Chrome is ditching Microsoft's Scrolling Improvements due to battery Performance issues

Google is disabling the “Windows Scrolling Personality (WSP)” features, such as “percent-based scrolling” and “impulse scroll animation,” in Chrome due to battery issues. These features were initially introduced by Microsoft for all Chromium browsers, including Edge and Chrome, after switching to the Blink engine.

Windows Scrolling Personality

After switching to Chromium, Microsoft introduced new scrolling improvements to the Edge browser that match the personality of Windows. These improvements brought smoother and more responsive scrolling across various input methods and included new animation curves for smoother scrolling and overscroll bounce effects. Microsoft calls these enhancements “Windows Scrolling Personality.”

Here is a brief overview of these features:
Percent-based scrolling: Allows for more precise control over scrolling.
Impulse scroll animation: Provides a more natural and intuitive scrolling experience.

The company shared its code with all Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, Brave, and others.

Google is disabling the Windows Scrolling Personality features in Chrome

Recently, Microsoft suggested to Google to disable percent-based scrolling and impulse scroll animation features in Chrome code to avoid issues. Specifically, Microsoft confirmed they already disabled the Windows Scrolling Personality code in Microsoft Edge to fix battery performance issues.

“WSP (Windows Scrolling Personality) was identified as a source of battery regressions, and we are planning to remove the code. We already disabled the feature in Edge,” Microsoft informed Google in a bug report.

Meanwhile, a Brave developer shared in the bug report that their users love the WSP feature.

Google is now following Microsoft’s advice to “unship Windows Scrolling Personality” and is removing the respective flag, as well as disabling impulse scroll animation and percent-based scrolling in Chrome code.

“Disable Windows Scrolling Personality features in code. This is the first CL in the series to remove Windows Scrolling Personality (WSP) features, particularly percent-based scrolling and impulse scroll animation,” Google confirmed its actions in a commit message.

Apart from this, Chrome will allow users to run legacy extensions using Manifest V2 with a temporary flag. Additionally, Microsoft is trying to reduce its reliance on the Chrome Web Store for Edge extensions and themes, as it has its own add-ons store.