It’s happened to all of us, you’re surfing around, checking out your favorite websites, then all of a sudden you hear your Mac’s cooling fans shift into high, and your battery has dropped 10%! Damn you Flash! Well, now Apple will be giving you a tool to prevent events like this with an OS X Mavericks feature called Safari Power Saver.
Using a Flash blocker extension is one option – and it’s one that many of us use quite successfully. But that leaves web pages looking ugly, with gaps or spaces where there should be content.
Apple’s come up with a different solution for OS X Mavericks, and they’re calling it Safari Power Saver. The new feature of Safari running on Mavericks wrests the Mac’s CPU out of Flash’s hands and puts it back in your control.
Apple describes Safari Power Saver thusly:
The new Safari Power Saver feature recognizes the difference between what you came to see and the stuff you probably didn’t. If the content is front and center it plays as usual. But if it’s off in the margins, Safari Power Saver pauses it. You’ll see a static preview, and it won’t run until you click to play it.
Until you give it permission, Safari won’t load Flash content on a web page. In it’s place, Safari will display a static preview of the content with a graphic laid on top saying, “Click to Start Flash plug-in.” If you click the notice, the content will be loaded and played. Otherwise, it remains paused.
Apple claims a Mac running Safari Power Saver can use up to 35% less power than before.
Sure, Flash is becoming less and less prevalent with the advent of HTML5 but some website developers and advertisers cling to Flash because they’re either unwilling, or unable to make the move over to HTML5.
While Safari Power Saver is a feature in a beta OS, and could be removed before OS X Mavericks public release, here’s hoping it makes the cut, and helps us cope with Flash until it finally gets a well deserved permanent death.
