Google Chrome gets new settings to optimize memory and battery consumption

Catching up to rival Edge, Google Chrome gets new Memory Saver and Energy Saver settings, allowing further optimization of RAM and CPU resource consumption, improving the battery life of laptop systems.

Checking the settings added to the desktop version of Chrome promises to decrease power consumption by up to 40%, or up to 10GB of RAM memory occupied by open tabs. All this without any performance penalty for the user.

Like rival Microsoft Edge, Chrome will suspend unopened tabs left unused for longer, with the Energy Saver feature managing to free up CPU resources for other apps while saving energy that would otherwise be unnecessarily consumed. The Memory Saver feature works especially on devices with limited RAM resources, saving idle tabs to the device’s local memory. This allows performance to remain at an optimal level no matter how many tabs you have open in the browser, with the drawback being a small waiting time to reactivate “hibernated” tabs.

Memory Saver and Energy Saver features will be found in the app’s main menu, with newly added symbols to the right of the address bar indicating their activation. Energy Saver mode will also automatically activate in the Chrome browser if the battery charge level drops below 20% on laptop systems.

Reserved for Windows, macOS and ChromeOS editions, the new functionality will be added over the coming weeks via Chrome’s automatic update system.