Oliver Haslam on July 14, 2020, 9:45 pm

Google To Make Major Chrome Improvements On Mac For Better Battery Life

Anyone who uses a portable Mac and Google’s Chrome web browser is already acutely aware that it’s an app that very much likes to eat batteries for breakfast. But Google is apparently set to try and fix that, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Part of the work to do that will be to better prioritize tabs that are active, allowing Chrome to have the background tabs run in a reduced power state.

“This is an ongoing investment in improvements to speed, performance and battery life,” said Max Christoff, Director of Chrome browser engineering at Google. Google is also working to prevent resource-hungry ads from eating into battery life as well.

The impact of Chrome on a Mac’s battery life is not something that should be understated. Using Chrome is often something that MacBook users simply refuse to do when not plugged in because of the dire impact it has on their battery life.

Apple’s own Safari is a much better option in that regard, but users who live in Google services like Gmail and Google Docs are at a disadvantage when using Safari.

For those people, Google’s assertion that it knows about the performance issues and that it is working on them is exceptionally good news indeed.