Upcoming Chrome browser feature promises to deliver big battery gains for laptops

Google’s Chrome browser is the most popular browser in the world with current figures showing it has a market share of 65 percent. That doesn’t mean it is perfect, however, with users often complaining about it being a resource hog. Things could be set to change with an incoming feature update to Chrome 86 that should reduce CPU cycles that are otherwise offering little in terms of functionality to the end user.

According to the folks at TheWindowsClub, the experimental feature being introduced to Chrome 86 will limit Javascript timer wake ups in background webpages/open tabs to 1 wake up per minute. This is similar to a feature already built into Apple’s Safari browser and will be available in all versions of Chrome 86 across Android, Chrome OS, Mac, Linux and Windows. Currently, the number of wake up calls in Chrome’s Javascript times doesn’t offer any benefit to users.

According to Google’s internal testing, switching to just one Javascript timer wake up per minute with 36 random tabs open in the background yielded a massive 28 percent improvement in laptop battery life when the foreground tab is about:blank. With foreground activity like running YouTube in fullscreen mode along with some other tweaks, the same reduction in Javscript calls resulted in a 13 percent improvement in battery life. Google hasn’t confirmed if it will take the feature mainstream, but even with it enabled, Safari still leads it in efficiency by some margin according to Google’s own data.