Limit Download Speed in Chrome

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How Download Speed in Chrome Can Be Limited?

All browsers come with a basic download manager which would download the files and scan them to ensure that there is no harmful content. A browser’s download manager has fewer features as compared to the desktop download manager apps. It simply has little to nothing to offer, besides the interface. A failed download can be resumed on Firefox, but Chrome, on the other hand, does not allow it. If one uses Chrome for downloading files and does not want it to hog all of the bandwidth, then they may use a little trick from the web developer tools so as to limit the download speed for Chrome.

Limit Download Speed for Chrome

There are no side-effects of this method and nothing would be permanent. However, in order to keep the work from being interrupted, it is a great idea to first create a separate Chrome profile to download files through it when one needs to limit the download speed of the browser. Follow the below steps to do so.

• Firstly, open a new tab for Chrome and press the F12 key. It would open web development tools. Simply select the Network tab.
• Click on the little dropdown beside - Online - on the second row of options. The dropdown would feature two preset speeds, slow 3G and fast 3G. Now, these are only for test purposes so they don’t do the trick. A custom network throttling profile would need to be created and in order to do that, the Add options in this same menu would have to be pressed.
• A new panel known as Network Throttling Profiles would open up. It would be empty. Press the - Add custom profile - button. • Give the custom profile a name, and enter the maximum upload and download speed that you want the current Chrome tab to have. The Upload and Latency fields can be left blank and the download speed can be entered in kb/s. Click on Add.
• Finally, return to the Network tab after closing the panel. Once again, press on the dropdown section, beside Online and choose the new network throttling profile that had been created. Now, start the download. The speed would be limited according to the settings.

Disable Network Throttling Profile

The network throttling profile can be disabled once you are done in one of the two ways. The first would be to simply close the tab. The other tabs would not inherit the same network profile. The other would be if one does not want to close the tab, they can simply click on the dropdown beside the current dropdown that is next to the current network profile by selecting the - Online - option and the download speed would return to normal.

Conclusion

The thing about network throttling profile is that it works on a per-tab basis and it does not apply to the other tabs. Ideally, one should limit the download speed in one tab and continue on with working normally in a separate tab.