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Google Touts Chrome 89 Memory Savings That 'Keep Your Mac Cooler' While Browsing

collin_ said:
It has some settings and extensions that are highly useful to me and not available on Safari. I'm thinking about moving to Safari with its big improvements lately, though.

Something that should be noted is that, although Chrome is a privacy nightmare with default settings, it can be heavily configure it to be way more private -- potentially even more private than default Safari. Google is banking on people not disabling features such as these, and probably 99% of users don't.
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Terrific post, and right on about the security.

I don't have any resource issues on Chrome on my Mini (I7/32GB), I currently have 7 (named) windows with ~60 tabs or so open across them (tabs are also pinned/grouped as needed), several extensions, etc. I'm also running in MacOS: VSCode, ST2, Sketch, Soulver, Safari (yes, two browsers 🙂), Postman, Messages, dozens of term windows (and various servers/services running) - and also running a VM with Winders™ that's running VSStudio, MSSM, MS-SQL, IIS. As it should be apparent, I'm a developer, so that should be an additional indicator why some of us use Chrome.

Can't hear any fans, certainly not spun up, I do run mine on a nice big, ultra BB fan with the bottom plate removed, so YMMV 😎
 
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Here is what Edge looks like on my computer with 39 tabs loaded and again with 7 tabs open. Now I never have that many tabs opened normally. but also I have set the sleeping tabs to 5 mins so when 5 mins comes along it would drop heavily in memory usage.
 

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duanepatrick said:
Never used Chrome since I downloaded Brave.
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Brave is my primary browser on Android and iOS, but there are quirks on Mac OS and Windows that make it a bit annoying to use. I like that they've added the ability to sync across devices, but some extensions don't work exactly the same as they do on Chrome.

Casting is an experimental feature on Brave and is a bit squirrely. I keep Brave installed on my Mac OS and Windows devices and periodically test it to see how well the latest version works. It's close. As soon as those issues are resolved, I'll fully switch over since I like everything else about it.
 
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Unless you keep open only a trivial number of tabs, Chrome has always been unusable without running a tab suspender plugin that completely unloads dormant tabs. What’s messed up is that the most popular of these plugins by orders of magnitude — The Great Suspender, with many millions of installs — turned into malware and Google forcibly removed it. Super messed up situation and Google made the right call, but a huge blow to the biggest usability improvement to Chrome there is. Cleaned up mirrors of the original have popped up, but the whole situation left me with a very sour taste in my mouth for what was already my least favorite browser.

I usually have all three browsers open but my primary one is Firefox. I really hope they survive, they’re the only remaining hope for Google and Apple not completely controlling the web.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

The Great Suspender Chrome extension's fall from grace

Google has forcibly uninstalled the immensely popular 'The Great Suspender' extension from Google Chrome and classified it as malware.
www.bleepingcomputer.com www.bleepingcomputer.com
 
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BornAgainMac said:
Microsoft Edge / Firefox
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Worth checking out a suppose on the Mac, but I'm not a fan of the Edge interface compared to Chrome on Windows and I can't install Firefox on my work computer.

But that's why. It's a relatively new option that edge now uses the same backend for Chrome and can support its plugins so really just a matter of the process of switching browsers as well.
 
collin_ said:
It has some settings and extensions that are highly useful to me and not available on Safari. I'm thinking about moving to Safari with its big improvements lately, though.

Something that should be noted is that, although Chrome is a privacy nightmare with default settings, it can be heavily configure it to be way more private -- potentially even more private than default Safari. Google is banking on people not disabling features such as these, and probably 99% of users don't.
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Big Sur initial setup has hidden data collection enabled by default so people have to be more careful universally. I'll take a screenshot when I do another clean install since my MBA M1 is glitching out again with excessive memory and swap usage.
 
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That's awesome! Any optimisations Chrome can get are really nice to see. I've seen a post about other memory usage improvements in the current version, it all eventually adds up.
 
Eddy Munn said:
That's because Safari keeps killing active tabs. Watching a film on Disney+? Nah, you don't need that. Kill!
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There is either a problem with Disney+ or a problem with your set-up because I've never had Safari killing a single tab on me in the last 10 years.
 
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Wando64 said:
There is either a problem with Disney+ or a problem with your set-up because I've never had Safari killing a single tab on me in the last 10 years.
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A lot of Safari issues are on the M1 platform so unless you own one you might not experience the same issues as on Intel. Safari issues are common though in the M1 forums. Even basic Zoom recording playback crashes M1 Safari and the fix was to use Chrome. TV+ M1 app also has memory leak and the fix for that too is watching through Chrome.
 
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bla1011 said:
Wow, Macrumors.

Still perpetuating the completely debunked "safari uses 10% of RAM" finding from a single test by a guy who didn't understand how to correctly check for memory use?
Even misquoting by saying it was "tests" not a single false report that was completely disproven and should have been removed from this website? And then daring to call the findings "contested". They are not contested, they are false

Disgusting and embarrassing.

You are perpetuating misinformation.
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The original article was written by Sami, I thought “okay he’s young, he’ll still learning journalism, everyone makes mistakes.”

I don’t understand why Tim Hardwick would include the flawed “independent study” in his article, especially given all of the attention this got in the comment section of Sami’s article last month.
 
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mi7chy said:
Safari is the new Internet Explorer. It's more crash prone, less secure, doesn't render all sites properly, lacks proper add-ons like uBlock Origin and isn't cross-platform friendly. Have already removed Safari from my dock and replaced with Chrome.
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Have you considered compromising on Edge? Chromium based, chrome’s extensions work fine, but much lighter on resources.
 
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