Chrome’s “Heavy Page Capping” To Alert Users About Bandwidth Heavy Pages

Is your phone on a bandwidth diet? This upcoming Chrome feature will tell you when you are on a page that uses a lot of data. This is currently available as a flag in the latest Canary channel of Chrome.

The Flag

Name: Heavy Page Capping

Description:

Enable showing an InfoBar on data-heavy pages that allow the user to pause sub-resource request loading on the page. Using the ‘Low’ option will reduce the triggering threshold 1MB. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android

URL: chrome://flags/#enable-heavy-page-capping

As the description suggests, you will see an info-bar when a page uses too much bandwidth. However, there could be a catch. It seems this is limited to pages that allow “pause sub-resource request”. The flag also provides an option to set this data cap at 1 MB. I got my first alert while I was watching a video on WhatsApp Web.

“Lite” editions of apps are very popular these days. Almost all the major apps have a Lite edition which uses less storage space and fewer data. If you are using a mobile data plan with limited bandwidth, this will definitely be useful.

This feature is indeed in the early stages of its development. Stay tuned for more.