14 DAY TRIAL // The latest Chrome version has been tweaked to help you save some power. Everyone who uses this particular browser knows that Chrome is bad when it comes to power usage and terrible when it comes to memory usage.
This time around, it seems that at least one of the issues has been fixed to a certain extent. "Starting in version 57, Chrome will throttle individual background tabs by limiting the timer fire rate for background tabs using excessive power," reads Google's post signed by Alexander Timin, software engineer with the Chromium team.
He says the changes were made to prolong battery life, for which purpose Chrome should minimize power impact from things users can't even see, including background tabs, which usually consume about a third of Chrome's power usage on the desktop.
Chrome 57 comes with a new throttling policy. The browser will delay timers to limit average CPU load to 1% of a core if an application uses too much CPU in the background. That does not include tabs playing audio or maintaining real-time connections like WebSockets or WebRTC.
25% improvement
"We've found that this throttling mechanism leads to 25% fewer busy background tabs. In the long-term, the ideal is for background tabs to be fully suspended and instead rely on new APIs for service workers to do work in the background," Timin adds.
The new Chrome 57 has been out for a few days already, and it can be downloaded at any time. Alternatively, you can update the Chrome you have already installed. If you're always on the go and need your laptop battery to keep on for just a little bit longer, then this is great news because your laptop may stay alive for that extra minute you need to get your work done.
Let's just hope they find ways to improve the overall impact of Chrome on the system.