The recent updates from Google mention about the improvement in background tabs management in Google Chrome that will help in extending battery life. The background tabs in Chrome 57 will have these improvements and users will certainly see a positive effect on their PCs’ battery life.
In general, the background tabs in Google Chrome can have a negative effect on browser performance, especially on battery life. That is why; Google is constantly working on the background tabs management in Google Chrome; sometimes even restricting it. The recent policy of Google Chrome focuses on management of background tabs.
Improved background tabs management in Chrome
According to the new policy of Chrome 57, the developers are asked to keep the background activities of the tabs to minimal. This way the background tabs will consume less power. The Google team mentions about this new improvement of the background tabs management in Google Chrome.:
“Web developers should be aware that users often have a lot of tabs open in the background and it can have a serious effect on power usage and battery life. Work in the background should be kept to a minimum unless it’s absolutely necessary to provide a particular user experience. The Page visibility API should be used to detect when page is the backgrounded and suspend all unnecessary work like visual updates.”
Google’s team also mentions that this improved background tabs management in Google Chrome can reduce CPU usage by as much as 75%. Chryptowatch has even tweeted about how running the tab in the background reduced CPU usage.
The new Chrome 57 policies include several improvements.
- RequestAnimationFrame(): As per the new background tabs management in Google Chrome, Chrome does not call requestAnimationFrame() when a page is in the background. Thus, it reduced CPU usage. However, it’s not a new addition. In fact, this policy has been in effect since 2011.
- Background timer alignment: Google’s team mentions, the policy regarding background time is also in place Since Chrome 11. According to this policy, each independent timer is run no more than once per second. Chrome runs these timers in batches once a second, ensuring that the number of process wakeups is kept to a minimum. Pages playing audible audio are considered user-visible and exempted from background timer throttling.
- Budget-based background timer throttling: The background tabs management in Google Chrome also include budget-based timer throttling. This is the further extension of the timer alignment mechanism, placing an additional limit on background timer CPU usage.
To know more about the improvements in background tabs management in Google Chrome, read the Google Developers Update.
