Google on Tuesday rolled out a new version of the Chrome web browser with support for Apple's new M1-powered Macs, though distribution has been paused due to unforeseen issues. Although Google didn't actually announce the release of Chrome for Apple's new processor, it had to hit pause on the rollout for the M1 version soon after it started because of the new browser. Why are there different versions of Chrome? With the all-new Apple M1 chip powering the late-2020 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, this means that there’s a new architecture at the helm. Essentially, these new devices have processors built similarly to the processors found in the iPhone 12 lineup. The Apple M1 chip has got everything and more than enough power to run Google Chrome flawlessly on the Macs as it is the more powerful chip from the currently existing ones. Here are the steps: Head to google.com/chrome/ from your Mac. There click on the “Download Chrome” button.
The Google Chrome browser is now available as an Apple M1 native application, for those of you lucky enough to have M1 Mac Mini, Macbook Air, or Macbook Pro systems. (If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, the M1 is Apple's newest in-house-designed ARM silicon, which the company began selling in traditional form-factor laptops and Mac Minis for the first time this week.)Google presents Chrome for download as either an x86_64 package or an M1 native option—which comes across as a little odd, since the M1 native version is actually a universal binary, which works on either M1 or traditional Intel Macs. Presumably, Google is pushing separate downloads due to the much smaller file size necessary for the x86_64-only package—the universal binary contains both x86_64 and ARM applications, and weighs in at 165MiB to the Intel-only package's 96MiB.
Performance
Chrome Apple M1
In our earlier testing, we declared that the previous version of Google Chrome—which was available only as an x86_64 binary and needed to be run using Rosetta 2—was perfectly fine. That was and still is a true statement; we find it difficult to believe anyone using the non-native binary for Chrome under an M1 machine would find it 'slow.' That said, Google's newer, ARM-native .dmg is available today, and—as expected—it's significantly faster if you're doing something complicated enough in your browser to notice.Chrome Apple M1 Performance
The first benchmark in our gallery above, Speedometer, is the most prosaic—the only thing it does is populate lists of menu items, over and over, using a different Web-application framework each time. This is probably the most relevant benchmark of the three for 'regular webpage,' if such a thing exists. Speedometer shows a massive advantage for M1 silicon running natively, whether Safari or Chrome; Chrome x86_64 run through Rosetta2 is inconsequentially slower than Chrome running on a brand-new HP EliteBook with Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U CPU.
Chrome Apple M1 Tablet
Advertisement Jetstream2 is the broadest of the three benchmarks and includes workloads for data sorting, regular expression parsing, graphic ray tracing, and more. This is the closest thing to a 'traditional' outside-the-browser benchmark and is the most relevant for general Web applications of all kinds—particularly heavy office applications such as spreadsheets with tons of columns, rows, and formulae but also graphic editors with local rather than cloud processing. Chrome x86_64 under Rosetta2 takes a significant back seat to everything else here—though we want to again stress that it does not feel at all slow and would perform quite well compared to nearly any other system.
Chrome For Apple M1
Finally, MotionMark 1.1 measures complex graphic animation techniques in-browser and nothing else. Safari enjoys an absolutely crushing advantage on this test, more than doubling even M1-native Chrome's performance. The Apple M1's GPU prowess also has an inordinate impact on these test results, with Chrome both native and x86_64 translated on the M1 outrunning Chrome on the Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U powered HP EliteBook.