How To Stop Chrome from Always Running in the Background

Learn how to stop the Google Chrome browser from always running in the background even after you close it.

Generally, when you close an application by clicking the “X” icon on the title bar, you’d expect it to be closed completely. However, some applications, such as Chrome, continue to run in the background even after you close them. In fact, Chrome doesn’t even show a taskbar icon, indicating that it is running in the background. This allows Chrome to display notifications, run background updates, and launch faster when you re-open it.

While useful in some cases, having it running in the background consumes system resources and increases its power consumption. On laptops, it might reduce the battery backup time. As such, if you don’t want Google Chrome to run in the background after closing it, you can disable this behavior via its settings.

In this quick tutorial, I will show you the steps to stop Chrome from running in the background after it is closed. Let’s get started.

Stop Chrome from Running in the Background After it is Closed

1. Open the Start menu by clicking the “Windows key”.
2. Search for “Google Chrome” and click “Open“.
3. Click the “Menu” (three vertical dots) icon in the top-right corner.
4. Select the “Settings” option.
5. Go to the “System” tab on the sidebar.
6. Turn OFF the “Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed” toggle.
7. With that, you’ve disabled the background run feature in Chrome.
8. From now on, Chrome will not run in the background after you close it.

That is it. You are done. Keep in mind that, after you disable this feature, you will not receive real-time notifications from Chrome. For example, if you are logged into Discord or WhatsApp, you will not get notifications from those sites if Chrome is closed.

If you have any questions or need help, comment below. I’ll be happy to assist.