{"id":44942,"date":"2024-09-17T16:17:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T20:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44942"},"modified":"2026-04-16T11:11:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:11:53","slug":"does-google-chrome-still-devastate-mac-battery-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/17\/does-google-chrome-still-devastate-mac-battery-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Google Chrome Still Devastate Mac Battery Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Birchler<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

About 18 months ago, Google claimed they’d caught up to Safari<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While I did experience some variability in each 3 hour test run, Chrome came out on top in 5 of the 6 direct comparisons.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

therjaye<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

ksec<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve certainly seen that Chrome handles large numbers of tabs much better than Safari.<\/p>\n\n

Nicolas Magand<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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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<\/a>?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I still like Safari better as an app, but, as I wrote<\/a> a week ago, I’m increasingly frustrated by compatibility and reliability problems. Maybe it will be better with Sequoia<\/a>, when I can upgrade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Mike Rockwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The search engine limitation is one of the main reasons I’ve switched from Safari on my iPhone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n