Does Google Chrome Still Devastate Mac Battery Life?
That brings us to the “Chrome devastates your Mac’s battery” claim that is commonly thrown around as fact, although rarely while citing any sources. This is presented as common knowledge. It’s as indisputable as gravity – a fact of the universe – Chrome crushes your battery and Safari sips it.
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About 18 months ago, Google claimed they’d caught up to Safari in battery drain, so I decided to do some testing of my own. Conveniently, I recently had to wipe my MacBook Pro’s internal drive and restore to a clean version of macOS Sonoma (long story, but betas gonna beta) so I have pretty stock version of macOS running right now that would be perfect for some testing.
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In my 3-hour tests, Safari consumed 18.67% of my battery each time on average, and Chrome averaged 17.33% battery drain. That works out to about 9% less battery drain from Chrome than Safari. Yes, you read that right, I found Chrome was easier on my battery than Safari.
While I did experience some variability in each 3 hour test run, Chrome came out on top in 5 of the 6 direct comparisons.
I believe Microsoft engineers contributed a lot of code to the Chromium project in regards to improving battery efficiency. All the Chromium-based browsers benefited from it and so Chrome is nothing like as bad as it used to be.
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Perhaps the peak of Chrome complaining battery drain was something in between 2018 - 2020. It also happens to be the peak of Safari is the new IE with so many web features missing and bugs unresolved. Both are correct to a certain degree and have been the case for many years before it reached what could be described as a PR crisis.
Since then Safari had twice if not more features and bug fix than usual in the next few Safari releases. While Chrome worked on multi tab memory usage reduction, and efficiency. At the same time Firefox just went into polishing mode because a lot of the efficiency work already came from Servo, E10s and Memshrink over the past 10 years.
In multi tab usage ( ~50 to 80 ) Chrome is already better than Safari simply because Safari still don’t consider lots of Tabs on macOS as one of their usage scenario. And Chrome being better for that for at least 2 years. For 7000 tabs it is still better to use Firefox.
I’ve certainly seen that Chrome handles large numbers of tabs much better than Safari.
Today, after nearly 20 years of loyalty to Safari, I’m considering switching to another default browser on my personal computer. I mean, why is it so hard to watch a YouTube video without hiccups, and why can I only choose from a selection of 4 search engines, including three Bing-based?
I still like Safari better as an app, but, as I wrote a week ago, I’m increasingly frustrated by compatibility and reliability problems. Maybe it will be better with Sequoia, when I can upgrade.
The search engine limitation is one of the main reasons I’ve switched from Safari on my iPhone.
Previously:
- EU iOS Envy
- Safari Private Browsing 2.0
- DOJ Investigating Apple-Google Default Search Engine Deal
- Most Compatible With Google Chrome
- Chrome vs. Safari: Energy Use and Compatibility
Update (2024-09-19): Nick Heer:
I cannot understand why Safari’s UI has been so poorly responsive for years now. This is just me toggling between two windows. Look how long it takes for the window to become visually active or inactive.
10 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I still use Safari at home on Mojave, because I have a dozen or so tabs that have been (mostly) open for the last five years, and use Chrome at work. Unfortunately, I regularly encounter sites that don't work in that old Safari (Territorial Seed Co. being a recent example), and will probably end up switching entirely to Chrome. Even though Chrome for Mojave is also old/unsupported, it's more functional, although I haven't paid attention to battery usage.
I replied to Matt on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@rcarmo/113141420589033772
The gist of my reply is that I don’t consider automated testing reliable for this since there are things like tab throttling and the like that rely on human input (like moving your mouse across, switching tabs, etc.) and scripting simply won’t generate comparable results. In my experience, Chromium/Edge tries to be input responsive to a fault, and just moving your pointer around a tab will trigger DOM events (as just one example). I’ve also found it to be more energy intensive in general (due to different caching policies and rendering features).
I think the vast majority of "compatibility" problems are actually iCloud Private Relay. It has been getting more and more unreliable lately as more and more sites are using Cloudflare protection.
@Brad I don’t use iCloud Private Relay, and the compatibility problems I’ve seen predate it, but certainly it could be the cause of some people’s problems.
Nope. Not true. You know how I know? The most reliable narrator in the universe, Mr. John Gruber, has told us otherwise. Repeatedly. And let’s be real, he always acts in good faith and is hands down the most trustworthy journalist on the face of the planet. If John has taught us all one thing, it’s that this misinformation is definitely the fault of the EU and Tim Sweeney.
AFAIK the biggest reason for Chrome's reputation for destroying the battery comes from the first 16" MacBook Pro (2019). All dual-GPU machines (starting with the first 15" Retina in 2012, IIRC) have some heuristics for deciding when to switch to the dedicated GPU. The way Chrome created graphics buffers triggered the switch right away, even for simple webpages. And the 16" model had truly horrendous drivers that caused the dGPU to overheat even when doing basically nothing — therefore your machine would run hot and have fans at full blast simply for opening Chrome.
I don't think the heuristics for dGPU were ever documented, and the fault for the inefficient drivers lies entirely with Apple and AMD, since the drivers were bundled with the OS. Seems quite unfair to blame Google for a fuckup that was entirely outside of their control and that had no guaranteed way to avoid — the best one could do was "avoid triggering today's heuristics and pray they won't change in a future release".
(BTW, there were lots of other ways to trigger the dGPU, like connecting an external display — I remember my 16" losing 70% of its battery playing a 20-minute show on a TV over HDMI)
@Someone else
Gruber just commented on this exact issue. Follow the blog here if you want to know more, but he's been harping on Chrome and battery life for years and he literally just threw a tantrum about native Chrome on iOS being the death knell of the platform. He's a partisan ass who traded in credibility for page clicks, but he still gets a lot of attention for some reason anyway.
In all honesty, without Apple barring competition on iOS, I think Safari would be largely dead. Even when I used Mac OS, I long ago gave up on Safari. I wish Opera was still Opera and not the horror amalgamation it has become. That's the one I really miss. And Camino actually. Sigh…
Ps iCab was always a better Safari than Safari frankly.
"Damn, you people have got Gruber living rent-free in your heads."
Just like you have all of us living rent-free in your head. I like it here, a bit weird, some leaky thoughts, but pretty cozy overall, and the rollercoaster of wild ideas is a nice addition.
