Despite the fact that Google Chrome is a rather gluttonous browser that has always made computers suffer from overuse of RAM and processor resources, it has always been quite thrifty about traffic. In many respects, this was facilitated by a special Lite-mode, aimed not so much at saving data as at increasing performance in conditions of a poor Internet connection. Thanks to him, Chrome was able to load light versions of sites, getting rid of heavy elements. But in the next update, the mode will receive a new function.
Chrome for mobile and desktop will be more cost effective. But not now, but a little later
Google is testing a new engine called LiteVideos for Chrome. It will automatically reduce the quality of videos posted on sites to SD (480p). Thus, it is planned to reduce traffic consumption, which is especially important for users with a fixed tariff, and at the same time to increase the speed of loading web pages with videos with automatic playback. Despite the fact that administrators mostly try not to use autoplay, from time to time such sites still come across.
Chrome update
Automatically cut video quality to reduce traffic consumption
The new mechanism will become part of the next Chrome update number 86. In general, it promises to be quite large-scale, because it is with its release that Google plans to release another tool that limits the consumption of device resources. This is a JavaScript timer. In simple terms, it will block background websites from being refreshed endlessly, allowing it to refresh no more than once a minute. This should reduce energy consumption by a third of the baseline.
LiteVideos will be available in all versions of Chrome regardless of platform and will appear in the browser by the end of the summer. However, if you want to test this and other innovations right now, you will need a test version of Chrome with the Canary prefix, which is distributed freely among devices with a wide variety of operating systems.
How to save traffic on Chrome
- Download Chrome Canary for Android from this link;
- Start Canary and go to chrome: // flags;
You can enable LiteVideos on both Android and on PC
- Find the Enable LiteVideos parameter and select Enabled in the drop-down window opposite;
- Click the blue Relaunch button to restart the browser and apply the changes.
Why video quality dropped
Google took over to update Chrome due to Apple
From now on, all videos that you play in Chrome will automatically play in SD quality, reducing traffic consumption. Thus, you can reduce the consumption of cellular data up to two or three times, although the difference in quality will not be so striking. Despite this, if you want, you can manually enable the video resolution that you like – 720p, 1080p, and even 4K – of course, provided that your device supports it. In this case, the traffic consumption will greatly increase, but the video quality will also increase. And what is more important for you, decide for yourself.
Obviously, Google is so active in improving Chrome because of Apple. At the end of last month, the Cupertino-based company held a presentation during which it presented an updated version of Safari, which was 50% faster than Chrome, more economical and safer. It is logical that Google did not suit such a situation, and it decided that it was necessary to urgently upgrade the proprietary browser in order to exclude the desire of users to switch to Safari, because even among users iOS and macOS there are a lot of Chrome adherents.