Google has optimized the power-saving mode of the latest version of Google Chrome for Mac, enabling significant optimization of MacBook Pro battery life to match the Safari battery life levels touted by Apple at launch.
In a blog post shared today, Google says that a 13-inch model running Chrome 110.0.5481.100 (2022 with 8 GB of RAM and running macOS Ventura 13.2.1) can browse the web for 17 hours or watch YouTube for 18 hours when your MacBook Pro is fully charged once.
For comparison, Apple announced this product with a claim of 17 hours of web browsing on a wireless network or 20 hours of watching movies in the Apple TV app.
"Testing was conducted by Apple in May 2022 using a preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro with Apple M2, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. Battery life was measured by browsing 25 popular websites on a wireless network with display brightness set to 8 clicks from the bottom. Battery life was measured by playing HD 1080p content in the Apple TV app's movie playback test, with display brightness set to 8 clicks from the bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration."
Meanwhile, Google used a suite of open-source testing software (official link attached) to conduct the test and said users will also “see performance improvements” on older models.
The new version of Chrome is described as bringing four feature updates.
Reduce unnecessary image redraws: “We used robots to browse real-world websites and identified patterns of Document Object Model (DOM) changes that don’t affect screen pixels. We enabled Chrome to detect these early and bypass unnecessary styling, layout, painting, raster, and GPU image drawing steps. We’ve made similar optimizations to the Chrome user interface.”
Fine-tuning iframes: “…… We’ve fine-tuned the way garbage collection and memory compression is done for recently created iframes. This reduces short-term memory usage (without affecting long-term memory usage) and helps reduce power consumption.”
Tweaking the timer/timer: “……Javascript timers still take up a large portion of the power consumption of Web pages. So we tweaked the way it triggers in Chrome to reduce the frequency of CPU wake-ups. Likewise, we identified opportunities to eliminate their use when they are no longer needed, further reducing the number of times the CPU is woken up.”
Streamlined data structures: “We identified data structures that are frequently accessed using the same keys and optimized their access patterns.”
