Google Chrome has had a bad reputation on the Mac for more than a decade. Its notoriety comes from being a resource hog that can consume far more memory than you think a web browser should. Those days may be over, however.
Chrome product manager Mark Chang detailed the changes in a Google Chrome blog post with a focus on the gains found in Chrome M89. This version, which is currently available (we just checked, is on our MacBook Air with M1) uses a lot of Google’s own technology for performance gains – on both macOS and Windows 10 machines.
Chrome improvements on Mac
This starts with a smaller memory footprint, saving up to 8% or more than 1 GB in cases tested by Google. Your mileage, of course, can vary.
You will probably hear the difference, as Google found scores up to 65% better than Apple Energy Impact (a metric seen in Activity Monitor) for background guides – which translates, according to Chang, into cooler systems that they do not shake their fans constantly. This means that everyone who has dozens of guides in the background (without judgment) can see them playing a much smaller role in the system’s performance.
If the news spreads that this new Chrome is much better for your Mac, it can help Google grab 36% of the MacOS browser for Safari’s desktop (according to NetMarketShare). But performance is just one of the great features that Apple promotes for its browser: greater privacy is the other, and Chrome doesn’t seem to have it on its to-do list.
Chrome improvements on Windows 10
On Windows, where Chrome is king (~ 71% according to Netmarketshare), there are even greater improvements. Chang divided memory savings into three different sections: improvements of up to 22% in the browser process, 8% in rendering and 3% in the GPU.
This is enabled with the Google PartitionAlloc memory allocator, which is optimizing for efficiency. Previously, Chrome used only PartitionAlloc for Blink, its rendering engine. Now, he’s using PartitionAlloc everywhere in Chrome on 64-bit Windows and Android.
In our memory management tests for Chrome, Firefox and Edge last February on Windows, we saw that each of these browsers takes up a lot of memory. Firefox was the worst offender in all of the test rounds, except for one – usually occupying 200 MB more than Chrome and up to 1 GB less than Edge. Only in the round of 20 tabs did Chrome consume more memory, taking 1.8 GB versus 1.6 GB for Firefox.
How to get Chrome M89
Here’s how to make sure Chrome on your Mac is up to date:
- Click on the button at the top right corner.
- Select About Chrome on the left menu.
- Install updates if available – and click Restart, if presented.
On the PC, it’s so easy:
- Click on the button at the top right corner.
- Select Update Chrome on the left menu.
- Install updates if available – and click Restart if presented.