Google Chrome to stop being such a battery hog on Macs

It’s no secret that Google’s web browser, Chrome, can be a huge resource and battery hog. Depending on the version and the operating system, it sometimes got so bad it inspired a ton of memes about Chrome slowing down your computer more than playing games does.

Google is working on it, though. On Tuesday, the company announced it has made a number of optimizations to Chrome that should result in Chrome draining a lot less battery on Mac computers.

The company says that a 13-inch, M2 Apple MacBook Pro running this latest version of Chrome should last for 17 hours of browsing, and 18 hours of watching YouTube. Google also made improvements to Chrome’s Energy Saver mode, which should give you an additional 30 minutes of browsing on battery (Energy Saver starts by itself when your laptop’s battery falls to 20 percent, appearing as a leaf icon next to the address bar).

Short-lived iframes will not be such a power hog for Chrome anymore.
Credit: Google

Google says older Macs should see performance improvements as well, though the company didn’t share any numbers.

These improvements are a result of several changes Google has made under Chrome’s hood. These include fine-tuning “the garbage collection and memory compression heuristics for recently created iframes,” tweaking Javascript timers as to reduced CPU usage, optimizing access patterns for “data structures in which there were frequent accesses with the same key,” and avoiding unnecessary redraws of the items rendered within Chrome windows, and the Chrome UI itself.

It’s worth noting that Google implemented optimizations to reduce battery drain and improve performance in Chrome on numerous earlier occasions, including in 2017, 2020, and 2022 (when it launched the Energy Saver feature). The latest batch of changes are notable as they only affect Mac computers.

These changes have launched in Chrome versions 109 and 110, but Google told Mashable they were only rolled out to a tiny fraction of users. All Chrome users should see these improvements by the end of this week.