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Chrome hangs for 15s , no clues in DevTools — how can I debug this?

Time:12-09

One page on a client's site causes Chrome to hang unresponsively for 15 seconds or so. On macOS, the browser locks up completely and the spinning wheel appears.

There are no issues whatsoever in Safari or Firefox. I have no idea why this is happening, and DevTools doesn't seem to give any clues as to what's causing it.

Here's a screenshot of the timeline — note the flurry of activity in the final second, when the browser becomes responsive after seemingly doing "nothing" in the latter half:

chrome timeline

Some comments on the timeline above:

  • At ~12,500ms the page looks ready. In any other browser, it is ready for interaction at this point. You can see the final green chunk in the timeline finishes around here.
  • Chrome completely locks up between 12,500ms and 28,500ms.
  • I initially assumed the problem was with one of the 3rd-party/analytics scripts, as you can see the timeline shows activity from these right in the final second (> 28,000ms). I tried switching every one of these off, but exactly the same thing happens.
  • This is a particularly large page, as it lists several thousand records in a JS datatable. I appreciate performance can be improved, but I don't believe that's the root cause. The page/plugin has been working absolutely fine for several years.

What can I try next? Thanks!

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