Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Chrome vs Safari

C

Con1750

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 1, 2015
83
112
Hi,

I done some searching regarding the topic in the title and could only find really old posts, I get 4h 30m battery life estimates on chrome on my 2014 11" Air. This is with just a few tabs open and nothing else.

With safari the estimates are way better clocking in at easily 8h or above, is there really that much of a difference between chrome and safari?

I prefer chrome as its what I've used for years and I like the tab icons more than safari, i'm not worried about switching if the battery life is that different between the two however.

Can anyone shed some light on this?
 
It's the same for me - Chrome nearly halves my battery life. It is pretty much an agreed-upon fact that Chrome is far more resource intensive than Safari or even Firefox at this point, likely due to the fact that Google's strategy for Chrome is to turn it into an OS of sorts for all their web and Chrome apps. That stuff has to come with some overhead when compared to browsers focused on just the browsing experience. If you click on the battery icon in the menu bar, it should show you apps using significant energy. Chrome is always there for me when it is running, and when I click on it to go to the Activity Monitor, it shows it using on average 3-4 times (and depending on what I'm doing on Chrome at the time, it can be up to 5-10 times) the amount of energy that Safari does.
 
Yep

Con1750 said:
Hi,

I done some searching regarding the topic in the title and could only find really old posts, I get 4h 30m battery life estimates on chrome on my 2014 11" Air. This is with just a few tabs open and nothing else.

With safari the estimates are way better clocking in at easily 8h or above, is there really that much of a difference between chrome and safari?

I prefer chrome as its what I've used for years and I like the tab icons more than safari, i'm not worried about switching if the battery life is that different between the two however.

Can anyone shed some light on this?
Click to expand...

It has been this way for some time now...
 
Meister said:
Use safari - stay away from chrome.
Click to expand...

Almost every time I read this I get sucked in. :eek: I update and use Safari but it only is a day or two before I go back to Chrome. I just can't stand how long it takes to load and connect to pages. Just tried 8.0.4 and it seems to hang and Chrome doesn't: so back to Chrome. Seems to me: more power but less time :cool:.
 
Thanks for the replies,

Ive gone back to safari and I'm going to keep an eye on it, personally I have no problems with the speed of safari, I have pretty average internet and it performs well for me at least.
 
TPadden said:
Almost every time I read this I get sucked in. :eek: I update and use Safari but it only is a day or two before I go back to Chrome. I just can't stand how long it takes to load and connect to pages. Just tried 8.0.4 and it seems to hang and Chrome doesn't: so back to Chrome. Seems to me: more power but less time :cool:.
Click to expand...

Use Firefox.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jwolf6589
I'm a cross platform chrome user, OSX / Linux / Windows. Safari gets fired up if I select a link within mail.app, but otherwise it's all chrome all the time. Resource hog or not, I prefer it.
 
i use chrome with my samsung android tablets, but safari on my mba and mbp and desktop mini.
 
Con1750 said:
Hi,

I done some searching regarding the topic in the title and could only find really old posts, I get 4h 30m battery life estimates on chrome on my 2014 11" Air. This is with just a few tabs open and nothing else.

With safari the estimates are way better clocking in at easily 8h or above, is there really that much of a difference between chrome and safari?

I prefer chrome as its what I've used for years and I like the tab icons more than safari, i'm not worried about switching if the battery life is that different between the two however.

Can anyone shed some light on this?
Click to expand...

This is tough because it's so hard to reproduce the same scenario in both browsers.

The number of tabs you have open is essentially irrelevant, and it isn't even very helpful to know which pages are open specifically.

It's so easy to get different ads served on a site and many ads are poorly designed and will burn through your battery power by displaying videos or running poorly-coded JavaScript or Flash. Usually when you experience poor battery life from browsing, it's due to a few stupid ads like this.

