Chrome users love it for its simplicity and power. Users lament it because it’s power consumptive and uses far too much memory. With Chrome 45, all that changes as the browser will now be proactive about how it uses your computer’s resources.
Unused memory clean up via garbage collection takes place on idle tabs, and is especially powerful for complex Web apps. Google says it sees a 10 percent reduction of memory usage on average, but complex Web apps like Gmail see up to 25 percent reduction in memory used.
Chrome’s Flash suspension feature, which pauses Flash content on a website, will now become standard. Google says that will help your battery last up to 15 percent longer (or help get back the extra power Chrome uses versus other browsers, depending on how you look at it).
When you use certain tabs more often than others, Chrome will now autoload them ahead of others on restart. Ryan Schoen, Product Manager and Performance Promoter at Google, writes “tabs are restored from most to least recently viewed, so you get to see the most important tabs faster.”
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Additionally, Chrome will now monitor the resources available to it. If your computer doesn’t have the resources Chrome needs, background activity on tabs will be paused until you click on them.
It’s all welcome news for Chrome users, and may even have some who’ve edged away from using Chrome give it another try.
➤ Chrome improvements for a faster and more efficient web [Chrome Blog]
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