Google's extremely popular web browser, Chrome, has been updated to include a memory-saving mode. This is a long-awaited feature for the browser, which is notorious for wasting memory space (open in new tab). The update also brings a new energy saving mode, another area that is in great need of improvement.

The update will be available as part of the browser's Release 108 and will be available for Windows, MacOS, and ChromeOS in the coming weeks. The memory saver mode will reduce Chrome's memory footprint by up to 40%.

It is unclear if Chrome is shutting down tabs or if it is sorting them into some sort of swap file. Similarly, there are no details on how Chrome determines which tabs it considers inactive. However, Google's blog states that "inactive tabs are reloaded when necessary."

The blog also states that this feature will be useful for those "running other intensive applications, such as family video editing or gaming. It will be interesting to see how long "inactive" tabs take to launch and how and when Google determines that any given tab is inactive.

Another big component of the update is power usage. Laptop users will know that there is no quicker way to waste battery power than by opening lots of tabs and running Chrome. The new energy-saving mode activates when the device's battery power reaches 20% and "limits background activity and visual effects on websites, including animations and videos."

That's good, but better overall energy consumption would be desirable. After all, once you get below 20%, you are very much on borrowed time.