The quickest fix for Chrome draining a laptop battery is Chrome’s own Energy Saver. Select the three-dot More menu > Settings > Performance, turn on Energy Saver, and choose when it should apply. It works while your laptop is unplugged or its battery is low, and it doesn’t turn on when the laptop is plugged in. These details come from Google’s performance settings guide.
What Energy Saver does
- Chrome reduces its image capture rate and other background tasks.
- It stops eligible CPU-intensive background tabs. Tabs on video calls or playing audio aren’t affected.
- You may notice changes in gaming and video performance while it is on.
- It is available on Windows, Mac and Chromebook computers that have a battery.
If you need a background tab to keep updating for a while, select the Energy Saver icon next to the address bar and select Turn off now. That keeps background tabs active for the current session.
Turn on Memory Saver too
On the same Performance page, Memory Saver deactivates tabs you aren’t using. An inactive tab stays in the tab strip and reloads when you click it. Choose Moderate, Balanced (Google’s recommendation) or Maximum. If a site must keep running, add it under Always keep these sites active. Our page on tab freezing and discarding explains what happens to inactive tabs.
Close what you don’t need
Google’s speed-up guide gives three steps that also cut the work your laptop does:
- Close unused tabs. The more tabs you have open, the harder Chrome has to work. Ctrl + W closes a tab on Windows and Linux, ⌘ + W on a Mac.
- Turn off extensions you don’t use. Select More > Extensions > Manage Extensions, then switch them off or remove them.
- Stop heavy tasks. Select More > More tools > Task Manager (Shift + Esc on Windows and Linux). Look for tasks you no longer need that use a lot of resources, such as a video or a web app. Select one and select End process. Unsaved work in that tab is lost.
On a Mac: see Chrome’s energy use
Open the Activity Monitor app and click Energy. Apple’s Activity Monitor guide explains the columns:
- Energy Impact is a relative measure of an app’s current energy use. Lower is better.
- 12 hr Power, shown on Mac laptops, is the average over the last 12 hours.
- Preventing Sleep shows whether an app is keeping your Mac awake.
For longer battery life overall, Apple’s guide to Power Modes on your Mac describes Low Power Mode: choose Apple menu > System Settings > Battery, then pick Low Power Mode from the “On battery” menu under Energy Mode. Our Mac battery guide has more.
Keep Chrome up to date
Select More > Help > About Google Chrome. Chrome checks for updates on that page. If you see Relaunch, select it. If there is no Relaunch button, you have the latest version (from Google’s update guide).
If the battery still drains fast
- Check for unwanted software. Pop-ups that won’t go away, a search engine that keeps changing, or extensions you didn’t install mean something unwanted may be running. Follow Google’s removal steps.
- Reset Chrome’s settings. Settings > Reset settings > Restore settings to their original defaults. Google says your bookmarks and saved passwords aren’t deleted or changed.
On a phone or tablet
Energy Saver and Memory Saver are computer-only. Google’s help says you can’t personalize Chrome’s performance on Android, iPhone or iPad. You can still close tabs you have finished with.