What you need to know
- Google says Chrome on Android now experiences 48% fewer scrolling interruptions than in 2023.
- The improvements are the result of almost three years of engineering work.
- Google redesigned several parts of Chrome’s rendering process to achieve this.
If you’ve been feeling like the Chrome app on Android is smoother when scrolling through articles lately (even like this one), it’s probably because you’re using the end result of three years of behind-the-scenes engineering work at Google.
While Google may be focusing heavily on new AI features, such as bringing more Gemini to ChromeThere are also plenty of other improvements the company has been quietly working on for Chrome on Android. Take, for example, that split-second stutter you sometimes notice when scrolling through a web page before it continues normally, what Google internally calls “scroll jank.”
In a new engineering blog post, Google says Chrome on Android now experiences 48% fewer unpleasant scrolling than it did at the end of 2023.
According to Google, scrolling occurs when Chrome doesn’t refresh the page fast enough to keep up with your finger. Although the delay may only last a fraction of a second, it is long enough for the human eye to notice it, making the entire scrolling experience feel choppy.
The company says getting rid of those interruptions wasn’t as simple as making Chrome faster. Google explains that Chrome’s rendering process is much more complex than that of a typical Android application because the browser distributes the work among multiple processes for greater security and stability. That means there’s a lot more chance for small delays to build up before a frame finally appears on the screen.
To address the issue, Google first spent months instrumenting Chrome’s rendering process to identify exactly where scroll stutters were occurring.
It then introduced a series of architectural improvements over the following years, including rerouting touch input via a faster path, reducing communication delays between browser processes, and shifting more work to the GPU.
Google also worked alongside Android itself to prioritize the operating system’s input threads, helping touch events arrive. Chrome more consistently, helping you produce frames more reliably.
Google went into much more depth about how exactly it solved all of this, but I won’t bore you with the technical details. In case you’ve been wondering why Chrome doesn’t feel as bad on Android anymore, that’s why your feed may feel a little less edgy than it did a couple of years ago.
