How to Monitor System Performance on Chromebook

Chromebooks are popular for their extremely simple user interface and bloat-free operating system. Unlike Windows, here there are Device Manager, Performance Monitor, Event Viewer etc. you won’t find system tools. Google believes you don’t need such tools to check system performance because Chrome OS is not a resource hog. However, that seems to be changing as Google has added a new Chrome URL called System Internals that lets you monitor system performance on a Chromebook. You can view system metrics such as CPU usage, RAM allocation, and more. So, if you want to learn how to access system performance on a Chromebook, follow along.

Monitoring System Performance on a Chromebook

1. Open Chrome and paste the following path into the address bar and press enter.

chrome://sys-internals/

2. A System Internal window will open. Here you can monitor your Chromebook’s system performance as follows: CPU usagememory allocation and ZRAM information.

3. For more information about CPU cores, click on the hamburger menu in the menu. upper left corner and click on “CPU”.

4. Here is a summary of the CPU performance on your Chromebook. real-time graph of each core. You can click on the kernel to view or remove the performance data of that kernel from the graph. You can also right-click the chart and save it as an image for future reference.

5. Similarly, to understand RAM usage, go to hamburger menu and open “RAM”. Here, too, you can monitor the RAM performance of your Chromebook in real time. Just like with CPU cores, you can click on the memory type. show or hide usage in the composite chart.

6. Finally, you can: View ZRAM’s performance on a Chromebook from the same sidebar. ZRAM is a type of swap memory, but allocated within RAM.

List of Popular Chromebooks

Our tutorial will work with all of the following Chromebooks. It is not an exhaustive list and is here as an example only.

Viewing System Performance on a Chromebook

So you can monitor system performance on a Chromebook and understand how well your machine is doing. Windows 10 has a full-fledged Task Manager, where you can view all running tasks, as well as monitor system performance. You don’t have such a detailed view here, but System Internals is starting to offer some much-needed information.

As for the Task Manager, you need to run a custom Chromebook keyboard shortcut. Just press Search + Esc to view all background processes and you can even end tasks like Windows 10. Well, that’s it for us. If you want to know more about such Chrome OS tips and tricks, follow our linked guide.