MacOS – Mac Google Chrome Not Responding; how to investigate and fix

google-chromemacos

Just now while using Chrome with an infinite number of tabs and windows, it stopped responding with a colorful spinwheel. The computer is still working, but every other application moves 30x slower whereby every action I make will be delayed by ~2 seconds, even if its a simple click. I waited for about 10 minutes to unlag but its still the same.

I opened activity monitor and started quitting all Chrome subprocesses. After about 3 minutes, computer is completely fine now, but Chrome main process is still showing as not responding:

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How do I investigate what's going wrong? And how can it be fixed?


(Btw, I remembered having a similar issue 2 months ago and I managed to fix that one after much googling, but I can't remember how I fixed it.)

Best Answer

My friend, ask yourself how deep you desire to know and how far you are willing to go. If you desire merely a working Chrome, reinstall it and hope that all will go better.

If you want more than that, then let us explore what tracing and profiling can tell us. You will need Xcode and need the command-line tools installed. If you have chrome still running, then pull up a Terminal, and let’s profile chrome for a minute when it starts beach-ballin’.

sudo sample $( pgrep Chrome ) 60 -f ~/Desktop/chrome.profile.txt

You can also use Instruments for the same:

sudo instruments -l 60000 -t Time\ Profiler -p $( pgrep Chrome )

You likely will spot something in there that takes up most of the time. Time now for trace. When you are ready, straight bust a dtruss on Chrome, to see the low level:

sudo dtruss -a -f -n Chrome 2> ~/Desktop/Chrome.trace.txt

Let it run for a minute. Then stop with CONTROL-C, as I recall, off the top of my head. Then examine that trace file!

Enjoy, and Good Yule,

F.