New Chrome Limits Background Tabs Usage

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,601
While this may not be a huge deal for Chrome desktop users, it will certainly get the attention of many of us that use Chrome on our mobile devices for web browsing. With the release of Chrome 57 you will now find that the browser limits JavaScript timers in background tabs. For those of you that keep a plethora of tabs open, this could be a big deal when it comes to kicking up your battery life a notch or two. You can head over to Bleeping Computer for the full scoop as it has laid out some of Google's plans through 2020 to keep background usage in check.

Google says that in most cases, developers have abused timers, which often continue to work and consume resources even when the user switches to another tab. Google says that by throttling JavaScript timers in Chrome 57, they've achieved "25% fewer busy background tabs."
 
I don't know all I can say is chrome works very well, its becoming my friendly spy browser.
Google is not sticking their thumb in their ass when it comes to this piece of software, that is for sure.
 
I don't know all I can say is chrome works very well, its becoming my friendly spy browser.
Google is not sticking their thumb in their ass when it comes to this piece of software, that is for sure.

I beg to differ.

Sometimes I switch over to Edge for specific websites if I don't want it to slow down; Facebook, Hardforum (on occasion), Paypal, Ebay. Facebook in particular can run to a complete crawl on Chrome for whatever reason - I havent figured it out yet but it happens on both of my laptops and my desktop.

I have 32gb of ram on my desktop and I have caught Chrome sucking up 16gb of ram before. I dont know what the hell its doing in the background. As I type this, its using about 3gb of ram for 6 tabs including Gmail, HardOCP, 2 Hardforum tabs, 2 Google Docs tabs.
 
Huh,

I just assumed they did this from the very beginning.

Seems like a given to do that on any mobile browser at least
 
I beg to differ.

Sometimes I switch over to Edge for specific websites if I don't want it to slow down; Facebook, Hardforum (on occasion), Paypal, Ebay. Facebook in particular can run to a complete crawl on Chrome for whatever reason - I havent figured it out yet but it happens on both of my laptops and my desktop.

I have 32gb of ram on my desktop and I have caught Chrome sucking up 16gb of ram before. I dont know what the hell its doing in the background. As I type this, its using about 3gb of ram for 6 tabs including Gmail, HardOCP, 2 Hardforum tabs, 2 Google Docs tabs.


I have also experienced that problem in Facebook, particularly when browsing pictures. For me it seems related to browser plugins, as if I open Facebook and log in using an incognito window (all plugins disabled) it has no problems.
 
So, is it even close to The Great Suspender addon? just wondering.

edit:
NVM i see that this is for mobile mainly, so i will keep using TGS on my desktop.
 
Eh, it should still limit resource usage on desktops. Win/win.

Totally agree. ALL browsers should do this. You couldn't imagine how many times I had to explain to my kids that the reason none of them could connect to the internet anymore was because they had 20-30 tabs doing stuff in the background.
 
I played with this in the Canary builds on my phone. It increased performance on sites that were JavaScript heavy.

My main gripe with Chrome after a certain version is that it became so terrible to type on websites (significant lag, like multiple seconds). Forums all but become unusable in certain situations on the phone. Other times, it's fine.
 
I beg to differ.

Sometimes I switch over to Edge for specific websites if I don't want it to slow down; Facebook, Hardforum (on occasion), Paypal, Ebay. Facebook in particular can run to a complete crawl on Chrome for whatever reason - I havent figured it out yet but it happens on both of my laptops and my desktop.

I have 32gb of ram on my desktop and I have caught Chrome sucking up 16gb of ram before. I dont know what the hell its doing in the background. As I type this, its using about 3gb of ram for 6 tabs including Gmail, HardOCP, 2 Hardforum tabs, 2 Google Docs tabs.
Maybe a clean install? I never really slow down and haven't seen a crash in a long long time. Then again i don't use Facebook.
 
Every web/front-end dev working on a heavy-workload app should detect focus on tabs deal with that themselves. Wishful thinking, I know.
 
Back
Top