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Google Chrome - Battery Drain?

P

pat.micunnis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 24, 2013
196
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I just received my 15" 2.6/16/1 TB/750 M. I noticed the battery levels fluctuates (+/- 20 to 40 minutes).

Are other Haswell rMBP owners seeing their battery drain faster with Google Chrome? I only have 5 tabs open. When I close a tab, the battery level increases by 15 minutes!

In the Mavericks forum, there are posts about the known bug about Google Chrome helper not responding.
 

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pat.micunnis said:
I just received my 15" 2.6/16/1 TB/750 M. I noticed the battery levels fluctuates (+/- 20 to 40 minutes).

Are other Haswell rMBP owners seeing their battery drain faster with Google Chrome? I only have 5 tabs open. When I close a tab, the battery level increases by 15 minutes!

In the Mavericks forum, there are posts about the known bug about Google Chrome helper not responding.
Click to expand...

i find the opposite, safari chews up tons of memory for me and chrome does not same goes with battery.
 
MacModMachine said:
i find the opposite, safari chews up tons of memory for me and chrome does not same goes with battery.
Click to expand...

Same here.

I have more tabs open and less memory usage in Chrome. Of course if I check the Activity Monitor, Chrome is the energy hog out of the few programs I am currently running, but it's all relative to the moment.
 
Chrome still annoyingly forces the dGPU to be used even though it's not needed, which consequently will devour your battery life.

I recommend installing gfxCardStatus and forcing it into iGPU-only mode if you want to use Chrome on battery power.
 
johnnylarue said:
Chrome still annoyingly forces the dGPU to be used even though it's not needed, which consequently will devour your battery life.

I recommend installing gfxCardStatus and forcing it into iGPU-only mode if you want to use Chrome on battery power.
Click to expand...

What about those of us with Iris only? I have the 13" model.
 
pat.micunnis said:
I just received my 15" 2.6/16/1 TB/750 M. I noticed the battery levels fluctuates (+/- 20 to 40 minutes).

Are other Haswell rMBP owners seeing their battery drain faster with Google Chrome? I only have 5 tabs open. When I close a tab, the battery level increases by 15 minutes!

In the Mavericks forum, there are posts about the known bug about Google Chrome helper not responding.
Click to expand...

you can see from that image pepper flash player is the main culprit, i suggest:
using click-to-enable for flash objects;
or don't use flash at all;
or have two browsers one with flash and one without
 
Last edited:
pat.micunnis said:
I just received my 15" 2.6/16/1 TB/750 M. I noticed the battery levels fluctuates (+/- 20 to 40 minutes).

Are other Haswell rMBP owners seeing their battery drain faster with Google Chrome? I only have 5 tabs open. When I close a tab, the battery level increases by 15 minutes!

In the Mavericks forum, there are posts about the known bug about Google Chrome helper not responding.
Click to expand...

Chrome is a battery hog on my rMBP. Safari is much more power efficient.
 
I've found that in what I browse on the web Safari is both more efficient with memory and less of a battery drain. I only use Chrome when I can't use Safari.

Victor
 
As others have already said it's mostly the content, primarily Flash player and activation of the discrete GPU that causes chrome to drain the battery fast. It's not only on the mac, on both of the PC laptops in the house my girls flash based games and clubs suck the living daylights out of the battery in windows.

I'm a Firefox user myself, mostly for the superior extensions and excellent sync, but on the MBP I run it without flash player installed and use a open in chrome extension to view flash based pages. I suggest you safari users remove flash player from system preferences and use a safari open in chrome extension, and chrome users use a flash blocker and as a lot of the drain is down to flash based ads use Adblock too.
 
I don't have a discrete GPU in my rMBP 15,4 and Chrome still sucks up the battery quite badly. As high has 1% every 1-3 minutes.
 
chrome for mac iss a disappointment to me because it consistently uses a lot of resources and makes my macbook hot, on an average using chrome i run around 60C and above, sometimes 70C. but with safari i run a cool 55C on usage and even less when its idling.
 
Although I prefer Chrome to Safari, my 2009 mbp runs noticeably hotter when using Chrome instead of Safari, sometimes enough to get the fans running.

It's bad enough that I have begun switching over to Safari for most tasks.
 
For me Chrome uses up my battery quite a bit so I only use it when I need to visit a Flash based site. It could possibly be Flash since I notice some posters experience similar situations with Safari. I uninstalled Flash from my system so I use the built in one on Chrome when needed.

Your battery drain might not necessarily be Chrome but some of the plugins.
 
Gav Mack said:
As others have already said it's mostly the content, primarily Flash player and activation of the discrete GPU that causes chrome to drain the battery fast. It's not only on the mac, on both of the PC laptops in the house my girls flash based games and clubs suck the living daylights out of the battery in windows.

I'm a Firefox user myself, mostly for the superior extensions and excellent sync, but on the MBP I run it without flash player installed and use a open in chrome extension to view flash based pages. I suggest you safari users remove flash player from system preferences and use a safari open in chrome extension, and chrome users use a flash blocker and as a lot of the drain is down to flash based ads use Adblock too.
Click to expand...

Somebody mark this as the "answer" to this thread! (If only we could do that here.)
 
Gav Mack said:
As others have already said it's mostly the content, primarily Flash player and activation of the discrete GPU that causes chrome to drain the battery fast. It's not only on the mac, on both of the PC laptops in the house my girls flash based games and clubs suck the living daylights out of the battery in windows.

I'm a Firefox user myself, mostly for the superior extensions and excellent sync, but on the MBP I run it without flash player installed and use a open in chrome extension to view flash based pages. I suggest you safari users remove flash player from system preferences and use a safari open in chrome extension, and chrome users use a flash blocker and as a lot of the drain is down to flash based ads use Adblock too.
Click to expand...

Or just use Click-to-Flash in Safari. I use Safari and Firefox if Safari won't work with a particular website, I don't need to use Chrome at all.
 
duervo said:
Somebody mark this as the "answer" to this thread! (If only we could do that here.)
Click to expand...
I don't have a discrete GPU and already use a flash blocker. Chrome still drains by battery like crazy.

simonsi said:
Or just use Click-to-Flash in Safari. I use Safari and Firefox if Safari won't work with a particular website, I don't need to use Chrome at all.
Click to expand...
There are better extensions in Chrome available that I use on a daily basis.
 
Yes, Chrome is a resource hog.

When browsing with Chrome, OS X tells me I have about 4 hours of battery left, and my Macbook (13" rMBP) gets pretty hot.

Currently I'm in Safari, and OS X says I have around 10 hours of battery left.

If it truly is Flash behind all this, here's to an HTML5 video future. Seems to be the way things are going, anyway.
 
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