Google Touts Chrome 89 memory savings that ‘keep your Mac cool’ while browsing

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

According to a new post on the Google Chromium blog, Chrome developers have recently been able to reduce the memory footprint of background tabs on the 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 not currently active, has also led to significant improvements by reducing JavaScript Timer wake-ups. Background tabs no longer activate the CPU as often and preserve battery life, and as a result, Chrome uses up to 5x less CPU, while battery life is up to 1.25 hours better, says Google .

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

The highlighted improvements are in sharp contrast to the recently reported independent measurements, which claim to demonstrate that Google Chrome uses 10 times more RAM than Safari on macOS Big Sur.

The interpretation of these measurements has been contested, but separately Apple still claims that Safari on ‌‌macOS Big Sur‌‌ is “50% faster, on average, for loading frequently visited sites than Chrome.” Apple also says that Safari can stream video for up to an hour and a half more and can keep users browsing normally on a single charge for up to an hour more, compared to Chrome and Firefox.

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