Google Chrome 57 restricts out-of-focus background tabs to 1% of a single core's CPU load, with exceptions for tabs that are playing music or maintaining a real-time connection to a server using WebRTC or WebSockets:
In September last year, the Chromium team said changes were coming to Chrome's handling of background tabs, but the changes have landed in the stable branch of Chrome a little sooner than expected. Basically, from now on, background tabs will be limited to an average CPU load of just 1 percent on a single core.
Chrome 57's actual mechanism for background tab throttling is a little more complex. After 10 seconds of being in the background (i.e. not in focus), each tab has a budget (in seconds) for how much CPU wall time it can use. (Wall time is the actual real-world time it takes for a process to start and complete.) The background tab is only allowed to use the CPU if it hasn't consumed its entire budget. Here's the kicker: the budget constantly regenerates, but only at a rate of 0.01 seconds per second.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:13AM (5 children)
Play inaudible music in your tab as well if the user agent betrays a google follower...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:58AM
and if google checks the output level of the played sound to avoid that trick of yours, play the sound of laptop fans. Especially funny if you are on a chromebook.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:22PM (2 children)
It has to be audible. If there is a stretch of silence during audio/video playback, the indicator on the tab goes away.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:43PM (1 child)
Not silence but less than 50 Hz or more than 15 kHz sound for example etc.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday March 20 2017, @11:41PM
WTF? Why not just loop the song and turn the systems volume down?
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(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday March 20 2017, @09:57PM
Having the audio indicator on a tab without any audible sound is pretty suspicious.
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