An app developer was fed up with RAM-hungry Chrome, so he developed an app for Mac that addresses the problem; called Flotato, it converts Chrome tabs into lightweight app windows.

With Flotato, each site you use is converted into a web browser that provides a single app. For example, you can open a Flotato window for the web version of Twitter, and only that app will run.

Morten Just, Flotato's lead developer, described the use case for this interesting app in a blog post. He first noticed that something was wrong because of the constant loud fan noise coming from his Mac while browsing Chrome.

After developing the app, he ended up testing several tabs of sites like Twitter and Gmail to see how Flotato could reduce the average RAM used by Chrome and Safari. when using Twitter in one tab, required an average of 730 MB of memory, while Safari required 73 MB; Flotato undercut both by only 63 MB.

In another session, opening Twitter and Gmail in Safari resulted in RAM and CPU usage of nearly 80 MB; Flotato was able to reduce this total by about 10 MB while running the mobile version of Twitter. Impressively, in another large-scale test, Just ran a 54-tab stress test on a Mac; Chrome required 290MB and Safari 12MB. These tests tell an all-too-familiar story.

Using Chrome for a variety of tasks often spikes RAM usage. As Just's tests point out, Chrome manages memory usage to keep performance high. Safari, on the other hand, does not consume as much RAM and rarely keeps the Mac's fan spinning.

Chrome slows down when tabs are full because of its high memory usage; high CPU and RAM usage can slow down overall computer performance. And if you're like Just, you might not be able to hear your podcasts over the fan noise.

That's where Flotato comes in: if you routinely use Chrome or another browser with similar results, it may save you time and frustration.

If you decide you want to launch a new browser, Flotato will set the appropriate icon for you. If you want to monitor changes, you can even choose a live image of the website.

Using WebKit on the Mac, Flotato can run all the "apps" while using much less RAM. There is no need to add plug-ins, browser renderers, or anything else that requires memory on top of Flotato.

Flotato is free for use with several different apps. If you need additional tabs, it costs $14.99 for the pro version which supports unlimited apps.