How To Limit Download Speed In Chrome Browser

Web browsers normally have a basic download manager that can help users download files and also scan the files for any harmful content. Compared to other desktop download manager apps, a web browser’s download manager is just an added feature. It actually has not much to offer other than its interface. Firefox has a feature that allows you to resume a failed download while on the other hand chrome does not allow you to resume. If you’re like me that makes use of chrome to download files but you don’t want it to hog all your data, you can make use of a simple trick in chrome developers tools to limit download speed.

How To Limit Download Speed

The method I’m going to show you does not have any side-effects and it is not permanent however to keep all your work from being interrupted, it will be a good idea to create a separate Chrome profile and download files with it anytime you want to limit the download speed.

Now, open a new tab in the Chrome browser and tap the F12 key. This will launch the web development tools. Navigate to the Network tab.

Now, on the second row of options, simply click the little drop-down just next to ‘Online’. The drop-down actually has two preset speeds; which is slow 3G and fast 3G. Although these are for only test purpose and will not make any impact for you. You will need to create a new custom profile. To do this, simply click on the Add option in this very menu.

This will launch a new panel for you called Network Throttling Profiles. Also, it will be empty. Now, click the button that says ‘Add custom profile…’.

Name your custom profile, and enter the maximum download and upload speed that you want to allow the current Chrome tab to have. You can as well leave the Latency and Upload fields empty and just enter your download speed in kb/s. After that click Add.

After doing this, close the panel and go back to the Network tab. Click on the drop-down next to Online and select the new network throttling profile which you just created from the menu. Now, start any download and the speed will be limited according to the profile you created.

Disable The Network Throttling Profile

Once you’re done with downloading, you can simply disable the current network throttling profile by simply closing the tab. The other tabs will not inherit this throttling profile. Or if you don’t want to close the current tab, all you have to do is click on the drop-down just next to the current network profile and select the option that says ‘Online’ from the menu to revert the download speed to normal.

This network throttling profile only works on a per-tab basis and does not apply to all the other tabs or rather the entire Chrome window.

What this means is that you can limit a download speed in one tab and continue browsing on the other tabs normally without any limit on download speed. You might accidentally close the throttled tab by mistake or try to browse through it which you have set the limited download speed, browsing in the same tab will be slow. That is why it’s better to this in a separate Chrome profile.