Google announced that the latest version of Chrome would be less of a battery drain on MacBooks due to under-the-hood improvements. The company revealed that version 110, which will roll out to all users this week, will boost performance on both new Macs with Apple processors and older models.
MacBook Battery
Google conducted tests that showed users could watch 18 hours of YouTube videos or browse the web for 17 hours on the new M2-powered MacBook Pro running macOS Ventura with the latest version of Chrome. However, the company did not provide data on how much of an improvement the new version would make on older Apple MacBook models with Intel chipsets.
Google had already started testing memory and energy-saver modes last year, and these enhancements began rolling out to users last week. The energy-saver mode can further improve battery life, enabling Chrome to run for an additional 30 minutes compared to the tests mentioned above.
The Chrome team modified iframes, elements that load an HTML page within a page. The team also eliminated the unnecessary redrawing of UI elements and fine-tuned its timer for more efficient CPU access. In the past year, Microsoft also worked on making its Edge browser less of a system resource hog for better energy management.
To check the version of Chrome you are using and update to the latest version, click on the ‘More’ button in the top right corner, open the ‘Help’ menu, and click on ‘About Google Chrome.’ Alternatively, Google automatically downloads and installs new updates in the background occasionally.
