Let’s agree, the web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on your computer. Why? Because you spend much of your time online inside a browser: when you search, chat, email, shop, bank, read the news, and watch videos online, you often do all this using a browser. Google has officially rolled out an update to its Chrome web browser which brings significant performance and power usage improvements.
“This month’s update represents the largest gain in Chrome performance in years, thanks to many under-the-hood improvements,” Google said.
The biggest performance improvements are summarised below:
- Chrome now prioritizes your active tabs vs everything that’s open – reducing CPU usage by up to 5x and extending battery life by up to 1.25 hours.
- Chrome now starts up to 25% faster, loads pages up to 7% faster, and does all of this using less power and RAM than before.
- Chrome on Android now loads pages near instantaneously when you navigate backward and forward, making these common tasks super fast.
Chrome has previously rolled out the ability to pin tabs, send them to other devices, and group them within the browser, and it has now added a tab search function to the browser.
“You’ll now be able to see a list of your open tabs – regardless of the window they’re in – then quickly type to find the one you need,” Google said.
The address bar is Chrome has also been improved, with certain functionality becoming embedded in its interface.
“In this release, we’re expanding what you can do in the address bar with Chrome Actions – a faster way to get things done with just a few keystrokes,” Google said.
“For example: when you type ‘edit passwords,’ or ‘delete history,’ you can now take action directly from the bar.”
Google is also adding cards to the new tab page in Chrome, which allows users to quickly access recently-visited and related content on the web.
“Cards in Chrome will help you pick up where you left off. They include recently-visited and related content, and they’ll start showing up for some users on the new tab page, underneath the shortcuts,” Google said.
Google said that all of these features, in addition to others it will share later, are rolling out over the next few weeks.
