Reddit @Leopeva64-2 has discovered that Google has recently done some new research on Chrome memory usage, and they are working on new tools to help users hibernate inactive tabs and free up system resources for other applications.
In the settings menu of the latest Canary version of Chrome (chrome://settings/ performance), a new performance page recently appeared that includes switches for Memory Saver and Energy Saver modes.
When you turn on the Memory Saver state, Chrome will display an icon similar to a car dashboard on the right side of the address bar.
For example, as you can see above, 127MB of memory is freed up when you freeze this tab, but of course, you can whitelist it in Memory Saver’s settings to prevent them from being freed up accidentally. Also, when you click on the little icon that looks like a car speedometer in the address bar of one of the tabs, you will see a pop-up window that shows how much memory has been freed up for other tasks.
On the other hand, Energy Saver mode is also very useful for laptops. When you turn on this feature, Chrome saves battery power by limiting background activity and visual effects like smooth scrolling and video frame rates, thus reducing power consumption and increasing battery life.
For now, these new features are only available on the latest Chrome Canary, but Google seems to be aware of the browser’s footprint on system resources. Hopefully, all of these new features will soon enter the stable channel and eventually roll out across multiple platforms.
