Memory Saver troubleshooting
Chrome Memory Saver not working?
Memory Saver is automatic. A tab may stay active because Chrome considers it important, because it is playing media, because the site is excluded, or because the tab is doing ongoing work.
Check the built-in settings
Open Settings > Performance and confirm that Memory Saver is enabled. Review the list of sites that must always stay active and remove an accidental exception if appropriate.
Give Chrome time to deactivate a background tab. Active media, downloads, forms, calls and other activity can prevent or delay sleeping.
Find what is still loaded
Use Chrome Task Manager to sort by Memory footprint. If a background page is still heavy, TabVitals X-Ray can show it beside a recognizable page name and let you sleep it deliberately.
Exact renderer memory is counted only when Chrome exposes a safe mapping. A JS-only reading is treated as a conservative lower bound and shown with ≥ rather than presented as full RAM.
Keep important tabs protected
Do not sleep a meeting, music, active work or another tab that must remain live. TabVitals excludes active, pinned and audio tabs from bulk sleep, and Always Awake lets you protect additional sites.