Google to 'Dramatically' Improve Chrome Impact on Mac Battery Life

[MacRumors]

Google will address long-standing battery life issues, particularly on Mac devices, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Chrome will improve "tab throttling" by better prioritizing active tabs and limiting resource drain from tabs open in the background. This is said to have a "dramatic impact on battery and performance." Google has reportedly been performing early tests on Mac laptops in particular.

"This is an ongoing investment in improvements to speed, performance and battery life," said Max Christoff, director of Chrome browser engineering. Chrome has previously been criticized for poor use of RAM, battery draining, and privacy concerns.

In May, Google set out plans to improve Chrome battery toll by blocking resource-heavy ads. Chrome will also limit the resources that an ad can use before the user interacts with it. In addition to this, Chrome will soon be updated with new optimization that will allow the most performance-critical parts of the software to run even faster.

Google is currently experimenting with the changes, with the intention of releasing the optimizations and improvements to Chrome in a stable release towards the end of August.

Article Link: Google to 'Dramatically' Improve Chrome Impact on Mac Battery Life

 

[Marbles1]

Good to hear. Chrome is essential for a lot of business web-apps as safari often falls short.

 

[djcerla]

I only use Chrome when Safari fails. It’s painfully slow, drains enormous amounts of CPU, RAM and battery and it’s goog-ugly.

 

[Marlon DLTH :)]

They got scared by this

 

[PowerBook-G5]

We’ve all heard this before. Let’s see if it actually happens.

 

[mannyvel]

Imagine how much computing power and electricity is wasted by Chrome every day.

Google can say they're green, but efficient software would save more energy than any single action google can do on a corporate level.

That should become a priority for everyone in computing.

 

[Mandarijntje]

Use safari.
If you really need a chromium browser; Use Brave, it's Chrome without the Google spyware.

 

[hot-gril]

It's also difficult to quantify how much additional energy is used because of its RAM consumption, since the kernel manages that. I typically use Safari.

 

[Tanax]

Lol do people still use Chrome on Mac?
I abandoned that ship a long time ago...

 

[sugargliderdude]

if the new safari is good in big sur, i will move from google chrome, but the previous safari gave me problems with watching on youtube and twitch.

 

[kirky29]

I know a lot of people say ‘just use Safari’ but one of the best and most important features of Chrome for me is multiple accounts and syncing. I have my personal Chrome, business accounts and even my partners account for quick access for her. Rather than having to constantly log out/re login on various websites I can just switch to a different Chrome account without closing or effecting my other account etc.

 

[dannyyankou]

Number 1 reason I don’t use Chrome, battery, life.

Actually number 2, behind privacy concerns.

 

[mike...]

And I will still never install it. I use Firefox most of the time and Safari when on battery.

 

[CarpalMac]

Considering Google apparently prides itself on selecting the highest quality candidates as their employees, I would love to know how it can possibly be improved and if it can, why it wasn't done years ago.

 

[Allwrong]

Netscape ftw ? Safari mostly but some sites don't play nice. I use Brave for them.

 

[huythanhv2]

I do web development and Chrome developer tools is way ahead of everyone else so I’m stuck with Chrome; so this is a good news if it actually happens.

 

[charlesdayton]

I only use Chrome to watch Netflix/Hulu/Prime on my MacBook Air when using an external monitor. Unfortunately on safari these services with DMR only work on build in monitors.

I wish Safari added support for Widevine DMR Like Chrome and FF. So DMR can work in external monitors.

 

[sotov]

Considering Google apparently prides itself on selecting the highest quality candidates as their employees, I would love to know how it can possibly be improved and if it can, why it wasn't done years ago.

Remember Google's business is selling advertisements, collecting data, and generating clicks. This is prioritized above everything else. They know what they are doing, and do that very well.

That's why I don't use Chrome.

 

[t3rminus]

As above, Safari’s developer tools are improving, but they’re still clunky and painful to use compared with Chrome’s dev-tools.

Which is funny, since they both started as the WebKit inspector, but Apple actually made them *worse* over time.

It’s too bad, but the poor dev-tools in Safari means I’m stuck with Chrome too. Glad they’re working on improving things like battery life though! and maybe someday Safari’s dev-tools will catch up too.

 

[mi7chy]

So it's primarily suspending background tabs? What if one wants to play Spotify via one tab in the background while surfing with another tab in the foreground? Still prefer Chrome over Safari to avoid exploits like this one that led to kernel-level code execution.

https://www.thezdi.com/blog/2020/3/19/pwn2own-2020-day-one-results

 

[mannyvel]

Remember Google's business is selling advertisements, collecting data, and generating clicks. This is prioritized above everything else. They know what they are doing, and do that very well.

That's why I don't use Chrome.

Presumably background tabs run in chrome because google can still serve ads to pages in a background tab.

 

[ipedro]

It'll also dramatically improve the data Google is collecting. Can you imagine that 68% of the world is browsing the web using a tool made by a company whose entire purpose it is to track people, sell that data to advertisers who in turn sell things to you. No wonder Google is so huge. I'll stick with Safari and Duck Duck Go.

 

[Lone Deranger]

Safari is all I need. Especially with the new translation feature. Means I have 0 reasons to use that Spyware/Chrome again.

 

[AussieStu]

I actually swapped over to Microsoft Edge. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro 15" 16GB ram and 2GHz i7.and it works really good.
It doesnt chew up battery, CPU or Ram. Havent had issues with some pages like Safari does.
Has solid features and its a browser made possible by the Chromium open source project.

Chrome was very slow on my ageing machine but found less errors running some sites. Chrome would zap battery and heat the hardware up and before I knew it fans are running hard.
Safari was ok but load times were average and load site errors on some pages Been using Edge for 12 months and has been a good solid browser and I never thought I would say that.

 

[nol2001]

I hope Google are working on Chrome for Apple Silicon - to be ready on day one.