Chrome, Google's web browser, is notorious for being extremely demanding on both computer resources and battery life. Sometimes it got so bad that a flood of memes emerged claiming that using Chrome slowed down your computer more than playing games did, though this did vary by version and operating system.
But rest assured, Google is on the case. On Tuesday, Google unveiled a variety of Chrome enhancements that should make the browser significantly more efficient at conserving battery life on Macbooks.
The company says the battery life of a 13-inch, M2 Apple MacBook Pro running the newest version of Chrome should last 17 hours. Chrome's Energy Saving mode, which activates automatically when your laptop's battery drops to 20 percent (you'll see a leaf icon next to the address bar), has also been improved by Google and should now provide you with an extra 30 minutes of browsing time on batteries.
Google claims that even older Macs would experience performance gains, though the search giant did not provide specifics. There have been a number of changes made by Google to the browser's internals that have contributed to these enhancements.
The Optimizations
Among these are improving access patterns for “data structures in which there were frequent accesses with the same key,” adjusting Javascript timers to reduce CPU utilization, and preventing unnecessary redraws of the things presented within Chrome windows and the Chrome UI.
It's worth remembering that Google has already made changes to Chrome to increase performance and decrease battery consumption on multiple occasions (2017, 2020, and 2022). The recent updates are noteworthy because they are for Macbooks only.
These updates are available in Chrome 109 and 110, but Google tells Mashable that they've only been released to a small percentage of users. By the end of the week, everyone using Chrome should notice these changes.
And now, with the newest version of Chrome for Macs, you can make use of an intelligent redraw elimination system that automatically skips over redraws that aren't needed and won't affect user experience.
“We went on real-world sites with a bot and detected Document Object Model (DOM) change patterns that don't affect pixels on the screen,” Google writes. We made adjustments to Chrome so that it could quickly identify these cases and skip over the steps of applying styles, layouts, paints, rasters, and GPU calculations when they weren't necessary.
Chrome's UI elements now use a redraw avoidance method in the same vein, cutting down on power consumption and increasing battery life on Macs. According to Google, these enhancements are just the beginning of their plans to further reduce Chrome's power consumption in 2023 and beyond.
