Have you ever experienced your laptop fan becoming loud simply by viewing a web page? The most likely culprit are the ads on the page.
Magic Lasso Adblock blocks ads, privacy trackers and unnecessary JavaScript on web pages. By removing these items, pages are smaller and battery life sees a big improvement.
Having efficient, light and simple pages reduces a web browser’s energy use, including its use of the CPU and graphics processor. When there’s less to load, render and interpret, a web browser is faster and also uses less battery. Let’s take a closer look at how much an impact this can make.
- What impacts battery life?
- How many unnecessary ads exist on common pages?
- How can I improve my battery life?
- What else can I do to improve web browsing battery life?
- Give Magic Lasso Adblock a try to improve your battery life
What impacts battery life?
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Ads are the most frequent user of battery life. Ads use a lot of network resources to load and also significantly use the CPU to display complex animations or video. Many web pages include multiple ads which reduces battery life further.
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Although not as impactful as ads, tracking scripts also impact battery life. Many of these scripts are bloated; adding extra page weight and extra loading time. For no benefit to the user. Tracking scripts can also slow pages by recording usage as you interact.
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Many web apps now use complex JavaScript frameworks that may impact battery life. Although necessary for an app to function, due to their use of non-native code they are not always efficient users of the CPU. Both web pages and some apps such as Microsoft Teams and Slack use JavaScript heavily, which quickly drains your device’s battery.
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In recent years, hidden crypto-mining scripts have been included on approximately 0.2% of all web pages. The majority of pages execute crypto-mining without user consent. These scripts are especially heavy users of the CPU, slow down browsing and unnecessarily use battery life and energy.
How many unnecessary ads exist on common pages?
Advertisements and tracking scripts, like any other website element, adds page weight and loading time to web pages. Even once a page has loaded, many scripts are running constantly, increasing the ongoing energy use while you read page content.
On a popular website such as The Verge, these unnecessary elements add 4.96 MB of page weight to each and every page load.
That’s 62% of the total page weight spent on features that don’t assist you as a reader.
How can I improve my battery life?
The easiest way to remove all of these unnecessary elements is to use an ad blocker. By default, Magic Lasso Adblock removes all advertisements and tracking scripts. In addition, the Battery Boost feature blocks many heavy JavaScript frameworks and stops hidden background crypto-mining scripts.
To see how much of a difference this makes, we did some tests. You’ll see the results below.
Using a selection of random pages from the top News and Media websites in the US (as reported by SimilarWeb), we automated loading, viewing and scrolling of the page to replicate a normal user.
Then we recorded the time until 10% battery life remained, both with Magic Lasso enabled and disabled.
Magic Lasso Adblock with Battery Boost reduced energy consumption by over 50%. That gives you twice as much battery life to use your device on each charge when doing heavy web browsing.
What else can I do to improve web browsing battery life?
- In Safari on the Mac, disable auto-playing videos. This reduces battery use while browsing on many sites that play videos automatically. Available in Preferences > Websites > Auto-Play. If you want to view the video you can just tap to play instead.
- Use Reader mode by default to make many news sites a more pleasant and lightweight experience. Safari includes a useful Reader mode which shows an article’s content and removes any distracting surrounding navigation and ads. It doesn’t work for all sites but is helpful for websites with articles that your read often. Enable this on the Mac in Safari Preferences > Websites > Reader. In Safari on iOS, it can be set in the Address bar > Aa > Website Settings.
- When battery life is getting low on your iPhone or iPad, enable Low Battery mode. Available in the Control Centre and also in Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode, this temporarily reduces any background activity which extends your battery until you can charge it.
- Use Wifi. When Safari accesses data on an iPhone or iPad, a Wi-Fi connection uses less power than a mobile network. So keep Wi-Fi on at all times. To turn on, go to Settings > Wi-Fi.
- Finally, adjust your screen brightness. A bright screen uses a surprising amount of the overall battery of your device. Therefore you can dim the screen or turn on Auto-Brightness to extend battery life.
Give Magic Lasso Adblock a try to improve your battery life
If improving your battery life while doubling the speed at which web pages view and load sounds interesting, try out Magic Lasso Adblock. You can use and download it for free from the App Store and Mac App Store.
We rely on the support of our community of users to continue development and make ongoing improvements. Once you’ve given it a try, let us know what you think.
