Microsoft changed the functionality of Microsoft Edge sleep tabs to improve the overall responsiveness and performance of the web browser. The feature began rolling out to Edge users using Beta 88 in December 2020 to drastically reduce memory and CPU usage, four months after it was released as a trial in September 2020.

“Starting with Microsoft Edge 100, we’ve updated the sleep tabs so that pages that share a view instance with another page go to sleep,” the Microsoft Edge team said in a statement earlier this week.

“With this change, on average 8% more tabs will sleep, which will save you even more resources! On average, each sleep tab saves 85% of memory and 99% of CPU resources for Microsoft Edge.

Redmond has also added a new dialog that will give users an overview of how much system memory is stored by the Sleep Tabs feature. To access this information with one click, you can open it by clicking the “Performance” option from the top right menu or by opening the “Performance” button in the Microsoft Edge toolbar.

How Edge Sleep Tabs Work

Sleep tabs automatically cause inactive background tabs to “sleep”, freeing up system resources after a predetermined time. These resources are redirected to active or newly opened tabs.

By default, inactive tabs will “sleep” after two hours of inactivity, but you can easily change this interval from the settings page on the side://settings/system.

All you have to do is restore the sleep tab with a click of the mouse and you can add websites that you never want to freeze thanks to this feature through the black list on the same settings page.

“Sleep tabs are at the core of Chromium’s freezing technology,” said Eleanor Hane, Microsoft’s senior software manager when the feature was announced.

“Freeze suspends tab script timers to minimize resource usage. Sleep tab automatically resumes when pressed, unlike discarded tabs that require a full page reload.

This feature significantly reduces the memory and processor requirements of Microsoft Edge, which improves browser performance and increases battery life. Based on performance tests on approximately 13,000 devices, Microsoft says that sleep tabs reduce memory usage by an average of 32%, and in most cases reduce CPU usage by around 37%. Source