In early 2020 Microsoft released all-new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium. Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web. Google Chrome is based on the same web engine as New Microsoft Edge. However, Microsoft has made it better.
If you are familiar with Google Chrome, you may be aware of the memory and CPU it consumes when you have several Tabs opened. Most of the time, these Tabs for future reference of your pending work or something you want to refer to later. So, these inactive tabs do not need active resources.
Microsoft Edge addresses this from Sleeping tabs. Sleeping tabs help you save CPU and memory utilization on Tabs which you are not working regularly; these inactive tabs go to sleep mode on inactivity time length where you define. According to Microsoft, “Using sleeping tabs on Microsoft Edge typically reduces memory usage by 32% on average. It also increases your battery life as a sleeping tab uses 37% less CPU on average than a non-sleeping tab “
Below graph based on experimentation in Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev channels, aggregated across ~40,000 devices.
Enabling Sleeping tabs
There are few ways you can enable this feature, Enable from Edge Settings, Experimental Flag features, and centrally from Group policy. The easiest way is to use the Edge Settings.
Open Microsoft Edge and Settings
Type Sleeping Tabs in the search area and enable it from the Save resources with the sleeping tabs button.
If you cannot find this setting on your Edge version, you can use Experimental Flag features to enable it. Type edge://flags/#edge-sleeping-tabs on the navigation bar and Enable the sleeping tabs as below screenshot.
Restart the Browser to take the effect
Additionally, you can configure this setting centrally by pushing the following registry key through Group Policy.
Create a Key named Edge in \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\ as below and create a DWORD named SleepingTabsEnabled with 0 for Disable and 1 for Enabled.
Sleeping Tab Configurations
There are two settings you can configure from the settings window.
- Inactivity time for sleep
- Exception site list
You can configure the amount of inactive time to put the tab to sleep mode. By default, it is configured as 2 hours. You can configure it from 5 minutes to 12 hours, which you preferred.
If you have sites running with cookies, auto-refresh, and sites that you need to be interactive, you can place them in the exception list. Sites such as news channels, social media sites, and sites sending regular alerts can be configured here. Click ADD on Never put these sites to sleep setting.
Enjoy this feature. I hope this post is useful.
Cheers
Asitha De Silva
