Hi Lorenzo Jackson
Welcome to Microsoft Community.
Based on your description, I understand that Chrome can lag badly when it comes to unfocused tabs, and I know exactly how you feel!
I'm going to give you some options to hopefully resolve your issue successfully! However, this first reply may not be able to solve your problem due to the lack of information and the fact that it requires different aspects of troubleshooting, so please understand and provide me with more information (pictures would be great!) in your reply. Thank you very much!
The following browser steps may differ somewhat from your actual environment, as the steps vary by Chrome version.
Option 1: Let's try using a different browser first, e.g. Edge, Firefox, etc. to see if the problem still exists.
This step mainly helps us to narrow down the issue and see if the problem only occurs when using Chrome.
Assuming that Chrome is the only browser that will have this issue, at this point I would recommend that you promptly bring this to your attention and ask Chrome or Google's tech support team, who are more familiar with their product and who may have had other users report similar issues. Perhaps they have written a fix or a more targeted solution.
Option 2: We try to disable hardware acceleration.
I have personally encountered this, when I found out through testing that it seemed to be caused by hardware acceleration.
However, different real-world environments may cause different situations, some people turn on hardware acceleration and the problem disappears, some people turn off hardware acceleration and the problem disappears.
Open Chrome and click on the top right corner “...” button -> “Advanced” -> “System” -> Try unchecking “Use hardware acceleration when available”.
If you currently have it turned off, we can try turning it on.
Option 3: Type “chrome://flags” in the address bar and search for “Tab Discarding” or “Throttle Javascript timers in background”.
Enable or disable these options to see if they improve performance.
Option 4: Use the Chrome Task Manager (Shift + Esc) to check which tabs or extensions are using the most resources. You may find that something is consuming an unreasonable amount of CPU or memory in the background.
Option 5: Sometimes it is possible that some extensions cause high CPU usage, which ultimately causes Chrome to stutter when the tab is not in focus.
Let's try disabling all types of extensions and see if the problem persists.
Option 6: We tried entering Safe Mode with Networking.
Since Safe Mode only uses a limited set of files and drivers, it helps us to effectively troubleshoot the possibility of problems due to third-party apps, driver conflicts, and so on.
For safe mode you can refer to: Windows startup settings - Microsoft Support (select “Safe Mode with Networking”)
Option 7: Use Chrome's built-in cleanup tool.
Go to “Settings” -> “Advanced” -> “Reset and Cleanup” -> “Cleanup Computer” and let it check for any harmful software.
I sincerely hope that the above information will help you. Please feel free to contact me (Photos related to the question would be great!).
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best Regards
Arthur Sheng | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
