Badge updates do not trigger excessive background CPU usage

Badge update calls fired on every high-frequency browser event — webRequest.onCompleted, tabs.onUpdated, or sub-5-second polling — create continuous background CPU load even when the user is doing nothing extension-related. ISO 25010:2011 performance-efficiency.resource-utilisation treats unnecessary background CPU consumption as a defect. On laptops, this translates directly to battery drain; on lower-end hardware it causes system-wide slowdown. Chrome surfaces extensions that abuse background resources in its Task Manager, leading to removal.

Debounce badge updates so high-frequency trigger events coalesce into at most one update per 500ms, and skip the setBadgeText call entirely when the value has not changed.

let currentBadgeText = '';
let badgeUpdateTimer = null;

function scheduleBadgeUpdate() {
  clearTimeout(badgeUpdateTimer);
  badgeUpdateTimer = setTimeout(async () => {
    const count = await computeCount();
    const newText = count > 0 ? String(count) : '';
    if (newText !== currentBadgeText) {
      currentBadgeText = newText;
      chrome.action.setBadgeText({ text: newText });
    }
  }, 500);
}

For polling patterns, use chrome.alarms with a minimum 30-second interval and add idle detection via chrome.idle to pause updates when the system is idle.