Turn Google+ data-friendly and lightweight on your desktop

Google+ has really opened a door leading to a new horizon of connectivity nowadays, for us admirers of the social network, at least. Combining the best features of Facebook and Twitter both, G+ is indeed my first choice. But one crucial issue that has haunted me since the early days of joining the network is that, it's a big data-hogger whenever you open it on your desktop browser.
On its Android app at least, opening the home-stream or any of the communities is a breeze, even on slow connections. But try doing that on Chrome or Firefox, and it'll take at least 30 MB of your data. For those who have unlimited high-speed data, this is not an issue. But for many, especially from countries like India where data is rather expensive (sadly), this is not the case.

Why does Google+ take up so much data?

There are many different reasons, but one of the major ones among them is that, nearly every post on G+ has an image posted alongside. This makes posts much more appealing compared to the ones we see in Facebook, but there's the added cost of extra data.

Another reason is that, unlike in Facebook, you can follow updates from way too many people in Google+. On Facebook, someone else needs to accept you as a friend before you get their posts, but doing that is far easier (and one-sided) on Google+. Naturally, most of us have far more contacts on Google+ compared to what we have on Facebook.

And then, add it to the revamped, intuitive and visually pleasing (almost aesthetic) UI of Google+. That adds an added burden on data-requirements.

Unfortunately, there's no built-in minimal or faster mode for Google+ on our desktops. If included, this will make the whole process a lot easier, and user-friendly as well. This guide will turn rather obsolete if that's the fortunate case. Till then, however, you can always take control and make Google+ a bit more minimal, data-friendly and lightweight.

OK, so why isn't it the case for G+ Android app?

On G+ Android app, like in most mobile apps, a lightweight mobile version of G+ is loaded. The screen of your mobile device is virtually a pond compared to the riverine extent of your desktop. Ok, I agree that's a bit far-fetched and poetic, but you get the idea anyway.

On its Android app, compressed versions of images are loaded. In addition, not all features are accessible from the app (such as, you can't move posts from one category to another on the community you moderate, using the G+ app). Also, since the screen-size is less, way less posts are loaded at startup, which saves data.

If that's the case, you can argue, why can't we just continue using the mobile app? One answer, ease of use.

For writing long posts on G+, it is difficult (to say the least) to make use of the mobile QWERTY. You would need a physical keyboard for flexibility. Similarly, the mouse is (in my opinion, at least) far less tiring compared to the touch-screen for longer duration of usage.

Adding images and posting content is easier on computers, and there are (as I said) some advanced features which can only be accessed through the desktop interface, such as moving posts from one category to another, creating and editing communities, etc.

And finally, no matter how efficient our mobiles become at multitasking, computers almost always beat them to it.

Enough chatter, what are the steps?

Before I mention the ways of recuding data-usage and making G+ load faster, let me share a few words about my connection. I have a high-speed 3G connection, which is quite fast as per Indian standards (400 kilobytes/sec DL). However, once I use up 6 GB of data, speed is curtailed to 20 kilobytes/sec, although I can download as much as I want.

The Desktop UI of G+ is more useful for writing
longer posts

Naturally, you can guess that this is really an agony, once the first 6 GB is used up. And on my 20 KBPS connection then, G+ just doesn't open!

On slow connections, G+ won't load. It'll always show loading or please wait, while you can literally scream and curse all you want. And if it does load at times, it simply takes around 5 minutes for the home-stream to load up! So, I was looking for ways to access G+ conveniently even on my curtailed speeds. It'd also automatically help me save data during my use of the first 6 GB of high-speed data. I tested all the ways I list here, and they all work. It's pretty intuitive to see them work.

Ok, on to the steps.

1. Recuding post count on home-feed | effect: medium

This is really helpful if you've joined a large number of communities, or have too many contacts on Google+. As you might have guessed, it is pretty straightforward to apply. Visit the community, and click on Settings under the community name on the left side of the screen. Now, you have the option Show posts on Home Stream, and under it, there's Amount.

Hover your mouse on Amount, and select Fewer. Repeat the same process for as many communities as you can, and this will reduce congestion on your home-stream, thus saving a little bit of data.

Alternatively, if you prefer to see posts from the community at your own leisure, feel free to uncheck Show posts on Home Stream. This is far more effective, and also it helps you focus on content your contacts are posting. You can always visit the community to check out what its members have posted.

This is especially effective if it is repeated over a large number of communities. Also, turning the option off on photography communities will help you in real time.

2. Reducing frequency of updates from certain people | effect: low

If you can afford it, you should do it. There are many contacts on our G+ accounts, usually, and not everyone is known to us. However, we may not consider removing the person completely, so it's better to turn his/her updates off from your home-screen if you're concerned about your data-usage.

Doing this is rather easy. Just open G+, click on the TAB of a circle (make a new circle for all those whose posts you're not willing to display on your home-screen). Now, click on the Gear icon on the top-right corner of the screen, and under Show posts on Home Stream, select the Fewer option, or else uncheck it completely.

3. Data Compression Proxy (DCP) for Google+ | effect: medium

The DCP is a handy extension, which helps you save a lot of data on your browser. It is an extension that loads images and other graphic content in smaller sizes (and lower resolutions), helping reduce the data required for loading pages. It is an experimental feature, but works reasonably well for Google+.

It can be downloaded from the Chrome webstore, here: http://goo.gl/TSpzRu

A word of caution: when you enable DCP, right-clicking on images to download them won't work, since images are loaded in compressed format. You can still download them, but generally the jpeg or png file downloaded won't open (and it's smaller in size comapred to the original file). So, you can just click on the DCP option on your Chrome and turn it off for a while, and download your image after reloading the page. Or else, you can use another browser, or a dedicated downloader such as the wget utility on BASH to grab your image.

4. Using TextFirst, loading text first and images on demand | effect: extreme

A G+ community, after applying TextFirst

This is the Big Daddy of all these tweaks, and it is ultimately what enables me to conveniently use Google+ even on 10-14 KBPS speeds! As you might have guessed, it is one of those add-ons that allows the browser to load texts of web-pages automatically, when you open them, but filter out the images. However, TextFirst has the added advantage that it will let you click on an image to load it manually! Also, it's the most effective add-on of its kind I've used on Chrome, at least on my Linux system.

This tweak works all by itself. Even if you ignore everything else and just follow this one tweak, you can actually get your work done.

However, this convenience comes at a price, G+ looks rather horrible and alien at first, totally devoid of images, icons, profile-pictures etc. But once you get used to it, you won't regret it.

You might be asking "Why should I use it? And how can I view images etc?" For that, you can disable TextFirst with a single click, or manually click on the images you're willing to see. Or else, you can rather choose to access G+ on your mobile more, to save data, as I do. I usually write long posts etc. On my desktop, while the Android app is more than enough when it comes to viewing other people's contents, and interacting with them.

You can always click it off when you're accessing other sites.

It can be downloaded from here: http://goo.gl/MvSAFx

Conclusion

It is really possible to make Google+ more data-friendly on your desktop, as my experience says. Although there seems to be a loss of functionality when you apply these methods, gradually you'll get used to them. And if you have a fast enough connection with a lot of data, then you shouldn't bother to use them at all!

Then again, if you're into environmentalism, it may be known to you that processing even a tiny amount of data costs energy. And by reducing data consumption, we're actually contributing to the environmental cause. This is, to some extent at least, Going Green with Google+.