- By Prateek Levi
- Thu, 22 May 2025 06:38 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Laptop Battery Life: You’re in the middle of a video call or racing to meet a deadline when — bam — your laptop battery hits the red zone. Sound familiar? While several things can cause your battery to drain, your web browser might be one of the biggest culprits. Modern browsers do a lot: loading websites, streaming videos, running background processes — and all that activity uses up a surprising amount of power.
The good news? With just a few quick tweaks, you can rein in your browser’s energy use and stretch your laptop’s battery life.
1. Turn on Energy Saver in Chrome
If you use Google Chrome, take advantage of its built-in Energy Saver. Head to the three-dot menu > Settings > Performance, and switch it on. You can set it to kick in when your laptop is unplugged or when your battery drops below 20%. Don’t forget to enable Memory Saver too — it puts unused tabs to sleep, helping reduce Chrome’s overall resource load with little to no effect on speed.
2. Use Efficiency Mode in Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge comes with Efficiency Mode, which works similarly. Go to the menu > Settings > System and Performance, and turn it on. You’ll have the option to decide when it should activate and how long it waits before putting inactive tabs to sleep. Max out the settings for the best battery savings — just know that page loading might be slightly slower.
3. Enable Battery Saver in Opera
Opera users can squeeze out a little more battery life with its dedicated Battery Saver feature — potentially up to an extra hour. Just click the red Opera icon > Settings > Features, and switch it on. You can have it activate automatically when the laptop is unplugged or reaches a set battery percentage. For extra savings, also enable the option to snooze inactive tabs.
4. Switch to Dark Mode
Dark mode isn’t just easy on the eyes — it can also save power, especially if your laptop uses an OLED or QLED display. Firefox users can go to Settings > Appearance to toggle it manually. For Chrome, Edge, and Opera, these browsers typically follow your system’s dark mode setting by default. It’s a simple change that could make a noticeable difference.
5. Close Those Extra Tabs
Every open browser tab adds to your laptop’s workload, even if you’re not actively using them. The more tabs you have, the more battery you burn. Try closing tabs you’re not using or install tab management extensions like OneTab (for Chrome and Edge) or Tab Stash (for Firefox). These tools neatly collapse all your open tabs into a single list, helping your system breathe easier.