Chrome is easily the most popular browser out there. But as any program that’s as popular as it is – especially one that has to interact with as many web page types out there as it does – sometimes things are just going to go wonky. Here are some tips to keep Chrome running as smooth as possible.

Update Your Browser: Sometimes updating Chrome might be the only thing you need to get things running happy again (especially if you’re running an old version). If automatic updates aren’t happening, you might need to force the issue. When an update is available, you’ll notice a small green arrow in the upper right area of your browser, in the extension tray, next to the little three-dot-menu. Click on that to update. If that doesn’t work, you may need to force the issue and type “chrome://help” in the address bar and hitting enter and following the update links to get things going again.

Remove Unneeded Extensions: Chrome uses extensions to provide additional features and functionality. There are a lot of great ones, but the more you add, the more work your browser has to do. Type “chrome://extensions/” and hit enter to see your list of currently installed extensions. Hit the little switch next to ones you might not need, and that will disable them. If you find that things run great for a while after disabling the extension, you can remove it completely by heading back to that same page and hitting “Remove” on the extension in question.

Enable Prediction Services: Google Chrome can preload pages in the background that it thinks you might open, enabling them to load much faster if you do actually click on the link. This is a great way to speed up general web browsing. You can make sure this setting is enabled by going into the settings (chrome://settings/) and click on “Show Advanced Settings.” In the privacy and security section, turn on both the “Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar” and “Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly.”

Try the Data Saver Extension: If your internet connectivity isn’t all that great or it’s low-speed, you can enable an extension that will highly compress the data using Google’s servers before it comes your way, making page downloads faster on slower connections. Click here to download the Google Data Saver extension.

Remove Malware: Sometimes Chrome gets too buggered up because of malware or some other issue that you just need to reset it from scratch. To do so, head back to the settings area again (chrome://settings/) and on the bottom, click Advanced, and then under “Reset and clean up” select “Clean Up computer.” This will make sure there isn’t any malware running that is interfering with Chrome as well as reset some settings back to defaults.

Reset Back to Default Settings: If you just want to start over with Chrome, you can set everything back to how it was when it was first installed. To do so, head back to the settings area again (chrome://settings/) and on the bottom, click Advanced, and then under “Reset and clean up” select “Reset Settings.”