The latest Chrome update will prevent your device's battery from draining

The latest Chrome update will prevent your device's battery from draining

Over the years, Chrome has earned a reputation as a resource-intensive browser. Google has already introduced several measures to improve things, but it is not always Chrome itself that is responsible for poor performance. Now Google is starting to roll out a new feature in Chrome that will help prevent online ads from slowing down the browser. In addition to blocking ads that slow down your browser's performance, Chrome will also intervene with those that drain your batteries or use too much data. The changes are good news for desktop, laptop, and mobile users. All Chrome users should note that ads no longer slow down their online experience as much, laptop and mobile users will benefit from better battery life, and anyone with a metered connection should see a reduction in data usage. Google seeks to improve the overall ad experience by discouraging advertisers from creating ads that use large and poorly compressed images and videos, mining cryptocurrency, and performing CPU-intensive tasks. The company has been working on this feature for over a year and has developed three criteria to determine whether or not ads should be blocked.

Faster web

Chrome will now download, or effectively block, an ad if it uses the main CPU thread for more than a minute total. Ads will also be downloaded if the main thread is used for more than 15 seconds in a 30 second window, or if it uses more than 4MB of bandwidth. Once the feature is rolled out, it will be enabled by default and you can verify that it works by visiting Google's "Heavy Ad Intervention" demo page. As the page suggests, you can verify that the feature is enabled by performing the following steps:
  • Visit chrome: // flags
  • Look for a heavy ad
  • Use the dropdown next to enable-heavy-ad -vention to select Enabled
  • Use the drop-down menu next to the strong ad privacy touches to select Off
  • Restart chrome
  • Through a computer that rings