Chrome 88+ Will Throttle Timers to 1 Minute in Certain Conditions

Starting from Chrome 88, chained JavaScript timers for hidden pages will throttled to 1 minute in particular conditions.

All of the following conditions need to be true in order for the 1 minute throttling to happen :

• Page has been hidden for more than 5 minutes.
• Chain count while applying setTimeout() / setInterval() methods is greater than 5.
• Page has not made any sound using any of the sound-making APIs.
• WebRTC is not in use.

Workaround

To work around this limit, browsers usually have alternative & better performing APIs to do the same thing :

• Using requestAnimationFrame() to perform animations.
• Using IntersectionObserver to find whether element has entered viewport.
• Using ResizeObserver to find whether size of element changes.
• Using MutationObserver to find whether the DOM changes.
• Using web sockets, server-sent events, push messages, or fetch streams instead of polling the server.

Read full blog post on developer.chrome.com