "Google Chrome Helper" is trigged.

2. CHROME EXTENSION OR CHROME SYNC

Sometimes you can find the Chrome extension that is draining your CPU but you have to work and keep that Chrome Extension available. Or maybe that Extension is managed by your Company and you cannot disable it.

In this case you have to click on your Chrome account on your browser and sigh out from all of your Accounts.

Now close your browser, reopen it and "Google Chrome Helper" shouldn't bother you at all. Well, this is normal, because you are not signed in. Now Sign in into Gmail but don't never ever click on the "Turn on sync..." button

Now you can also install the Chrome Extension that was giving you pain and you shouldn't experience any problem. Just don't touch that "Turn on sync..." button.

3. I STILL HAVE PROBLEMS

Well, in this case you are facing something I haven't faced myself. The only suggest you I can give you is to debug the issue by yourself. When the CPU is spiking high open the Activity Monitor and target the "Google Chrome Helper", look at that line and take the PID number (in the picture that you can see in the question is 29048).

Now open a terminal and run:

killall -9 29048

This way you have now killed the process itself. Try to spot what has changed in your Chrome: maybe an Extension has been deactivated, maybe a tab was closed, maybe a webpage has become unresponsive. Dig and you will find the solution.