I use Chrome and it rarely uses any more CPU power than I think it should. Usually just a couple percent to keep a bunch of tabs going. I keep a fairly close eye on it, and if a page misbehaves I will refresh or kill it. Maybe this isn't necessary in Safari--I don't know. I haven't used it as my primary browser.
 
There have. Even some good explanations on threads as to why Chrome uses more power than Safari (I believe something to do with changing CPU cycle timing), but I can't remember them exactly. On my laptop (2012 rMBP) Safari estimates better battery life than Chrome, and does come through in that regard. I will use Chrome when a site requires flash (since Chrome has it built in), or when I'm plugged into an AC adapter; but in general I use Safari for the battery savings and Continuity features.
 
motrek said:
This is tough because it's so hard to reproduce the same scenario in both browsers.

The number of tabs you have open is essentially irrelevant, and it isn't even very helpful to know which pages are open specifically.

It's so easy to get different ads served on a site and many ads are poorly designed and will burn through your battery power by displaying videos or running poorly-coded JavaScript or Flash. Usually when you experience poor battery life from browsing, it's due to a few stupid ads like this.

I use Chrome and it rarely uses any more CPU power than I think it should. Usually just a couple percent to keep a bunch of tabs going. I keep a fairly close eye on it, and if a page misbehaves I will refresh or kill it. Maybe this isn't necessary in Safari--I don't know. I haven't used it as my primary browser.
Click to expand...

Safari in Yosemite doesn't load Flash automatically (not that I even have Flash installed in Safari). One of the reasons I prefer it over Chrome, along with smoother scrolling and much more efficient HTML5 video playback (on my iMac it's a difference I can literally hear). Just all around a more efficient browser, you'd be doing your laptop some good to switch over from Chrome.
 
redheeler said:
Safari in Yosemite doesn't load Flash automatically (not that I even have Flash installed in Safari). One of the reasons I prefer it over Chrome, along with smoother scrolling and much more efficient HTML5 video playback (on my iMac it's a difference I can literally hear). Just all around a more efficient browser, you'd be doing your laptop some good to switch over from Chrome.
Click to expand...

This thread prompted me to switch to Safari for the day to try it out.

Seems to work fine but I find the usability poor vs. Chrome.

No icons next to bookmarks or open tabs makes them hard to differentiate at a glance.

Address field only shows the domain name unless clicked, so, difficult to see the actual URL.

Private browsing windows have minimal visual differentiation, just a somewhat darker address bar.

Management of pop-up windows seems poor. Pop-ups actually pop up in separate windows, sometimes above and sometimes below the originating window. Confusing. Like I'm using a web browser from 10 years ago.

Anyway, I'm going back to Chrome even if it's less efficient (which I'm not 100% convinced of).
 
  • Like
Reactions: dannytman
motrek said:
Address field only shows the domain name unless clicked, so, difficult to see the actual URL.
Click to expand...

Preferences > Advanced > Show full website address.

motrek said:
Management of pop-up windows seems poor. Pop-ups actually pop up in separate windows, sometimes above and sometimes below the originating window. Confusing. Like I'm using a web browser from 10 years ago.
Click to expand...

Preferences > Tabs > Open pages in tabs instead of windows

motrek said:
Anyway, I'm going back to Chrome even if it's less efficient (which I'm not 100% convinced of).
Click to expand...

At least you gave it a try. Enjoy your worse battery life and added heat.
 
redheeler said:
...
Ok, enjoy your worse battery life and added heat.
Click to expand...

Eh, each to his own, YMMV, etc.

Like I said in an earlier post, as long as I remain a little vigilant about killing poorly designed pages, Chrome only uses a couple percent CPU time.
 
motrek said:
This thread prompted me to switch to Safari for the day to try it out.

Seems to work fine but I find the usability poor vs. Chrome.

No icons next to bookmarks or open tabs makes them hard to differentiate at a glance.

Address field only shows the domain name unless clicked, so, difficult to see the actual URL.

Private browsing windows have minimal visual differentiation, just a somewhat darker address bar.

