Google said it’s rolling out under-the-hood improvements to the latest version of Chrome that make it less battery-hungry on MacBooks. The company said version 110, which will roll out to all users this week, will improve the performance of new Macs with Apple processors and even older models.
Google’s test showed that users can 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 new version. Google has not provided any data indicating the difference the new version will make on older Macbook models with Intel chipsets.
Notably, Google started testing memory and power saving modes last year. But these improvements started hitting users from last week. The search giant said that the power saving mode could further improve battery life, as Chrome could run for 30 minutes longer than in the tests mentioned above.
Google noted that the Chrome team made changes to iframes (an element that loads an HTML page into a page). It also prevented the browser from redrawing UI elements unnecessarily and tuned its timer for more efficient CPU access.
Last year, Microsoft also tuned its Edge browser to use fewer system resources for better power management.
You can check the version of Google Chrome you’re using and (potentially) update to the latest version by clicking the “More” button in the upper right corner and opening the “Help” menu, then clicking “To About Google Chrome”. Otherwise, Google automatically downloads and applies new updates in the background from time to time.
