New Energy-Saving Feature in Chrome 133: Freezing Background Tabs
The upcoming release of Google Chrome 133 introduces an innovative feature designed to enhance battery performance: freezing. As detailed in the Chrome Developer blog, this functionality will specifically target eligible CPU-heavy background tabs when a device is in energy-saving mode, thus helping users extend battery life while on the go.
Understanding the Freezing Mechanism
Chrome aims to ensure a seamless user experience with the freezing feature, which will only affect background tabs that meet certain criteria, particularly those that are resource-intensive. Notably, this freezing process is distinct from unloading a tab from memory. Users can return to their frozen tabs to find them ready to resume queued tasks without any loss of state.
Impact on Web Functionality
For tech-savvy individuals curious about how this feature operates, Google clarifies that freezing will effectively halt task execution on the affected web pages. This means that various tasks, including event handlers, timers, and promise resolvers, will be paused.
Keeping Essential Apps Active
In an effort to maintain functional integrity, Google has programmed the freezing feature to avoid impacting well-designed web applications. For instance, email clients, chat applications, and calendar services that issue notifications will remain unaffected. Similarly, web pages involved in audio or video conferencing and those controlling external devices will not be frozen, ensuring essential services continue to run smoothly.
Guidance for Developers
Developers managing websites are advised to assess their background activities. If a webpage does not engage in background tasks, it will likely escape the freezing mechanism. However, developers of sites with active background functionality should aim to optimize CPU usage to prevent their sites from being deemed CPU-intensive and subjected to freezing. Google provides a comprehensive list of optimization tips for developers in its announcement under the section titled “How can I prepare my website?”.
Availability
Chrome 133 is set to launch in February, meaning users won’t have to wait long to experience the advantages of this exciting new feature.
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