Malcolm Owen
Google's Chrome browser will consume fewer resources on Macs in the coming months, the search giant has confirmed, with the browser set to introduce a number of updates that will improve battery consumption and overall performance.
On July 5, reports started to circulate about an experimental feature in Chrome 86, which makes changes to the way it handles background webpages. The feature, which reportedly worked for the macOS version of the browser as well as other platforms, limits Javascript timer wake-ups of background webpages to once per minute, cutting down on processing when a page wasn't in view.
Initial documents seen by TheWindowsClub revealed Google's in-house experiment of the feature could allow a device's battery life to be extended up almost two hours, in an instance where a browser had 36 tabs open and no other processing occurring. Battery life was also prolonged for situations where processing was taking place, alongside the massive number of browser tabs, albeit with shorter times.
In an article about browser performance by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Google confirmed it was actively performing work to make the browser less resource-hungry.
"I view performance on Chrome as a journey not a destination," said director of Chrome browser engineering Max Christoff. "This is an ongoing investment in improvements to speed, performance, and battery life."
On being presented evidence on performance levels of a variety of browsers, Christoff admitted there were three improvements to the browser on the way in the next few months.
Along with the tab throttling, which Christoff said will have a "dramatic impact on battery and performance," the browser is also intended to gain a limit to the amount of power that advertising can use, as well as other optimizations of performance-critical elements of the browser itself.
It seems highly likely that these changes will be making their way to macOS. As well as the earlier experimental feature discovery, Christoff said he was quite encouraged by initial tests of the changes on Chrome installations on MacBooks.
The changes arrive at a time when Chrome's competitors are making major changes to how their browsers operate. Safari will be including support for more web extensions in macOS Big Sur, including those made for other browsers, as well as other performance improvements, while Microsoft's Edge has been migrated over to Chromium, the same browser engine that is used by Chrome.
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Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
16 Comments
There’s a coincidence; I just wiped Chrome off my laptop a few days ago when I realised it had inserted itself into the startup items list.
Will it send you a cut of what they make off of your info?
Indeed. It really is time for Google to start sharing its profits with all those who supply it with all that lovely data. That might keep the anti-trust police off their backs? Even if they did, google[dot]com (as is pretty well every other google owned doman) is still blocked at my home firewall.
Many users have noticed that the web doesn't "feel" any faster than it does from years ago - and they're largely correct in this thinking and Google is largely at fault of this with their garbage, overreaching, tracking scripts.
As performance and average internet speed increases, the complexity and number of tracking scripts on websites has increased. Additionally these scripts are from multiple vendors, each performing duplicate functions. Google's own tracking scripts are responsible for a significant slow down of the web, and there is no efficiency between running a script for Google's analytics (which you should never do by the way), and their other services. Additionally other methods used to fingerprint the user also require significant upstream too.
This became most noticed during the introduction of the EU's GDPR, where examples of non-tracking versions of the websites were over 90% smaller in size and significantly faster to use. (Source: https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000708906434392064 )