Chrome has always been a power consuming monster, but over the years Google has made a bunch of changes to reduce the toll it takes on your system — including an Energy Saver mode. But changes to Chrome’s Canary build are teasing the possibility of some big Energy Saver upgrades, which could help boost efficiency even further.
Chrome’s Canary build is the experimental version of the browser, where Google tests new features and updates long before they arrive on the stable or beta versions of the official Chrome browser. But that also means it can be a good indicator of what Google wants Chrome to be able to do, and the kind of upgrades we may say several months down the line.
Leopeva64, posting on X, found flags relating to a number of these potential upgrades, allowing for a little bit more customization of how Chrome’s Energy Saver mode works. Specifically the ability to “freeze CPU intensive background tabs” while the mode is switched on. An additional flag also lets users test this feature by forcing all tabs to behave like a CPU-intensive tab.
Canary isn’t designed for the majority of people, but it is available to download and use if you want to check out these features for yourself — and are happy with the fact they may not work correctly. The rest of us can just wait until these features make their way to the official version of Chrome. Assuming they ever do, that is.
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