Google Chrome, as fast as it is, can turn into an annoying sloth if you never clear out your browser history.

This is a bit different than clearing out your browser cache because it only applies to the address bar and nowhere else.

Unless you’ve specifically cleared out the browser history before, Chrome keeps a local record of every single web site you’ve ever visited with that browser in a single database file; there is no option natively to limit how much history it records (but there is an extension that will do that job which I’ll mention in a moment).

What happens over time is that you’ll go to type in a web address, and even on the fastest PC there will be this annoying pausing/stuttering while you’re typing something out. What’s going on here is that Chrome is actually searching the local database of all the web addresses you’ve been to before as you’re typing.

The bigger your local database is of past URLs, the more frequent you’ll encounter those annoying pauses/stutters.

There are two ways to get rid of this annoyance.

1. Periodically clear out your browser history

While in Chrome, press CTRL+SHIFT+DEL.

Choose to (and this is in Google’s words mind you) "Obliterate the following items from the beginning of time", and select just the browser history:

If you’ve never done this before and have been running Chrome for more than, say, 6 months, it may take around 10 to 30 seconds before Chrome "obliterates" all the history it has recorded.

2. Use the History Limiter Chrome extension

History Limiter is a stupidly simple extension that instructs Chrome only to keep history for the amount of days you set.

Once installed, go to Cog icon, Tools, Extensions, click "Options" next to History Limiter and set the number of days you want Chrome to record browser history until it deletes it:

Yeah, I know, this really should be built-in to the browser, right? Even though it isn’t, the History Eraser Limiter extension does the job it’s supposed to. This is a true set-it-and-forget-it so your Chrome address bar doesn’t slow down to a crawl from locally indexing too much browser history.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: