New Chrome Meta tag will allow websites to recommend battery saving strategies

Google is currently on a mission to reduce the energy consumption of it’s Chrome browser, and some of the ways it plans to achieve this is by causing their browser to behave in a non-standard way with websites.

Chrome would, for example, reduce the rate at which javascript executes on a website, or render a web page animation at a low framerate.

This has the potential for causing all kinds of problems on websites, which are increasingly behaving like applications, for example causing notifications not to fire or stuttering video.

Google is now proposing a solution, by allowing websites to specify which battery throttling techniques they are happy with.

With the new Battery-Savings Meta tag website owners would, for example, be able to consent to “allow reduced frame rate” or to “allow reduced script speed“.

Google is also offering websites the ability to detect when a browser is using a battery saving mode with new CSS Media such as @Reduced-Frame-Rate.

Google says reducing the javascript wake-up timer to 1 minute for tabs which are currently in the background can improve laptop battery life by 28% (2 hours).

Google proposes these modes kick in when your laptop is in battery saver mode and the company is currently testing these changes in Chrome 86 and 87.

via TheWindowsClub