Chrome for macOS beats browser benchmark records

Google has set new browser performance records for Chrome following a year of improvements, with the latest results made using an M5 MacBook Pro.

As one of the main browsers in use today, Google Chrome has engineers working to improve its performance, so it can maintain its position in the market. That work can sometimes lead to massive improvements, even for Mac users.

In a Chromium blog post on June 4, Google declares that its optimizations to Chrome have resulted in it setting records in some industry-standard benchmarks. They are said to be records across all browsers.

For the JetStream 3 benchmark, it managed a score of 469, a new record and a 10% improvement from the start of 2026. At the same time, a test of Speedmeter 3.1 resulted in another score of 61, a 5% year-over-year bump.

The blog post explains that the results were measured using a MacBook Pro M5 with macOS 26.0.1 installed.

Project improvements

Google outlines three areas where work was carried out to improve performance.

The first, JavaScript, adjusted an optimizing compiler to inline “fast paths,” common paths used regularly, helping the engine skip some time-consuming tasks. Inlining async operations like microtask dispatch and await resolution also had a big impact.

Work was also made to improve Google’s heuristics of what JavaScript code to optimize, as well as to implement some missing optimizations in BigInt handling.

For WebAssembly, Google looked into how V8 managed internal data structures. Code generation optimizations helped improve performance for AI, cryptography, and interpreter use cases.

Changes were also made to reuse temporary memory in the compiler more efficiently. There was also work to reduce the overhead of function calls from JavaScript to WebAssembly.

On the rendering engine, Blink, there were optimizations to style resolution and DOM operations using smarter caching and reducing redundant DOM lookups. A fast bailout path reducing checks was introduced for element attribute tracking, while style recalculation delays were minimized and CCSS selector caching was simplified.

Foundational page-loading and text-processing performance was addressed, including making string copying more efficient. Critical performance bottlenecks were also identified in typography and vector graphics rendering.

The team also completed Apple Advanced Typography shaping optimizations and fixed font fallback issues. At the same time, it eliminated heap allocations for glyph width calculations and added a cache to speed up SVG processing for graphics.

A well-timed release

Google’s decision to publish a blog post on optimizations in early June, as well as bringing up the use of the M5 MacBook Pro and Apple Advanced Typography, is quite apt. Especially considering the week ahead.

Apple’s WWDC event is set to start on June 8, with the keynote address happening on the first day. That keynote will focus on software changes coming up in Apple’s operating systems, and will almost certainly touch upon Safari improvements at some point.

As a developer-focused event, a cynic may view Google’s article as trying to spoil Apple’s party and to try to diminish Safari in advance of the keynote. However, since the article is very much a web developer-focused piece, it is doubtful that it will make any real impact in the eyes of consumers.