Long lost google chrome feature could fix browser's worst problem

Google Chrome fans could see an update rolled out which will address what is arguably the biggest flaw with the market-leading browser. Earlier this year the Chrome community was set abuzz

with claims that the software's notorious habit of gobbling up RAM could finally be getting addressed. It looked like the millions of Google Chrome users on Windows 10 would see a huge

amount of memory space freed up thanks to a feature dubbed 'Segment Heap' which Microsoft and Google had been working on. The feature is designed to slash the amount of RAM that

apps use on Windows 10 machines, and testing had shown it reduced the memory usage of Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser by a staggering 27 percent. That's a huge reduction in

RAM usage, and it looked like Google were set to deploy the feature in Chrome as well. However, after testing Google later held fire on plans to utilise Segment Heap with Chrome - disabling

it in the Canary version of Chrome 85 in July. The reason behind that while the feature did help cutback on RAM usage, testing showed it had the knock-on effect of making a PC's CPU

work overtime. READ MORE: ANDROID 11 IS OUT TO DOWNLOAD, BUT ONLY IF YOU OWN THESE SMARTPHONES Bruce Dawson, a Google Chrome programmer, explained that tests showed using Segment Heap lead

to a 13 per cent increase in CPU consumption. At the time the Chromium member said: "M85 already has a number of other optimisations and landing this change (simultaneous (memory)

improvement and (performance) regression) at the same time makes the comparison even more difficult.” "Although I have heard encouraging things about memory savings from lab tests I

don’t see any way for us to leave this enabled until we have clean telemetry data and lab tests on 20H1, neither of which will be happening in time for M85. So, the plan is to disable this

for M85 (thus giving us another telemetry data point) and reconsider in the future." And now, months after the decision to put Segment Heap on the back burner, it looks like work on the

feature could have resumed. As revealed in a post by Windows Latest, a Google senior developer has requested Microsoft's help on GitHub to clear two Segment Heap flags. The developer

explained: "These flags would be useful for all Chromium-based browsers". It remains to be seen how seriously Google is looking into enacting this feature in Chrome, and how far

away they are from making it work. But given the huge reduction in RAM usage it offers Google Chrome users will be hoping a general release is not too far away. In other Google Chrome news,

the handy new Tab Groups feature is now available to everyone. As the name suggests, the feature helps Google Chrome users stay organised and group relevant tabs together. The Tab Groups

feature was added to the latest version of Chrome 85 (85.0.4183.102) and is really straight-forward to use. To create a new tab group, simply right click on a tab and then select add to new

group. You can choose a colour coded icon for each group, give different groups names and then add other relevant tabs to these groups.