Youtube and videos in general are notorious resource hogs. For years the main culprit was Flash but the promise of a more efficient HTML5 is largely forgotten now as most browsers handle videos poorly. A computer with more than enough power can still fall prey to a browser grabbing more and more of its memory and processor when watching videos.
One way to save more than just resources, even help a solid state drive lifespan, is to install the PotPlayer video player and a corresponding browser addon/extension to open and play videos outside of a Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and others. The program is lightweight, feature rich and regularly maintained but its best use is perhaps watching online videos. After the addon/extension is installed buttons will appear under videos or a link added to the right click menus on YouTube’s front or other pages. Links below.
- PotPlayer https://potplayer.daum.net/
- Chrome extension (For Google Chrome, Opera and other Chromium based browsers) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/potplayer-youtube-shortcu/cfdpeaefecdlkdlgdpjjllmhlnckcodp
- Direct Opera version https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/potplayer-youtube-shortcut/
- Firefox extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/potplayer-youtube-shortcut/
Again, must try this. Chrome/Vivaldi and Firefox are real hogs. Edge usent be so bad, but it isn’t that great either, and much as I’d like to reward it for being a relatively light browser, I find it hard to change browser again. (I stubbornly stuck with Firefox till sometime in 2020. I did try Edge last year but enabled some kind of tab grouping and the tabs started jumping all over the place — when I disabled it the jumping continued so I moved back to Vivaldi.)
I have switched browsers far more often than I would like. In my experience Firefox does a poorer job than all others include Chromium based browsers. I am currently relatively happy with Opera.