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Chrome is Awful....

turbineseaplane said:
I'm curious what Mac are you on?
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On both my M1 MBP and M4 mini I see the same behaviour. For both Chromium browsers like Helium or Vivaldi and Gecko/Firefox. If I'm just browsing like usual it's not a problem. I can see in Activity Monitor they aren't performing worse than Safari. In same cases they are lighter. Even if I'm watching a video on YouTube all three engines perform more or less the same. The second I turn on PiP though, which I often do, Firefox and Chromium flip out. Chromium's web GPU helper hovers around 20% usage, peaks over 30%, and Firefox has a GPU helper as well on top of some kind of container process that combined have over 30% usage on the CPU. I'm pretty sure it's because neither Chromium or Firefox are using the "native" PiP of Safari/macOS. They use their own thing which is also limited in some ways, like not following you across fullscreen apps.

On a desktop like the mini this isn't a big deal, and tbh the battery life on my MBP is still really good. My battery health is only at 92% after almost 5 years. It's more that I feel as though this shouldn't be happening at all.

edit: to be fair Safari also spawns an extra process with PiP but in terms of resource usage it's a difference of ~10% vs 20-30%+.
 
I don't trust any Chromium browser. Google do not care about security or privacy as witnessed by how they DON'T regulate their own Play store; they are quite happy for known malicious software to sit there for years, nevermind the fact they don't even vet submissions.
 
Chrome is the worst browser you could possibly use. Anything else is better. I use Brave, though in the past I have used Firefox, Floorp, Yandex, and Opera at different times.

Thorium I really liked but it hasn't been updated for years.
 
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blufrog said:
I don't trust any Chromium browser. Google do not care about security or privacy as witnessed by how they DON'T regulate their own Play store; they are quite happy for known malicious software to sit there for years, nevermind the fact they don't even vet submissions.
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The main reason why I use Brave, even though it is a Chromium browser is that it seems to load and work faster than Firefox. I am not sure if that is factually true or if that is just a placebo effect.
 
I did use Firefox before but got fed up with all the updates. It became a PITA updating all the time. Chrome I stay away from because sometimes it breaks my Password Management app. My main browser is Safari which I have no problems with.
 
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If one wants both Firefox and Chrome extensions in same browser then Orion can be a choice. Because Orion is WebKit based, not all of these extensions would work.
 
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I've used Chrome for many years. Currently using a MacBook Pro M1 Pro from 2021. I probably have 80 tabs open with 16 GB of RAM. No issues at all with battery or performance. I find that most websites render better with Chrome, and also the plugin ecosystem is way better.
 
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ChrisA said:
I use Chrome on a Mac Mini. There is no battery, so I don't need to worry about how much power it uses. The case is slightly warm, but there is no fan noise. Right now I can open 8 tabs and two browser windows on a 27" 4K screen. About 12GB of RAM is in use, with 12% CPU use.

I also have a few terminal windows and a text editor a bit more open. The Mac is about 88% "idle."

I think the conclusion is that Chrome works poorly on an under-resourced Mac, and in that case Safari is the better choice.
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In comparison on Safari on my Mac mini I have 1 Safari window with 19 tabs open. ~1.3% CPU usage and ~6.3GB RAM. BUT, it really depends on the site, youtube itself uses 1.5GB, which is over twice as large as any other site I have open.
 
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In the beginning there was a smart little comic showing the ideas behind Chrome. It showed clever people makinng new and smart choice making a new browser. However, it was Google back when “Don’t do evil.” was their motto. Now, Chrome does everything a Google app should do, give you what it says on the tin with that little bit a siphon off everything private off to the Google in the cloud.
Funnily enough, Microsoft now don’t own their own browser and Google has direct control as it’s based on Chrome. In fact a lot of what used to be proudly Microsoft software is now weakened and controlled by another company (Google) whilst still being cornerstones of the company’s strategy. Microsoft seem to have done this willingly but they’ve given Google a lot of control over them through what sounds like a “can’t be arsed” nature in MS.
IMHO get the best of Chrome without the Google by using Edge. It’s pretty good as the Chrome engine is excellent generally speaking. I use FireFox where I can in case you wonder.
 
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eyoungren said:
I just do not like how Safari works. I get that most people use it, but I'm the type of user that when I get a new Mac I'm installing Microsoft Office and Adobe CC, so I don't have to use Apple's apps.
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I get this. 100% Since the Jobs and his British compatriot Jonny Ive left Apple make hard to use, powerful but hard to use trash
 
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I tried to remember why I do not use Safari that much and actually remembered.

If I have many tabs in many windows open at the same time in Chrome then I can have an extension to search/see all open tabs from all windows in same menu - and lately extension is not even needed for that as natiive "search tabs" dropdown menu has emerged. Safari does not have that in any way, shape or form. Only option is to have tab overview of tabs in one single window without way to see what is in other windows or in all windows in same place. There is a separate app "Tabs switcher" but that is very clunky and takes all tabs from Chrome into it as well.

If this deficiency would have a workaround then I probably would use Safari more.
 
nmt1900 said:
If one wants both Firefox and Chrome extensions in same browser then Orion can be a choice. Because Orion is WebKit based, not all of these extensions would work.
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Orion is a great concept, but still extremely buggy to be a daily driver. Many extensions (Firefox or Chrome) just fail to work properly.
 
Miltz said:
I tried it for 2 weeks. During that time my laptop battery was awful and it was always hot, very hot.
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Is that on an Intel Mac or an Apple Silicon Mac? Nobody will ever accuse Chrome of being a lightweight browser, but it performs much better on Apple Silicon than on Intel.
 
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Harddrive said:
I seem to always come back to Firefox after trying many browsers still use Safari on the Mac but sometimes depending on the website have to switch over to Firefox on it but it is my mainstay on Linux and Windows.
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Love Firefox, but it's slower than Chrome (can't even get 10G on speed tests) and Login with Apple does not work consistently.
 
uacd said:
Firefox all the way, can’t imaging my Internet life without this highly-customizable piece of software art
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^ This is the way; especially now for the full uBlock Origina blocker experience, and containers! There is no turning back to other browsers.
 
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