Chrome 57 for Mac throttles background tabs for better CPU use & battery life

The desktop versions of Chrome — including the Mac edition — now throttle the performance of background tabs, according to Google, reducing CPU demand and hence the browser's power consumption on MacBooks.

In particular the Chrome 57 update limits the timer fire rate of background tabs deemed to be consuming too much power, the official Chromium blog explains. The tactic is intended to limit average CPU load to 1 percent of a core.

The change should result in 25 percent fewer "busy" background tabs. Crucially, tabs with audio or real-time connections are immune to throttling.

Google notes that through a later update, Chrome will eventually be able to suspend background tabs completely. New APIs will handle tasks that need to continue operating.

The Mac version of Chrome has often faced criticism for being CPU- and RAM-intensive. The browser took a significant step forward with Chrome 55, which drastically improved memory usage.

The iOS version of Chrome has mostly continued along a different development track, since Apple's mobile policies force the browser to use the same WebKit engine found in Safari. Most recently it picked up the Reading List, copying a feature in Safari.

17 Comments

linkman 1040 comments · 11 Years

About 7 years ago

I haven't found a modern browser that doesn't use ridiculous amounts of RAM. Programmers simply aren't concerned about resource utilization anymore. They would have all received failing grades in my computing courses 30 years ago. It's like a "hello world" program needs 10 MB of disk space and uses 50 MB of RAM now.

maciekskontakt 1168 comments · 15 Years

The problem with tabs is the as before: I do not need them. I have suffiently large monitor and prefer to see windows side by side. One window design is not for all devices (not for PC) and can be inefficient in commercial work (nobody switches between tabs while comparing information - we hav task bars and docks for that). It also disrupts order of "main windows" (appplication window) management. Old good days Z-order burns in hell and user needs to figure out why I need to bring all irrelevant windows and tabs to front while we need one tab on top of window from another application or data in two windows instead of tabs side by side.
I hope this fashion will die when people mature.

linkman said:

I haven't found a modern browser that doesn't use ridiculous amounts of RAM. Programmers simply aren't concerned about resource utilization anymore. They would have all received failing grades in my computing courses 30 years ago. It's like a "hello world" program needs 10 MB of disk space and uses 50 MB of RAM now.

True, but to some level. Google uses processes behind windows and tabs while other browsers use threads in the same process. Isolation is better, but resources are not shared - replicas are used probably. This reason i dumped Chrome in personal use and sticjktto Firefox/SeaMonkey that are way more lightweight in use of resources. Chrome is simply killer and annoys me with some dumb messages (long processing javascript - do not to take resources from system so it could process faster in the first place). So it is more architecture. As far as system swamping with some obejcts and counting on garbage collections and system reaction is also not the best idea. You run into system thrashing problems... but young kids do not get it. Some of them already have PhD in CS and know this problems, but they ignore them.

StrangeDays 12960 comments · 8 Years

maciekskontakt said:

The problem with tabs is the as before: I do not need them. I have suffiently large monitor and prefer to see windows side by side. One window design is not for all devices (not for PC) and can be inefficient in commercial work (nobody switches between tabs while comparing information - we hav task bars and docks for that). It also disrupts order of "main windows" (appplication window) management. Old good days Z-order burns in hell and user needs to figure out why I need to bring all irrelevant windows and tabs to front while we need one tab on top of window from another application or data in two windows instead of tabs side by side.
I hope this fashion will die when people mature.

i will never give up using tabs on my 27" display. To me setting background tabs are for things i want to read in the short term but not right now. i don't want 15 windows spawned, which would gum up my desktop/workflow.

kkerst 330 comments · 19 Years

I think part of the reason people love tabs so much is because they exist. I know from my workflow, occasionally I'll find a website with good info. I'll leave it in a open tab for later reference. That's a colossal waste of resources. I guess I could save it offline; Using a browser instead of a notes app, or something else for the same thing, is wasteful but effective.