The latest experimental addition to the Chrome browser promises to save a ton of power usage. As spotted by TheWindowsClub, a new flag in the Canary version of Chrome called "Throttle Javascript timers in background" will cut down on the processing that normally happens in background tabs, and it could add two hours to a laptop's runtime.
Javascript timers often track user interaction with a webpage, checking things like the scroll position and ad interaction while a tab is open. This also happens on background tabs, which really isn't useful since, by definition, a background tab isn't being interacted with. When you have a bunch of tabs open, these timers can chew through a good amount of battery for no reason. Now, in Canary, if you turn on the "Throttle Javascript timers," any tab that has been in the background for more than five minutes will have these timers disabled, with wake-ups limited to once per minute. Normally, background tabs can trigger a wake-up once per second.
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Google's first test, with 36 background tabs and a blank foreground tab. [credit: Google ]
The flag in Canary links to a load of documentation detailing Google's test runs with this new feature. For the first test, the company grabbed a 2018 15-inch Macbook Pro and loaded up 36 background tabs with a blank foreground tab, then let the laptop run until it died. With throttling on, the laptop lasted two hours longer, or 28 percent longer, than the default settings. That's a huge improvement, but it still can't get Chrome up to the level of Apple's Safari, which bested Chrome by three hours with the default settings and by one hour with the new throttling flag.
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