While we have seen and laughed at various memes made on Google Chrome and how it is a serious offender of killing RAM as well as the battery life of laptop due to constant usage in the background, we know that it is the best browser so everyone deals with it. Now, this is not to say that there are no great alternatives to Google Chrome but most people are now used to Chrome and don’t want to switch. For that reason, we love to use Chrome while still complaining about it on a daily basis.
But we might soon stop complaining about Chrome killing battery life because there is an upcoming update to our beloved browser from Google. It is known that the issue with Google Chrome constantly keeping tabs in memory that are not in use eventually killing battery life will be stopped. As per TheWindowsClub‘s report, “an experimental feature in Chrome 86 will reduce energy use by shutting down unnecessary JavaScript timers and trackers when a tab is in the background, such as those that check your scrolling position”.
Now, they say that the savings in terms of battery life and memory usage could be significant in the right circumstances and mention that Google saved 2 hours of battery life by keeping 36 tabs open in the background and 1 tab in the foreground. However, the tab in foreground was a blank one meaning it is not ideal for normal use-case but still a good pointer to understand the benefits.
On the other hand, playing YouTube video did not give as dramatic results as above but still added 36 minutes of runtime with “more intensive test” which is very close to how most people will use Google Chrome on their laptops. It is worth noting that Google’s test show Safari to be less intensive on a battery compared to their own browser but it is what it is. This feature is available on Chrome 86 through a flag and might or might not come to the stable version later this year. But if it does, this is going to be a game-changer for Chrome users.
