Windows Task Manager’s “Efficiency Mode” may cause Google Chrome to freeze, here is how to disable it permanently, rather than temporarily turning it off for Chrome’s sub-processes.
Microsoft has launched efficiency mode for Windows 11 with version 22H2 to reduce Power and CPU consumption. Enabling Efficiency mode for app sub-processes leads to increased battery life, reduced fan noise, and thermal throttling. It ensures certain processes don’t stress the CPU, resulting in faster foreground responsiveness and better energy efficiency.
Efficiency Mode is Windows 11-only feature, not related to any specific App. It can be noticed in Task Manager, where the processes that use the feature appear with a green leaf to indicate limited resources being used by the process.
When efficiency mode is applied to a process, it reduces the process’s priority to low and deploys EcoQoS, a quality service that reduces clock speed for efficient tasks.
Normally, most web browsers including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Firefox, use Efficiency mode.
While the feature brings the benefits of improved performance and reduced Power consumption to the device, it may sometimes cause apps to freeze or hang.
Google Chrome is considered one example of an app experiencing such issues. When you check Task Manager, the feature gets enabled, if you disable for specific processes, the efficiency mode gets disabled. However, The issue with this method is efficiency mode gets re-enabled for Chrome processes again.
Generally, to enable or disable efficiency mode for an app, right-click on its process and check or uncheck Efficiency mode.
How to permanently disable Efficiency mode for Google Chrome in Task Manager on Windows
- Close Chrome if it’s already open
- Right-click on the Chrome shortcut on the desktop
- Select “Properties”
- In the Target field, after Chrome.exe” give space and add the following command
--disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess - Click “Apply” and then “OK”
- When prompted for administrator permission, click “Continue”
- Launch Chrome using the shortcut. Check chrome://version to verify the command line flag is appended.
- If the Chrome browser performs well, keep using the above command line switch.
Please note that Efficiency mode is Windows 11-only feature and has nothing to do with Chrome’s battery-saver and memory-saver modes.
What’s your take on this? When was the last time you wanted to disable efficiency mode for Chrome? Let us know in the comments below.
Final words: Even if you disable Efficiency mode for Google Chrome from Task Manager, it may get automatically enabled again. Here is how to permanently turn it off if Chrome is freezing, using a command line swtich.
it worked, thank you.
Is there any way to do this without using a shortcut? I don’t have shortcuts on my desktop and instead have applications on my taskbar.
I right clicked chrome on my taskbar, which opened a menu of recent pages etc. But it has chrome listed again at the bottom. I right clicked that and went to properties. This window had other parameters in it and worked when I added this line from above
Thank you so fucking much this has been annoying me for so long I love you!
Genius! Thanks for this solution. It worked where others have failed. Props & gg
It worked… but it came back, im gonna try it again.
same here. Tried 4 times so far. It accepts the command, but after a restart it comes right back.
Works just fine with Firefox. I would castrate muself with a rusty spoon before using Edge.
Thank you very much! It’s really been annoying me since last year!!