Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Google says Chrome is now 20% faster on Macs

Arif Bacchus
By

If you feel like Google Chrome is running faster on your Mac, then you’re not mistaken. Google recently shared some new statistics behind the web browser, and is claiming that Chrome is now 20% faster on Macs based on the Speedometer benchmark testing.

According to Google’s data, Chrome on Mac hit over 360 on Speedometer testing. That comes just three months after the browser became the highest scoring browser on Speedometer, ever with a score of 300. For reference, Goggle tested Chrome on the M1 Max MacBook Pro running macOS 12.3.1, with Chrome version 104.0.5102.0. The browser was the ARM64 native optimized version. The below graph shows the differences between older and newer Chrome versions in scoring, where higher scores are better.

Chrome's performance over generations.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

To make sure Chrome is always on top of these benchmarks, Google also uses its own internal benchmarking infrastructure. Yet, Speedometer 2.0 is the most representative of real-world browsing. It runs a cycle of various common tests and web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items.

Recommended Videos

The test also ensures that the results are accurate by timing simulated user interactions and runs commonly used browser frameworks used on the most popular websites in the world. Per Google, Speedometer is also the best test for measuring a browser’s JavaScript performance.

Related

How did Google get that score? Well, it comes down to several tweaks under the hood of Chrome. Fastlookups, fast parsing, faster JS calls, pointer compression, short builtins, and Sparkplug are just a few examples. Google says that all of these tweaks have led to an 83% improvement in Speedometer score. The performance benefits of the M1 CPU, as well as browser engine features like Sparkplug and LTO+PGO are other factors too, per the company.

“We are excited to achieve this milestone in performance and look forward to delivering even more performance improvements with each release,” said Google in announcing the milestone back in March.

Microsoft’s own web browser, Edge, is also based on the same Chromium engine as Google Chrome. In our tests, it scores around 218, though we’ve used a base model M1 Mac Mini, and not the same hardware as Google in their tests.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Arif Bacchus
Arif Bacchus
Computing Writer
Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…
How to change the default apps on a Mac
Change your Mac’s default apps in three easy steps
MacOS Catalina Hands-on | Macbook Pro

Apple products come loaded with software designed to work seamlessly with the macOS operating system. For example, Safari is the default software used to load websites, Preview is used to view pictures, and Pages will open documents. But if you're not a fan of the built-in software, Apple doesn't lock you into using it. However, you'll need to know exactly where to look if you want to change the default apps on a Mac.

Thankfully, the process is largely the same whether you're running macOS Sonoma 14, Ventura 13, or other macOS versions. It's also easy to reverse the process and go back to using default apps.

Read more
10 Mac trackpad gestures that everyone should be using
A person holds a MacBook Air at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in 2023.

One of the best parts of macOS is learning and executing all of Apple’s many internal shortcuts. These are hidden commands built into the company’s hardware that are total godsends when it comes to things like click consolidation (one command instead of three clicks) and workflow optimization. Some of these commands you may already know, but we’re willing to bet there’s at least one or two we can introduce to you!

That’s our goal at any rate, and we’ve gone ahead and created this roundup of several trackpad gestures you can use in macOS for all our readers. Even if you don’t use shortcuts all the time, one of these quick executables could come in handy down the line. 
Zoom in or out

Read more
Apple quietly backtracks on the MacBook Air’s biggest issue
The MacBook Air on a white table.

The new MacBook Air with M3 chip not only allows you to use it with two external displays, but it has also reportedly addressed a storage problem that plagued the previous M2 model. The laptop now finally has much faster storage performance since Apple has switched back to using two 128GB NAND modules instead of a single 256GB module on the SSD drive.

This was discovered by the YouTuber Max Tech, who tore down the entry-level model of the MacBook Air M3 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. In his tests, thanks to the two NAND modules, the M3 MacBook Air is nearly double faster than the M2 MacBook Air. Blackmagic Disk Speed tests show that the older M2 model with the problematic NAND chip had a 1584.3 Mb/s write speed, and the newer M3 model had 2108.9 Mb/s for the M3 model, for a 33% difference. In read speeds, it was 1576.4 Mb/s on the old model and 2880.2 Mb/s on the newer model.

Read more