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I know how to use dev tools to monitor loads times for web pages, but what about the app itself? In my case chrome. I have several add-ons, most of which I need like Lastpass password manager, built with, live https headers, etc... that I use for business and software testing jobs. Something is making the browser itself load up much slower than usual, but I don't want to go through the lengthy process of trial and error for each and every extension, add-on, etc... What tool(s) can I use to find the element(s) causing my slowdown?

I'm on Windows 10 64-bit. Also please advise if the suggested tools can be used for other applications as well. Windows resource monitor is not doing it for me. I want to isolate the app, and get data on all the elements that load, if possible.

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  • You will not find a tool that measures the performance impact of arbitrary extensions for arbitrary applications.
    – user246
    Mar 22, 2016 at 19:39
  • What about using a VM to run the application and monitoring that? I'm thinking something like log information i can sift through, similar to logcat. But since I don't have access to the code, I can't run it in and IDE for log info. Any Suggestions there? Thanks for the initial response BTW.
    – Ouroboros
    Mar 24, 2016 at 0:41

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Chrome has a task manager; you can at least look at it to see if something in particular is causing a large amount of storage/CPU activity. Beyond that, I suspect you're left with binary search in terms of finding the problem plugin, although there's always the risk that it's not a single plugin causing the problem. Chrome does have a logging subsystem, but I suspect it won't be very useful unless you're an expert.

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  • Thanks, I'll check it out. Ultimately though I have a feeling I am going to have to backup all that's loaded onto chrome, start with a fresh install and just re-add each extension, 1 by one till I find the culprit, or like you said, combination thereof. I use pretty much every tool for testing purposes currently, I just might have to revert to alternatives for certain tools. I could try the windows event viewer again but that's a royal pain. I was wondering about running only Chrome in a VM box, but that doesn't duplicate my current hardware/software setup, which might also factor into it. Th
    – Ouroboros
    Mar 30, 2016 at 8:48
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F12 to bring developer tools in either of the browsers you are using, and switch to either Console or Network to see the load times of the page elements you are trying to track the load times for.

Its pretty straight forward to use, if youre stuck anywhere, PM me and I can give a hand.

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  • Yeah.., I know how to use dev tools, view HAR files. Etc... It was mentioned in my question. I'm not looking for load times on web resources and assets. I regularly do web application testing. I'm talking about the browser itself. The time from when I click on the launch icon within Windows to the time the browser fully loads and displays its homepage, whatever that may be. You can't use device tools on the app ie "Chrome" itself because dev tools is dependent on Chrome itself to function.
    – Ouroboros
    Mar 30, 2016 at 8:40
  • Sorry, misread a bit. Have you considered using perfmon from windows?
    – AndreiT
    Mar 31, 2016 at 8:20
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    As someone else mentioned, chrome also comes with a Task manager and you can check with that: quick link for it -> chrome://memory-redirect/
    – AndreiT
    Mar 31, 2016 at 8:29

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