Roger Fingas
A test build of Google's forthcoming Chrome 46 makes substantial improvements to the performance of the Web browser on the Mac, according to one early glimpse at the software.
The build appears to halve Chrome's memory consumption, and make formely slow tabs much faster, The Next Web commented on Thursday. At the same time, the browser also appears to consume fewer CPU and power resources.
The changes are the result of a variety of under-the-hood improvements, including closed memory leaks, better Javascript performance, and Mac graphics enhancements. Google has also been working on porting a Chrome OS feature called tab discarding, which can force a tab to "sleep" if memory is running out.
The latest stable version of Chrome is actually Chrome 44, but 46 is already available through Google's Chrome Canary program. New Canary builds are released daily — and sport the absolute latest Chrome features — but are so early into development that they can be prone to crashes and other bugs.
Mac owners have regularly complained that their version of Chrome is inferior to the Windows and Chrome OS editions, often consuming gigabytes of memory and chewing up notebook batteries.
William Gallagher
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13 Comments
"Google has also been working on porting a Chrome OS feature called tab discarding, which can force a tab to "sleep" if memory is running out." The single biggest annoyance with Safari, now ported to Chrome. [I]SMH[/I]
I didn't realize this was a widespread phenomenon. I switched to safari recently after years of Chrome due to the unreasonably high memory and CPU consumption. I do see a nice improvement in speed, battery life, and memory usage.
I find Safari much more problematic than Chrome. Safari freezes at times and looses the pointer cursor. I keep both browsers open all day long. I mostly use Safari for my personal email and Chrome for everything related to business.
The memory usage is about the same for me. The CPU is pretty minimal on both. Honestly, I haven't noticed any issues with Chrome and Safari seems a bit slower. YMMV
Will this also help resolve the power consumption disparity between Chrome and Safari on the Mac?
Sweet. Hopefully Chrome version 7813 won't be a piece of garbage on Mac.