Management of pop-up windows seems poor. Pop-ups actually pop up in separate windows, sometimes above and sometimes below the originating window. Confusing. Like I'm using a web browser from 10 years ago.

Anyway, I'm going back to Chrome even if it's less efficient (which I'm not 100% convinced of).
Click to expand...

You can change the URL display in preferences.

I haven't found your other complaints, with the exception of pop-ups, to be an issue, but that's all personal preference. I find the private browsing noticeable enough but not distracting. I don't display any bookmarks, instead just opening a tab and accessing from there. But I don't often use bookmarks anyway.

I don't like the way Safari handles tabs (constantly resizing them to cover the whole browser, then stopping the resizing such that you have to horizontally scroll through them).

Overall, I slightly prefer Safari. I get slightly better battery life when using Safari, as well (1-1.5 hours).
 
  • Like
Reactions: dannytman
Chrome vs Safari

Dweez said:
I'm a cross platform chrome user, OSX / Linux / Windows. Safari gets fired up if I select a link within mail.app, but otherwise it's all chrome all the time. Resource hog or not, I prefer it.
Click to expand...


Same here. And while travelingi resort to using safari just to maximize battery life.
 
Last edited:
motrek said:
This thread prompted me to switch to Safari for the day to try it out.

Seems to work fine but I find the usability poor vs. Chrome.

No icons next to bookmarks or open tabs makes them hard to differentiate at a glance.

Address field only shows the domain name unless clicked, so, difficult to see the actual URL.

Private browsing windows have minimal visual differentiation, just a somewhat darker address bar.

Management of pop-up windows seems poor. Pop-ups actually pop up in separate windows, sometimes above and sometimes below the originating window. Confusing. Like I'm using a web browser from 10 years ago.

Anyway, I'm going back to Chrome even if it's less efficient (which I'm not 100% convinced of).
Click to expand...

I also prefer the bookmarks bar in Chrome, and also think it's more visually appealing, but I still prefer Safari overall. The reason I prefer it is something I haven't heard anyone else mention, which are the cool features Safari provides. Top sites is something I use regularly and wish other browsers would adopt in full scale. The reading list almost replaces bookmarks for me, and the Open Tabs feature that shows me all my open tabs across Apple devices is extremely useful if like me you are on different Macs and iDevices daily. I also like the 'Show All Tabs' preview view as well. I find myself missing these things when using other browsers.

I'm a developer, and although I know a lot of devs would disagree, I actually prefer the dev tools in Safari too. (although I know they're very similar) I'm not sure what OS your on. If it's Windows, I'd probably stick with Chrome myself, but if you're on OSX, I'd say give Safari another try, but stick with it for a few days to get used to it. (Plus, you can overcome the inferiority of the bookmarks bar with keyboard shortcuts. Cmd + 1, Cmd +2 etc) El Capitan looks like it's going to have big updates for Safari too. It's probably the most updated app in the new OS with the possible exception of Notes.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Running on my maxed out 2015 BTO 15" MBP Chrome is so much faster and useful for my purposes.

I have become accustomed to the plethora of time saving extensions only Chrome offers. A long time Apple enthusiast I'd certainly use Safari if it could keep up, but it's always falling behind the excellent work done by the Google Chrome Team. Their efficient browser also shines on my loaded BTO 2014 13" MBA.

Yes, Chrome uses plenty of resources but that's what allows it to be the powerhouse it is. Everything is a compromise. I find Safari an adequate smooth browser to Apples credit. Better than it used to be, it's fine for those who don't tax a browser. It's the best on iOS devices since it takes advantage of Apples restrictions that have a rather negative effect and neuter the competition.

Over at the Google Labs they have a huge, very serious group of Mac enthusiasts and it shows. Working long hours to create Chrome and the many apps, extensions and other tools for Mac, iPhone and iPad they've made my Apple products better and even more enjoyable to use. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back