Google has tweaked its popular Chrome browser, making it perform faster in both Windows 11 and Windows 10.
While Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world by quite a margin, it’s also notorious for hogging system resources, especially memory, which can result in it running poorly.
Google is understandably keen to address these issues, and as Windows Latest reports, Google has been working on a project known as Native Window Occlusion, which aims to reduce the strain tabs you’re not looking at put on your PC. If a window or tab isn’t visible – for example if the window is minimized, or there’s another window open in front of it – the tabs in the window will be put into a state that takes up a minimum of system memory and resources, freeing up your PC to concentrate on the tabs that are visible.
Google has been working on this project for three years, and it’s now rolling it out to Windows 10 and Windows 11 users.
Promising results
According to Google’s blog post on the improvements, Chrome is now 25.8% faster on startup, and GPU memory usage has dropped by 3.1%. This has led to 20.4% fewer renderer frames and rendered crashes have also been reduced, this time by 4.5%.
By focusing resources on foreground windows, there’s now a 3% improvement in first input delay. Basically, Chrome now behaves faster and feels more responsive, especially when you first open it up on your PC.
The results are certainly promising, and hopefully Chrome users on Windows 11 or Windows 10 will see the benefits soon.
Analysis: Getting better
These improvements from Google are very welcome. Many of us use Chrome every day, but it’s increasingly becoming an app we begrudgingly use due to the fact that it hogs so many resources, slowing down even the most powerful of PCs.
By continuing to improve Chrome’s performance, Google could make this a browser people love to use once more. Microsoft has also been working on improving Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, to help speed up its own Chromium-based Edge web browser.
With both Microsoft and Google working on improvements, Chrome may no longer be the notorious RAM eater it used to be.
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