That’s odd. I run upwards of ten Safari tabs regularly with only 12GB of RAM while running a bunch of other stuff on my system, and the highest swap I’ve ever seen was 3MB.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I will consider Chrome a malware from now on..
- Thread starter matrix07
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That’s odd. I run upwards of ten Safari tabs regularly with only 12GB of RAM while running a bunch of other stuff on my system, and the highest swap I’ve ever seen was 3MB.
I searched for it in my library folder and manually removed it. I didn't take any screenshots though.
Not believing you have any problems with Chrome installed, is exactly what Google wants you to continue thinking.
Am I one of a very few people that can honestly say that I've never used Chrome for about anything? Legit curious, not being facetious.
Safari and Firefox person, myself.
Safari and Firefox person, myself.
Chrome (and Chromium), Safari and Firefox all run multiple processes to isolate tabs.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
The OP's experience doesn't match mine but I got the impression early on that Apple -> Sleep before closing the lid is perhaps a little more reliable (nothing scientific though). In terms of Chrome energy performance, between 23:00 last night, and 09:30 this morning, I gave my base MacBook Air its first test:
My thinking at this point? If you hare having performance problems around battery life, and nothing in Activity Monitor explains this, then perhaps you should be having a conversation with Apple (or sending the laptop back if your local consumer rights allow this).
- Cisco AnyConnect (Rosetta) connected to the office.
- Excel and Word (both Rosetta) running.
- Safari + Chrome (with Chrome running a SwitchyOmega proxy manager and also a Skype web session).
- Microsoft Teams (Rosetta).
- Multiple terminal windows and multi hop tunnels to various systems on site.
- Brightness set to Auto.
- A few tabs open on each of Safari and Chrome.
My thinking at this point? If you hare having performance problems around battery life, and nothing in Activity Monitor explains this, then perhaps you should be having a conversation with Apple (or sending the laptop back if your local consumer rights allow this).
I just went through the process of completely removing chrome and all the associated scripts, etc, as outlined on the "chrome is bad" website. I didn't check activity monitor because I wanted to see if my computer felt different without being biased by numbers. May be a placebo effect, but after rebooting everything is noticeably faster. Boot time was faster and apps are loading faster. Multitasking smoother as well, switching tabs and windows snappier. Using Intel 13 inch MBP with 10th gen Intel CPU.
I don't know if I would call Chrome malware, but I personally have noticeably better system performance with it gone.
I don't know if I would call Chrome malware, but I personally have noticeably better system performance with it gone.
I advocate installing a network-level ad blocker to cover all your devices, if you have reasonable knowledge of networking.
Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking
pi-hole.net
Can be had for the price of a Raspberry Pi
I've never used Chrome on any personal computers. I once worked for a company that standardized on GCP and Chrome. I used it on that company computer only. Interestingly enough, they only were using the Google products a year before migrating away from them, including removing Chrome.
I really don't understand why so many people have issues with Chrome from a functional perspective (I certainly get the privacy concerns.) I've never had issues with Chrome on my Macs and I have been using it for so long I am not even sure exactly when I began. Most of the issues I have seen are related to extensions. The ones that are not can often be solved by tweaking individual settings.
I have historically used Little Snitch to block certain phone home processes and I manually change the keystone agent interval to only allow it to function once a week (terminal--> defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 604800).
And this is a very strange statement...but Microsoft Edge is a damned good browser on the Mac.
I have historically used Little Snitch to block certain phone home processes and I manually change the keystone agent interval to only allow it to function once a week (terminal--> defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 604800).
And this is a very strange statement...but Microsoft Edge is a damned good browser on the Mac.
I've always been one that automatically installed chrome on my new Mac or new PC, usually as one of the first things I did with the machine. But Chrome from a few years ago is not the same as Chrome now. It has become a bloated resource hog. My experience (your's may vary obviously) has been that getting rid of it has made my mac run better and I wouldn't have known that unless I tried to get rid of it. Like I said, essentially since Chrome was released a version of it has always been on my computer and I also always questioned why people thought it was causing performance issues, because I basically didn't know any better.
