Enabling Swap Memory on ChromeOS

Picture Credit: Android Authority

If you own a Chromebook with a low amount of ram, chances are your device can’t handle more than two or three Chrome tabs. Users with 2GB of RAM, and in some cases, 4GB RAM, also face this issue. Most Chromebooks don’t offer the option of upgrading RAM either, so the only way to work-around this problem is to use Swap memory.

Swap Memory

Swap memory, or more commonly referred to as virtual memory, is a technology that allows the user to use parts of their storage space as RAM.
When the OS thinks that physical RAM is not enough, it will turn to virtual memory. For this to work, you need to allocate a certain amount of space.

Step 1: Open Crosh

Crosh is the terminal for ChromeOS, and to open it, hold Ctrl+Alt+T. It should open in a Chrome window.

Step 2: Allocating Memory

Now that you’re in Crosh, you’re going to allocate memory for swap. Here, you can decide how much memory to allocate. Personally, I believe that 2 GB should be sufficient.
To allocate memory, type in swap enable 2000, and press enter. This will allocate 2 GB of swap memory.

Step 3: Restart your device

For these changes to take into effect, you will need to restart your Chromebook.

Now, if at any point in time, you would like to disable swap, just open up Crosh and type in swap disable, and restart your Chromebook.

There you have it. Now, you can open up 10–15 tabs and not have a single one of them reload. This is a great work-around for users with lower end devices with a low amount of RAM.