Chrome's New Performance Feature Will Alert If Your CPU Usage is High

Google is working to add a new toolbar button to Chrome that will display performance notifications based on CPU usage. It’s no surprise that this is being built upon the Memory Saver feature already integrated into the Chrome browser.

One of the key features that Chrome has introduced to improve browser performance and address resource usage concerns is the Memory Saver mode. This feature is designed to reduce Chrome’s RAM usage by pausing tabs that aren’t being used, thereby freeing up memory for the tabs that are in active use. Memory Saver is particularly beneficial for systems with limited memory or for users who multitask with other memory-intensive applications.

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Google Chrome already displays tab memory usage on hover. You can also disable it if you find the memory usage in the tab hover card annoying. Now, another performance control is being added to the performance tools present in the Chrome browser, alongside the existing memory saver and memory usage card.

Chrome to Add Performance Notification Button on Toolbar for CPU Usage Alerts

According to a Chromium commit spotted by us, Chrome will get a new performance notification toolbar button. This button will be shown permanently on the toolbar and won’t do anything when clicked in the initial stages. Google is working on the logic to determine when to trigger the toolbar button to show/hide and to display a dialog when clicked.

Introduce the performance notification button This CL introduces the performance notification toolbar button. Currently, the button is permanently shown on the toolbar button and doesn’t do anything when it is clicked. Logic to trigger the toolbar button to show/hide and show a dialog when clicked will be added in follow up CLs.

The commit reveals the Performance Intervention Button responsible for the feature, which triggers the notification based on a tabs CPU usage. Google has set the resource type to CPU for the Performance Detection Manager. Based on the notification, Chrome users can either close that tab or activate Memory Saver mode. The details about what CPU usage threshold the notification triggers are unclear at the moment.

We can’t rule out the possibility of this being linked to Chrome’s Battery Saver, allowing users to improve battery life by reducing CPU usage based on the action suggested by the notification.

Apart from this, we’ve recently reported Chrome Startup performance getting a speed boost as well as Clear browsing data dialog requires you to select a time range going forward in a test conducted by Google.