Microsoft Edge Browser Updated With Game-Changing New Feature To Outsmart Chrome

Code-named “Spartan,” Microsoft Edge is the latest Internet browser from Microsoft that was introduced with Microsoft Windows 10 as a replacement for Internet Explorer. The Edge browser comes pre-installed with Windows 10 and now Microsoft has just updated its Edge browser with a game-changing new feature as it looks to beat Chrome in the browser wars.  

It’s nearly a year since Microsoft launched its updated Edge browser in a bid to grab share from market leader Google Chrome. Since then, Microsoft has been busy launching new Edge features including vertical tabs and price comparisons for holiday shoppers.

Now, Microsoft has just released an Edge feature that really could be game-changing. First mentioned back in September, its sleeping tabs feature will dramatically cut your memory and CPU resource usage.

Microsoft Edge Senior Program Manager, Eleanor Huynh said;

“To free up resources for active tabs, new tabs, and other applications on your device, sleeping tabs in Microsoft Edge makes background tabs ‘go to sleep’ after two hours of inactivity.”

Using sleeping tabs

Sleeping tabs are easy to customise to fit your needs. You can adjust the time interval in Settings by going to edge://settings/system. Sleeping tabs will fade to indicate they’ve released resources. To resume a sleeping tab, click on it like a normal tab. The tab will un-fade and your content will be there immediately.

Sleeping tabs builds upon the core of the engine Edge is based on, Chromium’s, “freezing” technology. Freezing pauses a tab’s script timers, minimizing CPU usage and frees up the operating system to reuse the memory for other open tabs, new tabs, or system applications.

In other words, the feature optimizes the Edge browser by forcing inactive background tabs to go to sleep after a certain amount of time, which will release memory and CPU resources for other apps or open tabs. It could make a huge difference–Microsoft claims Edge’s sleeping tabs feature will reduce memory usage by about 32% and leads to a 37% lower CPU usage. 

Enhancements to Edge’s sleeping tabs feature

Since the capability was first announced, Microsoft has enhanced it with the ability to put tabs to sleep after five minutes of inactivity; added group policies for IT admins to manage sleeping tabs; and added visuals to alert users to when a tab is sleeping without distracting you from what you are doing. 

The sleeping tabs capability is available to people running Edge Beta 88 as an experiment, Bleeping Computer reports. If you don’t want to use the capability, you can do this by toggling off in Settings under edge://settings/system.

Available to all users in January 2021, Edge 88 also includes password security alerts to show if your credentials have been exposed in a breach. The previously announced vertical tabs feature also arrives in Edge 88.

Edge and Google’s Chrome are both based on the same Chromium engine, which means they boast a lot of the same features. But Chrome is known for being a rather resource hogging browser. So if you are looking for an alternative, it might be worth giving Microsoft’s option a try.