Google promotes Chrome 89 memory savings that “keep your Mac cool” while you browse

Google’s Chrome browser has been criticized for years for being a resource of system resources, but Chromium developers are making some noisy claims about the degree of intelligence that the latest version has in using and freeing memory in macOS.

According to a new post on the Google Chromium blog, Chrome developers recently managed to reduce the memory footprint of background tabs on Macs by up to 8%, or just over 1GB on some version 89 systems. from the browser.

Tab limitation, which acts on pages that are not currently active, is also said to have led to significant improvements in reducing JavaScript timer alarms. Background tabs no longer activate the CPU as often and retain battery life, and as a result, Chrome uses up to 5 times less CPU, while battery life is up to 1.25 hours better, he says. Google.

According to the developers, since its introduction in Chrome 87 and the wider release in Chrome 88, the feature has been responsible for a 65% improvement in the Chrome Energy Impact score of the pages in the background.

The improvements highlighted contrast with recently reported independent measures that claimed to show that Google Chrome uses 10 times more RAM than Safari in macOS Big Sur.

The interpretation of these measures has been controversial since then, but separately Apple still claims that Safari on ‌‌macOS Big Sur‌‌ is “50% faster on average when loading frequently visited websites than Chrome.” Apple also says that Safari can stream video for up to an hour and a half more and can keep users browsing normally on a single upload for up to an hour longer, compared to Chrome and Firefox.

Google Chrome for Mac is a free download available directly from Google’s servers. Google Chrome for iOS is a free download for iPhone and iPad available in the App Store. [Direct Link]