How can I make setInterval also work when a tab is inactive in Chrome?

Question

On most browsers inactive tabs have low priority execution and this can affect JavaScript timers.

If the values of your transition were calculated using real time elapsed between frames instead fixed increments on each interval, you not only workaround this issue but also can achieve a smother animation by using requestAnimationFrame as it can get up to 60fps if the processor isn't very busy.

Here's a vanilla JavaScript example of an animated property transition using requestAnimationFrame:

var target = document.querySelector('div#target')
var startedAt, duration = 3000
var domain = [-100, window.innerWidth]
var range = domain[1] - domain[0]

function start() {
  startedAt = Date.now()
  updateTarget(0)
  requestAnimationFrame(update)
}

function update() {
  let elapsedTime = Date.now() - startedAt

  // playback is a value between 0 and 1
  // being 0 the start of the animation and 1 its end
  let playback = elapsedTime / duration

  updateTarget(playback)
  
  if (playback > 0 && playback < 1) {
  	// Queue the next frame
  	requestAnimationFrame(update)
  } else {
  	// Wait for a while and restart the animation
  	setTimeout(start, duration/10)
  }
}

function updateTarget(playback) {
  // Uncomment the line below to reverse the animation
  // playback = 1 - playback

  // Update the target properties based on the playback position
  let position = domain[0] + (playback * range)
  target.style.left = position + 'px'
  target.style.top = position + 'px'
  target.style.transform = 'scale(' + playback * 3 + ')'
}

start()

body {
  overflow: hidden;
}

div {
    position: absolute;
    white-space: nowrap;
}

<div id="target">...HERE WE GO</div>

---

For Background Tasks (non-UI related)

@UpTheCreek comment:

Fine for presentation issues, but still there are some things that you need to keep running.

If you have background tasks that needs to be precisely executed at given intervals, you can use HTML5 Web Workers. Take a look at Möhre's answer below for more details...

CSS vs JS "animations"

This problem and many others could be avoided by using CSS transitions/animations instead of JavaScript based animations which adds a considerable overhead. I'd recommend this jQuery plugin that let's you take benefit from CSS transitions just like the animate() methods.

I ran into the same problem with audio fading and HTML5 player. It got stuck when tab became inactive. So I found out a WebWorker is allowed to use intervals/timeouts without limitation. I use it to post "ticks" to the main javascript.

WebWorkers Code:

var fading = false;
var interval;
self.addEventListener('message', function(e){
    switch (e.data) {
        case 'start':
            if (!fading){
                fading = true;
                interval = setInterval(function(){
                    self.postMessage('tick');
                }, 50);
            }
            break;
        case 'stop':
            clearInterval(interval);
            fading = false;
            break;
    };
}, false);

Main Javascript:

var player = new Audio();
player.fader = new Worker('js/fader.js');
player.faderPosition = 0.0;
player.faderTargetVolume = 1.0;
player.faderCallback = function(){};
player.fadeTo = function(volume, func){
    console.log('fadeTo called');
    if (func) this.faderCallback = func;
    this.faderTargetVolume = volume;
    this.fader.postMessage('start');
}
player.fader.addEventListener('message', function(e){
    console.log('fader tick');
    if (player.faderTargetVolume > player.volume){
        player.faderPosition -= 0.02;
    } else {
        player.faderPosition += 0.02;
    }
    var newVolume = Math.pow(player.faderPosition - 1, 2);
    if (newVolume > 0.999){
        player.volume = newVolume = 1.0;
        player.fader.postMessage('stop');
        player.faderCallback();
    } else if (newVolume < 0.001) {
        player.volume = newVolume = 0.0;
        player.fader.postMessage('stop');
        player.faderCallback();
    } else {
        player.volume = newVolume;
    }
});

There is a solution to use Web Workers (as mentioned before), because they run in separate process and are not slowed down

I've written a tiny script that can be used without changes to your code - it simply overrides functions setTimeout, clearTimeout, setInterval, clearInterval.

Just include it before all your code.

more info here

Just do this:

var $div = $('div');
var a = 0;

setInterval(function() {
    a++;
    $div.stop(true,true).css("left", a);
}, 1000 / 30);

Inactive browser tabs buffer some of the setInterval or setTimeout functions.

stop(true,true) will stop all buffered events and execute immediatly only the last animation.

The window.setTimeout() method now clamps to send no more than one timeout per second in inactive tabs. In addition, it now clamps nested timeouts to the smallest value allowed by the HTML5 specification: 4 ms (instead of the 10 ms it used to clamp to).