Google Chrome Won’t Drain MacBook Battery Life Quickly Anymore With Upcoming Update

Google will soon make Chrome less resource-hungry, resulting in lesser battery drain for Macs, a report reveals.

Everybody knows that Google's Chrome browser eats up a lot of RAM and consumes a device's battery life quickly. Now, it appears that future Chrome updates will help the browser consume less battery life than ever, helping to extend a Mac's use in one charge.

According to an article from The Wall Street Journal, Google said it is working on ways to improve Chrome's overall performance without having to consume as much resource as it currently does.

"I view performance on Chrome as a journey not a destination," Max Christoff, director of Chrome browser engineering, told the WSJ. "This is an ongoing investment in improvements to speed, performance, and battery life."

Christoff said that in the next few months, Chrome will see improvements in several aspects.

First, the engineer said tab throttling will bring a “dramatic impact on battery and performance.” For those who do not know, tab throttling, as previously reported by TheWindowsClub, is a new way for Chrome to handle inactive tabs or tabs that the user isn't looking at at the moment.

Tab throttling refers to the act of lowering processing requirements by limiting Javascript timer wake-ups for inactive tabs to one per minute.

According to documents TheWindowsClub shared online, Google tested tab throttling by opening 36 tabs on a browser, with “about:blank” on the foreground. By limiting Javascript timer wake ups to once per minute, tab throttling was able to extend battery life by 28% or two hours.

Second, Christoff said Chrome will limit the power that ads can use in the browser. Research has shown that ads can slow browsers down to a crawl, the BBC reported last year. By limiting the resources that ads can use, Chrome just might be able to load webpages faster than before.

Third, Christoff added that Chrome's performance-critical elements will also be optimized. This can be expected to enhance overall speed and performance.

Google didn't provide an exact date for when the update will arrive. It's very timely, however, as other companies are also working on improving their browsers.