I found and turned off one setting in Chrome to save 2 hours' worth of battery

10 Sep 2026, 12:15 by Akshay Bhalla · Android Police

Conserving battery life on any Android phone can be cumbersome, since there are many hidden settings to adjust.

From the Android system to background activity, I constantly track many culprits to figure out why my phone dies earlier than expected.

But alongside Android's system, many apps, including Chrome, can also have settings that cause battery drain.

Surprisingly, I found one Chrome setting I didn't need turned on at all.

Chrome is my default browser, but I've outsourced the heavy lifting to Brave and Firefox

I stopped expecting one browser to do everything

Posts 7
By Anu Joy

How Chrome started to drain my phone's battery with only one setting

A sneaky setting that I can live without

There have been many times when I've left the house with a full charge on my phone, and by mid-afternoon it was down to less than 25%.

Even after replacing my phone's battery, it remained a concern and needed immediate fixing.

After investigating the battery stats, I found that Chrome was consuming more power than it should.

What's odd is that Brave is my primary browser, but I still keep Chrome as a secondary option for certain websites that are not as well optimized.

Since I only use Chrome for certain websites, something didn't add up. What I noticed, though, was that I had about 30 to 40 open tabs in Chrome.

While having many tabs open at once might not be the sole culprit, another feature caught my attention.

That's when I started digging through Chrome's settings and found one I didn't really need turned on.

Chrome has a setting called Preload pages, enabled by default, which lets it prefetch web pages and links for faster browsing.

The feature lets Chrome predict which links you might tap next and starts preloading pages on its own.

This requires the browser to constantly look up DNS records and make network requests, which puts a load on your phone's CPU.

Chrome's Preload pages feature also keeps background services active, which can increase power consumption and unnecessary data usage.

If you prefer faster or instant browsing, turning off the Preload pages feature will cause websites to open more slowly in Chrome.

When Preload pages is active, the phone’s cellular and Wi-Fi radios turn on frequently, which also draws power from the CPU.

With Chrome's continuous background activity enabled, the app and radio signals never get a chance to sleep, leading to greater battery drain.

If you use the browser for all your browsing activity and leave the app open in the background, the adverse effects add up.

For most users, including me, most prefetched pages are never opened, especially when reading news or shopping online.

This meant Chrome was wasting my phone's battery and data for no reason.

How to turn off Preload Pages in Chrome

It's worth saving battery life

Unless you want Chrome to be one step ahead of you, I recommend turning off Preload pages.

Turning this feature off can add roughly 1.5 to 2 hours of extra daily battery life, depending on your device. If you use Chrome exclusively and you use an older phone, turning off Preload pages is essential, in my opinion.

To turn off the Preload pages feature on Chrome, follow the steps below:

Open Chrome and tap on the three-dot menu found in the upper-right corner.
Select Settings.
Open Privacy and security.
Tap Preload pages, then select No preloading.

Certain Chrome builds may not use the same path as above. If you don't see the above settings, go to Settings > Privacy and security > Performance > Advanced > Preload pages.

It is worth noting that if you close Chrome often or are a light user, you may not see a massive difference in battery life.

But if you're a power user who uses it for daily browsing and has many tabs open, you will eventually notice the difference.

In my opinion, it is better to switch to Brave or a lighter browser that doesn't constantly track you or have these features enabled by default.

Brave removed the feature altogether to protect users' privacy and device performance.

But if you still prefer to use Chrome and aren't sure about other browsers, I recommend turning on Android's Adaptive Battery setting to restrict Chrome's background activity as well.

Also, if you have multiple inactive tabs open like me, close them when you can, since they keep your phone's CPU running in the background.

I used Google Chrome for 14 years, but this brilliant browser finally made me switch

After trying Edge, returning to Chrome no longer makes sense

Posts 8
By Jade Bryan Jardinico

Chrome can be a major battery and data hogger

Chrome's Preload pages are one of the many reasons I switched to Brave, and its other hidden features are a bonus I highly appreciate.

I recommend turning off the Preload pages feature in Chrome for 48 hours to see if you notice any difference in battery life.

If you don't see much difference or prefer instant page loads, you can always turn the feature back on.