For those digital multitaskers who habitually keep a plethora of browser tabs open, the bane often lies in the excessive system memory consumption that accompanies it. And God forbid you ask them to close a few! But Microsoft Edge, understanding the conundrum, brings a solution with its “Sleeping Tabs” feature. Rather than terminating these tabs, Edge cleverly places inactive ones in a state of “sleep,” conserving both memory and CPU resources. This is especially beneficial for systems with limited RAM, ensuring smoother performance. Essentially, this feature works by detecting dormant tabs over a certain period, subsequently putting them into sleep mode – freeing up valuable system resources in the process. Microsoft asserts that Sleeping Tabs can save up to 29% of system memory and even conserve battery power. Released with version 88 of Microsoft Edge, available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, the feature might even be activated as a default setting on your browser. Through this risewindows guide, dive into the intricacies of leveraging the Sleeping Tabs feature in Edge, a boon for preserving memory and ensuring optimal browser performance.
How to Enable or Disable Sleeping Tabs in the Microsoft Edge browser?
By default, the Sleeping Tabs feature is not enabled in Microsoft Edge. Therefore, if you’re interested in this feature, you’ll need to activate it manually. Microsoft has provided a hidden preference/flag to toggle the Sleeping Tabs feature on or off. To enable or disable the Sleeping Tabs feature and conserve resources or memory, follow these steps:-
Step 1. First, open the Microsoft Edge browser and type edge://flags/ in the address bar. Then, press Enter from the keyboard.
Step 2. Now, type sleep in the “Search flags” box.
Here, you will see the following options:-
Enable Sleeping Tabs Automatically puts idle background tabs to sleep to save resources. – Mac, Windows #edge-sleeping-tabs Enable immediate timeout for Sleeping Tabs Ignore the Sleeping Tabs timeout setting and put background tabs to sleep immediately. – Mac, Windows #edge-sleeping-tabs-immediate-timeout Sleeping Tabs use observed site characteristics heuristics Sleeping Tabs should consider observed site characteristics as heuristic violations when opting-out domains. These characteristics are related to background notification, such as modifying the tab title text, and favicon, or playing the audio while backgrounded. – Mac, Windows #edge-sleeping-tabs-site-characteristics
Step 3. After that, set the “Enable Sleeping Tabs” option to Enabled using the drop-down box to enable and activate the Sleeping Tabs feature.
Step 4. Next, click the Restart button from the right-side bottom of the Edge browser.
Then, the Sleeping Tabs feature is successfully activated.
Here, the other two options are unnecessary. Although, if you want to immediately put inactive tabs to sleep as soon as you leave the tabs, set the “Enable immediate timeout for Sleeping Tabs” option to Enabled using the drop-down box. Finally, click on the Restart button.
After enabling the Seeping Tabs feature on the Edge browser, you can customize or configure Sleeping Tabs functionality using the Microsoft Edge Settings page. Now, click on the 3-dots menu button present on the right side of the toolbar. Then, select the Settings option from the main menu to access the Settings page. Alternatively, directly open the Edge Settings page using the edge://settings/ URL in the address bar.
Now, click on the System tab, and in the right-side pane, you’ll see the “Save resources” section.
So, you can save the resources by turning on the “Save resources with sleeping tabs” option from the “Save resources” section.
Here, when the Tab is considered inactive tabs in Edge, you can specify the time by selecting the timing of inactivity from the option “Put inactive tabs to sleep after the specified amount of time.” So, you can choose the option 5 minutes of inactivity, 5 minutes of inactivity, 15 minutes of inactivity, 30 minutes of inactivity, 1 hour of inactivity, 2 hours of inactivity, 2 hours of inactivity, 3 hours of inactivity, 6 hours of inactivity, or 12 hours of inactivity.
If you want to exclude a web page from the Sleeping tabs, click the Add button next to “Never put these sites to sleep.”
A new window will open with a title, Add a site.
At last, enter the URL you want to exclude from the Sleeping tab feature and click the Add button.
Here, in Step 3 above, disable the Seeping tabs feature, then set the “Enable Sleeping Tabs” option from Default to Disabled.
Conclusion
In the digital age, efficient multitasking often means juggling multiple browser tabs. While this can be convenient, it can also drain system resources, especially when numerous tabs remain open and unused for extended periods. The Sleeping Tabs feature in Microsoft Edge, introduced in version 88, offers a solution to this problem by putting inactive tabs to sleep. This functionality can conserve system memory by up to 29%, ensuring smoother performance, especially on systems with limited RAM. This risewindows guide has provided a step-by-step walkthrough on activating, configuring, and managing the Sleeping Tabs feature. With this tool at your disposal, you can enjoy a seamless browsing experience, preserving both system memory and battery power.
