For many years, Google Chrome remained to be one of the most popular cross-platform internet browsers and was termed as one of the most battery-consuming programs. However, this will change since the rumors assumed that the new update for Chrome might extend a laptop’s battery life by up to 2 hours.
With so many rumors on the market, there is only one question left unanswered: How does Google plan to limit battery consumption?
New Chrome update is great news for laptop battery life
According to Engadget, an experimental feature for the update in Chrome 86 will reduce energy use by shutting down unnecessary JavaScript timers and trackers when a tab is in the background.
JavaScript can be used by website pages to perform several tasks, including checking if the user’s scrolling position has changed, recording logs, and analyzing interactions with advertisements. However, many of these tasks don’t need to be performed when the tabs run in the background.
This specific Chrome update could significantly save two hours of a laptop’s battery life. For its testing, Google opened 36 random tabs and one blank foreground tab in the background of Chrome, with the foreground tab on the “about: blank” address. The test found that throttling Javascript timers prolonged the battery life by 28%, which is significantly equal to two hours – for a user running up to 36 background tabs.
As reported by ZDNet, a second test Google ran was using its most popular video platform, YouTube. They substituted the blank foreground tab with a YouTube video in full-screen mode to determine if there was still a benefit when the tab was actively used. The accumulations were less significant in this instance, but battery life again increased by 13%, which is around 36 minutes.
When is the availability of this update?
Google is considering several ways to implement the feature to decrease battery usage when Chrome is open. One of these ways is when a web page is in the background for five minutes, the internet browser will align JavaScript timer wake-ups with a timeout that is less than or equal to five minutes to one-minute intervals.
The new feature is set to be released in October 2020 and will be available in experimental form on Chrome 86 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and Chrome OS. However, Google will give enterprise system administrators the ability to disable this excellent feature for at least a year after the feature ships. This scenario would allow them to test the functionality and make sure nothing breaks or make the necessary changes to become compatible with the new policy.
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