Norway-based company Opera Software today announced the addition of a new power saving mode to its Opera web browser, which is designed to extend battery life when the browser is used on a notebook computer like Apple's line of MacBooks.

According to Opera, the new power saving mode, which is available today in the developer stream, can extend laptop battery life by up to 50% compared to earlier versions of the Opera browser and to Google Chrome, giving heavy web users up to three hours of additional battery life. Opera's testing was done on a Lenovo X250 with a Core i7-5600U processor and 16GB RAM running Windows 10, so it is unclear how much battery savings Mac users will see.

operabrowsermac
The feature works through various optimizations like reducing activity from background tabs, adjusting page-redrawing frequency, and tuning video playback options.

"It's extremely frustrating to run out of battery on your computer, whether you are out traveling, watching videos, or you have just left your charger behind. Our new power saving mode will nudge you when the laptop starts to consume battery, and, when enabled, it can increase the battery life by up to three hours," says Krystian Kolondra, SVP of Engineering for Opera.

The power saving mode can be accessed whenever a laptop is using battery power by clicking on the battery icon located next to the address field in the browser. It is also able to detect when a laptop battery is running low, offering up an option to enable the mode. Today's developer update also includes optimized animated themes and better memory management techniques to improve performance.

The introduction of the power saving mode comes just a few weeks after Opera added a built-in virtual private network (VPN) feature to its web browser. The developer version of the Opera browser with the built-in power saving mode can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Top Rated Comments

Dilster3k Avatar
103 months ago
For me personally, any other browser other than Safari just feels wrong on OS X.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kajje Avatar
103 months ago
The whole "secret" of battery life optimisation is suspending background tabs. I find it incredibly annoying that Safari does this with no option to disable it. It makes it useless for certain websites that refresh their content periodically. A power save option is a good compromise.
You probably have a reason to want your background tabs to refresh, I have a good reason not wanting that. Outside of my Google Mail 'pinned' tab, I don't want any tabs to refresh - at all.

The consensus here probably is that having options for individual background refresh'ability is the way to go.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
unobtainium Avatar
103 months ago
My Mac is constantly running hot or slowing down because of some rogue Safari tab. According to some of the replies in this thread, Safari automatically suspends unused Safari tabs, but if that's the case, why does Safari cause me so many problems?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
vooke Avatar
103 months ago
Whatever they are smoking at Opera should be legalized
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rose-Opera Avatar
103 months ago
If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

Hope that Firefox will follow soon with the power save functions. Love my Firefox but hate it's eating battery power out of my MBr like there's no tomorrow.
Hey, my name is Rosi and I am working for Opera. It's nice to hear that you are liking the new VPN app and I hope you will continue enjoying it:)
Which functions we introduce, highly depends on what our users want. So when we saw that more and more people are using portable devices, we knew that we could help them out by integrating this feature. Feel free to test it out and send us a feedback. :)
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kajje Avatar
103 months ago
If your software needs battery power save functions and more, if there clearly are ways to build these functions in, why you didn't put them in in the first place?

Installed the Opera VPN on my iPhone and seems to work great!

Hope that Firefox will follow soon with the power save functions. Love my Firefox but hate it's eating battery power out of my MBr like there's no tomorrow.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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