Google Touts Chrome 89 Memory savers that “keep your Mac cooler” while browsing

Google’s Chrome browser has been criticized for being a system resource for years, but Chromium developers are making some loud claims about how much smarter the latest version is at using and freeing up memory on macOS.

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

Tab Throttling, which works on pages that are currently inactive, would also have made significant improvements by reducing JavaScript Timer wake-ups. Background tabs no longer activate the CPU as often and save battery life, and as a result, Chrome uses up to 5x less CPU, while battery life is up to 1.25 hours better, Google says.

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

The improvements highlighted are in stark contrast to recently reported independent measurements claiming that Google Chrome uses 10x more RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur.

The interpretation of those measurements has since been disputed, but individually, Apple still claims that Safari on MacOS Big Sur is “on average 50% faster to load frequently visited websites than Chrome.” Apple also says Safari can stream video up to an hour and a half longer and let users browse normally for up to an hour longer on a single charge, compared to Chrome and Firefox.

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