Since the release of Chromium-based Edge, Microsoft has been working along with Google to improve the Chromium framework for all the Chromium web browsers. After helping Google reduce the battery drain, Microsoft is now working on another feature that will reduce the resource usage on Microsoft Edge.
Called 'Sleeping Tabs', the new feature will suspend inactive tabs to free up resources. The feature was added to Microsoft Edge Canary recently (via Techdows) and is currently hidden behind a flag. If you are using Microsoft Edge Canary then you can enable the feature by following the steps below:
- Open Microsoft Edge and go to 'edge://flags'
- Type 'Enable Sleeping Tabs' in the search bar on the top
- Click on the drop-down menu and select 'Enable'
- Restart the browser
Once Sleeping Tabs is enabled, you can navigate to ellipsis menu > Settings > System and enable 'Save resources with sleeping tabs' under Save resources. You can also specify the time after which Edge will automatically put inactive tabs to sleep. Furthermore, you can add websites that you want to be active to the exception list.
Lastly, you can also enable the 'Enable immediate timeout for Sleeping Tabs' flag to put tabs to sleep immediately. This option will override the 'Put inactive tabs to sleep after the specified amount of time' option available under the Save resources menu.
Microsoft Edge Canary is currently on version 87.0.643.0 which is expected to roll out to Dev users in the near future. Edge Stable users, on the other hand, recently received version 85 and will have to wait for the next update to try out the new features.
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