Also, it has become increasingly hard to swallow the fact that I am the product advertisers are purchasing from Google, not a customer. Chrome is not a "product" so much as bait, as is essentially everything else google makes. Now mind you I don't think there is any more nefarious purpose to Google's business model other than to sell you crap more effectively but that doesn't mean I need to make it easy for them when there are so many other options, and Safari really seems to have come into its own. I also like Edge. It's great on Mac and Windows.
A lot of schools (maybe most?) standardized on Google Classroom which means anyone with kids doing virtual learning right now is stuck with Chrome. My guess is that Google has never made an effort to improve keystone because no one ever noticed / made a big deal about its ****** performance.
Look at Google's efforts to reduce Chrome's battery impact – none of that work really started until there was a groundswell of complaints. I figure this is part of the same deal.
Look at Google's efforts to reduce Chrome's battery impact – none of that work really started until there was a groundswell of complaints. I figure this is part of the same deal.
Google Classroom isn't Chrome-exclusive. It works in Firefox. Not sure about Safari, because I've never used it in Safari.
Nope, if you are a Chrome fan, then you should like the new Edge Download New Microsoft Edge Browser | Microsoft. It is based on the same engine as Chrome, and doesn't have all of the Google telemetry going on.
Personally, I use Edge on Windows, and Safari on my Mac.
Could you elaborate on that?
I haven't noticed any programs *not* writing data all over the place nor removing that data when moving the app to the bin. Kind of funny, but in that respect I miss the old days of
uninstall.bat.Wow, thanks for this thread. I had no idea about this. I have Chrome installed on both my MBA which is quite old now and my MBP 13” 2020, but I don’t use it. I use Firefox as my primary browser on my Macs, only have it as a back-up in case I have an issue Firefox.
Does this battery drain issue affect Intel machines too? I’m wondering if I should just delete it.
Thanks.
Does this battery drain issue affect Intel machines too? I’m wondering if I should just delete it.
Thanks.
My son uses in Safari. No issues. In fact, my daughter occasionally uses her iPad with Safari to access and complete assignments in Safari. (Otherwise, she uses a Chromebook. At 14, I can't convince her to get the Air. She said MAYBE, when the Chromebook no longer works ... )
Yeah, but schools that use GC give their students Google accounts and tie in Chrome-only extensions. It's possible to set up using a non-Chrome browser but you miss out on some of the integrations if the extensions they use only work in Chrome.
For me the thing that pushed me away from Chrome (and Google) was when Big Sur caught Chrome trying to access Bluetooth.
It's a bloody browser: there's no way it needs to connect to anything over Bluetooth at all.
See more here:
forums.macrumors.com
Obviously I denied it that access as can be seen here:
View attachment 1694984
But I also lost the last bit of trust I had in Google. [We are a paying customer of theirs for some services - I'm actively looking for another provider of said services]
It's a bloody browser: there's no way it needs to connect to anything over Bluetooth at all.
See more here:
Privacy warnings in Big Sur really handy to catch software spying on you in new ways
Installed Big Sur last night on a machine Had to log in to a Google Service (in Chrome) today and got this popup: A frigging browser trying to access Bluetooth ? We all know Google likes to spy on us in their browser, but now also going to open up Bluetooth is really a bridge too far. So...
forums.macrumors.com
Obviously I denied it that access as can be seen here:
View attachment 1694984
But I also lost the last bit of trust I had in Google. [We are a paying customer of theirs for some services - I'm actively looking for another provider of said services]
Last edited:
If you try to avoid Chrome because of Google, then by all means avoid Edge because of Microsoft.
If you want a browser that's less likely to work against you:
- Safari
- Brave
- FireFox
- Opera
FWIW: Firefox today came out with an M1 native version - so it's bleeding fast on the M1 macs. Upgrade to version 84.0 and fully restart the browser to get rid of the rosetta 2 version.
more here:
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/15/firefox-now-natively-supports-m1-macs/
Last edited: