Chrome is constantly criticized for its memory usage, and Google has been working to resolve these complaints in recent versions of browsers for Mac, Windows and Android.
With the latest version of Chrome, Google is using its own advanced memory allocator. PartitionAlloc is optimized for low allocation latency, space efficiency and security. It is now used anywhere in Chrome for Android and Windows 64-bit.
In Chrome M89, we saw significant memory savings in Windows – up to 22% in the browser process, 8% in the renderer and 3% in the GPU. More than that, we have improved the responsiveness of the browser by up to 9%.
The browser is also smarter to use and dispose of memory:
Chrome now retrieves up to 100 MiB per tab, which is more than 20% on some popular sites, discarding memory that the foreground tab is not actively using, such as large images that you have scrolled off the screen.
On macOS, Google recently reduced the memory footprint of background tabs by up to 8%, or just over 1 GB on some system. Tab Throttling – from JavaScript Timer awakenings to pages that are not currently being viewed – introduced with Chrome 87 (and widely available in version 88) is also responsible for a 65% improvement in Apple Energy Impact scores for pages in seconds flat. This results in “keeping your Mac cooler and fans quiet”.
On mobile, Google is using Android App Bundles to optimize downloads by device and isolatedSplits to allow divisions of resources to be loaded on demand. This repackaging resulted in fewer crashes due to resource depletion, a 5% improvement in memory usage, 7.5% faster boot times and up to 2% faster page loads.
The 64-bit version of Chrome on Android 10+ devices with more than 8 GB of RAM has also been rebuilt to allow for a more stable experience that is up to 8.5% faster when loading pages and results in 28% smoother scrolling and input latency.
The latest addition shows Chrome mobile to boot 13% faster with frozen tabs, or lightweight tabs that are similar in size to a screenshot, but can scroll, zoom and be tapped (for links). This version, shown above, is used while the actual guide is loaded in the background.
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