Future Chrome update to boost battery life by throttling background Java timers

Google’s Chrome browser may be popular, but it is nonetheless famous for its inefficiency. Be it RAM usage or battery life stats, Chrome sits behind many of its competitors, though work is being done to address these issues with future Chromium updates. 

To tackle Chrome’s battery life issues, developers hope to decrease Chrome’s power draw by throttling background JavaScript timers, a feature which is well documented here. This feature has been shown to extend the battery life of devices by almost two hours, representing a 28% increase in battery life when using Chrome within testing environments. 

This test was an endurance test which used 36 background tabs to simulate a heavy use case where Java background timers can have a considerable impact on both system performance and battery life. 

Early test versions of Chrome, Canary builds, are currently available. This feature will elongate the battery life of devices using Chrome and reduce the power draw of desktop PCs when using the browser. This software change will come as great news for Chrome users, especially those who are ecologically minded. 

Chrome can throttle these JavaScript timers because they are “often not valuable to the user when the page was backgrounded”, giving Chrome’s developers a useful optimisation opportunity. This feature is designed to increase battery life while having no impact on user experiences, giving power savings with no downsides, at least theoretically. 

While the benefits of these changes to Chrome are considerable, Chrome will remain behind browsers like Safari when it comes to power consumption. Regardless, this change in Chrome’s design is undoubtedly a step in the right direction for the browser.