1351755 - Provide "Slight/Light/Low power/Battery saving/Battery saver" mode option

Status: NEW

Description

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Option to disable/enable all CPU/GPU/RAM/battery/power/etc. hoggy animations/transitions/eye-candy things/etc. will be nice, especially for mobiles, laptops and low end PCs.

We can also:
- increase value of "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" preference in "about:config"
- pause all activity in background tabs (except music)
- enable click-to-play mode for plugins
- reschedule JavaScript timers (fired coalescently and less frequently = less time CPU is woken up)
- tune video-playback parameters (e.g. to get video in H.264 instead VP8/9, if user has H.264 acceleration but not VP8/9, like still probably most of PCs; using SD/LQ instead of HD/HQ video)
- disable smooth scrolling
- limit FPS to 30
- limit/disable data gathering
- change Persona/Light Theme/Theme/Appearance to Dark
and change probably many other things to get better time on battery and be faster on low end PCs.



Opera has for example feature named "Battery saver" [1][2]

[1] = http://help.opera.com/opera/Windows/2393/en/viewPages.html#batterySaver
[2] = https://www.opera.com/computer/features/battery-saver
[3] = https://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/05/introducing-power-saving-mode/
[4] = http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/06/over-the-edge/

Comment 1

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Some test - https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft-video-showcases-microsoft-edge-power-efficiency-in-the-windows-10-creators-update

Comment 2

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

I think this is a great idea!
At the same time, it also sounds like a pretty big effort to get right (so that battery saving mode doesn't leave users in a bad state).

Peter, I think you and I talked about something like this at some point. When do you think something like this would fit on our product roadmap?