Google Chrome is a popular Internet browser developed by Google that is used by millions of people around the world and has a reputation for being fast, secure and highly customizable with options such as pinning tabs . But at the same time, to maintain all this, it has to make concessions in other areas, such as RAM consumption or the processes that it has to open in the background even when we are not using the application , which may annoy some or subtract a lot of performance in less powerful systems.
One of these processes and which we will talk about this time will be the Chrome Software Reporter Tool , which is a program that is installed together with the browser and that works with the browser open and also when it is not working .
The main function of the Software Reporter Tool is to periodically scan the computer for applications, services or processes in the system that may interfere with the browser . This search is done automatically and generally does not consume many resources and lasts a few minutes, only on less powerful computers that are more resource-efficient can be a problem, even if the browser is one of the fastest there is. After the search, the program automatically sends a report to Google informing in case there is something interfering, and in that case the program will ask us to remove the application in order to improve our browsing experience. This can also be a privacy issue., since in the end Google will be obtaining data from our computer, also in that aspect we may be interested in starting Chrome in private mode .
Disabling this program can negatively affect the browsing experience and on most computers it will not be necessary, but if we want to do it we should not delete the folder directly, since Chrome will reinstall it. So we can deactivate the utility in two different ways, either by deactivating it from Google Chrome or by blocking all the permissions of the program folder to prevent it from running.
Both ways of blocking it are valid, although the second is stricter when done from outside the program itself and completely without access to the utility .
How to disable Software Reporter Tool from Google Chrome
- The first thing will be to access the browser settings, to do this we will have to press the three points at the top right of the browser and in the drop-down select the configurationsection .
- In settings we will go down to the bottom of the page and click on the Advancedoption , and then we will continue down until we reach the section where the system settings are .
- In the system section we should find an option that is “Keep running applications in the background when google Chrome is closed”, which we should deactivate.
- Then we will have to go to the Reset and cleaning sectionand click on the option to clean the computer.
- Then the settings of the google cleaning utility will be opened, in which we will deactivate the option to send details to Google.
How to block Software Reporter Tool from running
As a second option, we can eliminate the permissions to access the program completely , this will make it so that nothing and nobody can execute it and therefore it will also completely prevent the program from starting.
- We will start by locating the folder, which is at the following address: C / users / ”Your user” / AppData / Local / Google / Chrome / Userdata / SwReporter. The AppData folder is a hidden folder , so we will have to activate the option to show hidden files in our Windows explorer to be able to see it.
- Then we will access the folder’s properties menuby right-clicking on it and we will go to the security tab .
- Once in the security tab, we must press the advanced settingsbutton , which will open a new window from where we can manage the folder’s permissions.
- In the window of advanced settings, a button will appear at the bottom in which it says Disable inheritance, we press it and a small window will appear with two options, from which we will choose “Remove all permissions inherited from this object”. Then we give it to apply in the rest of the open windows and we would have finished blocking the program.
From now on, if we have followed the processes correctly, the Chrome Software Reporter Tool will have stopped working completely on our computer and should not do it again at any time, neither with chrome running nor in the background while we do other tasks.
Advantages of disabling the Software Reporter Tool
By disabling this program we will be able to optimize our computer , but if we want to further improve the experience using Chrome we can optimize it and personalize it more with add-ons or visual improvements such as changing all the bookmarks we have to icons so that it is easier to recognize them.
But with this process finished, we will not have to worry that the Software Reporter Tool will remove performance from our system ever again and we will be able to continue using Chrome as usual without any problem, in fact, we should not notice any changes since in the end This service in itself is not usually necessary in the vast majority of computers and I am sure that if our system has an old hard disk or a not very powerful processor, it will be very grateful for having blocked it
