Following today’s launch of M1-powered Macs, Google has quietly released a Mac version of Chrome that is optimized for Apple Silicon.
Update 11/18: The Apple Silicon version of Chrome for Mac is now available for download. As of this morning, those on M1 devices with the Intel variant of the browser are not automatically getting updated yet. Therefore, an uninstall is required to get the optimized version immediately.
To download, visit google.com/chrome and click the blue “Download” button. If you’re using an M1 computer, you should be given the option to select between “Mac with Intel chip” — which is labeled as being “most common” — and “Mac with Apple chip.”
This change to the installer page has yet to fully roll out to all new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini devices. The new download prompt is shown below.
Rstudio ggplot2 cheat sheet. Nov 17, 2020 11/20 Update: Google has now fixed these problems with a new update for the Apple M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Google has confirmed a problem in its major new Chrome browser update. Google allows users to search the Web for images, news, products, video, and other content.
Nov 19, 2020 Google presents Chrome for download as either an x8664 package or an M1 native option—which comes across as a little odd, since the M1 native version is actually a universal binary, which works on. Secure Shell is an xterm-compatible terminal emulator and stand-alone ssh client for Chrome. It uses Native-Client to connect directly to ssh servers without the need for external proxies. A SFTP command line client is included. On Chrome OS, you can create SFTP mounts and access them from the Files app! An alpha build of Mosh is included now too.
Update 11/17: Google has pulled the Apple Silicon-optimized version of Chrome due to “unexpected crashes.” Users that were able to install are advised to follow this workaround to resolve the issue:
- Open System Preferences.
- Navigate to Security & Privacy.
- At the top, select Privacy.
- From the left, select Bluetooth.
- Below your approved applications, select add application (+).
- Select Google Chrome.
- Restart Chrome.
An alternative is uninstalling the new version and downloading the regular Intel variant until an update is released.
The Intel/x86 version already works thanks to Rosetta 2, but there should be further optimizations in this update geared for the new processor.
Meanwhile, some users report that the Intel version of Chrome for Mac is automatically updating to the Apple Silicon variant. Since the latest release of Chrome launched later in the afternoon, some new Mac owners already downloaded the previous release this morning. You can visit chrome://settings/help to manually initiate the update process.
This support for Apple Silicon is rolling out with Chrome 87, which features a slew of other performance enhancements. Namely, an up to 5x reduction in CPU usage and a 1.25-hour increase in battery life thanks to background tabs throttling. The Google browser opens 25% faster, while page loads also see some speed improvements.
The latest release also features an app icon optimized for macOS 11 Big Sur. The Chrome logo is placed against a white, rounded square background that better fits with the latest operating system’s design direction. It also matches the Chrome for iOS icon.
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Google presents Chrome for download as either an x86_64 package or an M1 native option—which comes across as a little odd, since the M1 native version is actually a universal binary, which works on either M1 or traditional Intel Macs. Presumably, Google is pushing separate downloads due to the much smaller file size necessary for the x86_64-only package—the universal binary contains both x86_64 and ARM applications, and weighs in at 165MiB to the Intel-only package's 96MiB.
Performance
Google Chrome On M1 Macbook Air
In our earlier testing, we declared that the previous version of Google Chrome—which was available only as an x86_64 binary and needed to be run using Rosetta 2—was perfectly fine. That was and still is a true statement; we find it difficult to believe anyone using the non-native binary for Chrome under an M1 machine would find it 'slow.' That said, Google's newer, ARM-native .dmg is available today, and—as expected—it's significantly faster if you're doing something complicated enough in your browser to notice.Vpn guard plugin. The first benchmark in our gallery above, Speedometer, is the most prosaic—the only thing it does is populate lists of menu items, over and over, using a different Web-application framework each time. This is probably the most relevant benchmark of the three for 'regular webpage,' if such a thing exists. Speedometer shows a massive advantage for M1 silicon running natively, whether Safari or Chrome; Chrome x86_64 run through Rosetta2 is inconsequentially slower than Chrome running on a brand-new HP EliteBook with Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U CPU.
Google Chrome On M1 Mobile
AdvertisementJetstream2 is the broadest of the three benchmarks and includes workloads for data sorting, regular expression parsing, graphic ray tracing, and more. This is the closest thing to a 'traditional' outside-the-browser benchmark and is the most relevant for general Web applications of all kinds—particularly heavy office applications such as spreadsheets with tons of columns, rows, and formulae but also graphic editors with local rather than cloud processing. Chrome x86_64 under Rosetta2 takes a significant back seat to everything else here—though we want to again stress that it does not feel at all slow and would perform quite well compared to nearly any other system.
Finally, MotionMark 1.1 measures complex graphic animation techniques in-browser and nothing else. Safari enjoys an absolutely crushing advantage on this test, more than doubling even M1-native Chrome's performance. The Apple M1's GPU prowess also has an inordinate impact on these test results, with Chrome both native and x86_64 translated on the M1 outrunning Chrome on the Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U powered HP EliteBook.
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