Google claims lower power consumption in Chrome 57 by limiting background tabs

Google has announced that starting with version 57 of its Chrome browser, it will reduce overall power consumption by adjusting the timers of background tabs. That way, the CPU load should be reduced.

Google says in an announcement that timers, the moments when code is executed, currently run a maximum of once per second. The new tweak should ensure that as soon as a tab is placed in the background, a timer budget is assigned to it. This budget contains 10 seconds and regenerates at 0.01 seconds per second. When running a timer, the runtime is subtracted from the budget. A tab can only run timers if it has a positive budget, according to Google.

This should ensure that background tabs use an average of 1 percent of a CPU core. Tabs that play sound or use, for example, a WebRTC connection, are excluded from the restriction. Users can also disable the restriction themselves by applying the necessary Chrome flag. The current measure should lead to a quarter less crowded background tabs, according to Google. The company estimates that background tabs are responsible for a third of Chrome’s power consumption on desktop systems.

Going forward, Google wants to work towards completely disabling the activity of unused tabs. In the past, the company has also paid attention to reducing the power consumption of its browser, for example by freezing Flash banners. Google started turning off Flash completely at the end of last year. Chrome 57 is currently being released.