Google Chrome is rightfully one of the most popular, if not the most popular, browser in the world. It has many advantages in terms of convenience, but it also has disadvantages, which are expressed in the demands on the system. Everyone knows that Google Chrome will gobble up all the RAM it has and won't choke. For example, when I had an old MacBook Air with two gigs of RAM, it seemed to me that he was about to end his life, it was so hard for him to work with this browser. Even on the current MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, it's still sometimes easier to choose a different browser. Google understands this and is preparing an update that may not improve the state of affairs, but without unnecessary strain on the computer, it will make the browser faster.
Google Chrome is cool, but there is still room for improvement.
How Google Chrome works
Now Google Chrome works in such a way that when you close a tab, it instantly unloads. This is done in order to reduce the load on the system and its RAM. When you realize that you need to open it, you do it and the page is essentially reloaded. This is a waste of time, traffic and, again, system resources. Sometimes this can be very significant, especially if you are using a browser somewhere on the road and you have an unstable network connection.
As the guys at Chrome Story pointed out a while ago, Google Chrome is preparing an experimental update that will address this issue. As a result, opening a closed tab should be almost instantaneous. Well, or at least very fast – much faster than it is happening now.
How Google will save tabs
Instead of immediately clearing the data, Chrome will freeze all information about the page and all its data. It will be stored in a special cache for a short time. Thanks to this, if you decide to reopen a closed tab for a short time, it will open very quickly precisely because it will be saved and you will not have to download it again, knowing only the URL.
Google Chrome developers sometimes give us real gifts.
The development team notes that the speedup will indeed be significant. If it seems to you that you do not accidentally close tabs and reopen them so often, then I hasten to please you that the given upgrade advantage is not the only one.
The 'reopen tab' feature in a public project document is called the 'closed tab cache'. According to the doc, the closed tab cache is based on another experimental, work-in-progress 'BackForwardCache' feature that saves some of the pages you've recently viewed so that Chrome's Back and Forward buttons work almost instantly. This is already a much more significant innovation. At the same time, to all appearances, the cache will not be stored long enough to overload the system. After a few seconds or minutes, it will clear itself and you will not notice any extra load on your device.
Which Google Chrome tabs will fast open work for
The developers note that the “Reopen Tab” feature will work for recently closed tabs. They are currently actively working on improving the 'BackForwardCache' for Chrome. This cache will make forward and backward navigation instant. Developers want to reuse the work done there so that they can quickly restore recently closed tabs.
The main use case is accidental clicks, which sometimes happen to everyone. In this case, returning back will not make the user wait and recovery immediately after closing will be instant. This is how the developers hope to get big gains in terms of user experience. Having the ability to instantly restore tabs with all their contents, the user will get much more pleasure from working with the browser from Google.
There are many browsers, but Chrome is one.
When does the Google Chrome tab cache feature appear
Unfortunately, it cannot be said that such an update will appear very soon, but it will be. I see no reason to abandon this promising development. Now this is a matter of technology and, having an idea, you just need to implement it, which is what the developers are doing. Most likely, it will take several months to wait for the appearance of such a function, but it's worth it. I would especially like to get the “BackForwardCache” function working properly.
Someone will say that waiting a couple of seconds is not scary anyway, but imagine a smartphone on which, for example, you are trying to open the settings, and each item opens for 2-3 seconds, and not instantly. Why is this necessary, if it is possible without it? The Internet already works as if it was downloaded to our computer, if we compare it with what it was a dozen years ago. If there is an opportunity to further speed up the work with it, you need to do it.
Interestingly, the document also notes that Chrome already has a caching feature for recently closed tabs for Android, which provides a convenient option for undoing an action in a mobile browser. These new planned improvements should make the tab opening experience more consistent between Chrome for Android and the desktop versions of Chrome.
If you have something to add to the work of Google Chrome, write about it in our Telegram chat or in the comments. Our site is too large to remain unnoticed by serious market players, including Google itself. Perhaps you will throw in an idea that the company's specialists want to implement in new software versions.