Google Chrome is a resource hog. You know it, we know it, and Google knows it. But little has been done over the years to mitigate the browser's long-standing reputation for shortening battery life.

Fortunately, however, there may be a fix coming soon that could make your laptop last longer while using Chrome.

A new experimental flag setting in Chrome86 has been discovered by The Windows Club. Its purpose is to limit the Javascript timer so that inactive tabs are not constantly updated in the background.

The new policy triggers the Javascript timer once a minute after a tab has been left for five minutes, similar to how Safari works; according to a document shared by The Windows Club, Google states that activating it immediately extends the lifespan noticeably extended.

A laptop with 36 tabs open and running Chrome with an experimental Javascript setting turned on lasted nearly two hours longer on a charge than the same laptop with that setting turned off. and found that the new behavior also extended battery life by about 35 minutes.

It is surprising that Google has not implemented this policy in the past. I would have thought that reducing tab activity in the background would be an easy and obvious opportunity to save battery life; according to Windows Club, this setting remains an option in Chrome 86, and Google is still exploring it.

Thankfully, no matter where you use Chrome - Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, Linux, or Android - the new Javascript timer setting should save you precious minutes or hours of battery life. This is because all iOS browsers are powered by Apple's WebKit engine, so we won't see any performance changes on this platform.