Google Chrome is known to use a lot of memory and power. That can quickly shorten your laptop’s battery life. With the latest update, Chrome introduces new performance settings specifically designed to reduce power consumption and conserve battery life. Follow these steps to make the most of these tools and make your battery last longer.
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Step 1: Use inactive tabs
One of the notable features in Chrome’s performance settings is the management of inactive tabs. Tabs that remain active in the background can take up a lot of memory. Chrome now automatically sets those tabs to inactive to save power and memory. Inactive tabs get a circle outlined with dashes. An icon that looks like a speedometer also appears. Click it to see how many megabytes of memory the inactive tab has saved. Want to apply the appearance of inactive tabs? Then click the three dots in the upper right corner of Chrome and navigate to Settings >Performance. Under the tab General you can check or uncheck the option for appearance. You can turn on and off notifications and add sites that should always remain active.
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Step 2: Adjust performance settings
In that same Performance menu, you can change even more settings. At Memory you choose the level of memory saving you want: medium, balanced or maximum. Below that is Power, where you can set whether your Chrome goes into power saving mode when the battery is either less than 20% charged or not hanging on the power.
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Step 3: Enable or disable page preloading.
Another feature is page pre-loading. When this feature is enabled, Chrome pre-loads the pages you are likely to visit so that they open faster. Note that this can also consume more power.
Chrome’s new performance settings allow you to significantly reduce the browser’s power consumption and enjoy your laptop longer without charging. Experiment with the settings to find the perfect balance between performance and battery life.