New Google Chrome feature aims to improve battery life

Google is working on an experimental new feature for its web browser Chromewhich sounds promising: Chrome saves CPU and therefore expands Battery life on laptops. The feature update is scheduled to start with version 105.

This was reported by the online magazine About Chromebooks. Google is currently testing a new function called “intensive fast throttle” – that is, “intensive fast control”. The plan is to significantly extend an existing feature that was introduced with Chrome version 87.

In Chrome 87, Google launched “Intensive Wake Up Throttling”. This option prevents JavaScript from calling a tab more than once per minute after it has been suspended and hidden for more than 5 minutes.
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With this change, Google was able to reduce Chrome’s CPU usage by 5 times, potentially increasing battery life on laptops by up to 1.25 hours. Since then, Google has not touched on the functionality again – and now it is being developed further.

The 5-minute grace period will be shortened

As reported by Chromebooks, Google is now testing reducing this previous 5-minute grace period to just 10 seconds, so that paused tabs can reduce CPU usage faster and thus effectively extend battery life. “JS Timer Intensive Wake Up Throttling feature, which sets timer alerts to a 1-minute interval after a 5-minute grace period, has been shipped,” explains document About the new Quick Intensive Throttling feature. “The time period of 5 minutes is very conservative and was chosen to allow intensive activation control feature entry with minimal risk of rollback. Therefore, we are now considering reducing the timeout to 10 seconds, but only for pages deemed loaded, when hidden.”

The new feature is being tested in Chrome Canary and Dev versions. If you want to give it a try, you can find the quick throttling in flags under chrome://flags/#quick-ensive-throttling-after-load.

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