Microsoft Edge: Put tabs to sleep and make the browser faster

Some people love to keep dozens of tabs open at a time in their browser (the article writer is one such person – it’s so much more practical than bookmarks…). But they actually take up valuable system memory and other resources. The computer can become very much slower, but telling such a user to close some tabs is still asking for a mean look.

If you’re familiar with this, Microsoft Edge tab hibernation might be something. Instead of actually closing tabs, the built-in feature hibernates them by shutting them down after they’ve been inactive for a while. Closing a tab reduces the amount of memory and processing power it is allowed to use in the background. When you return to the tab, it wakes up again.

Inactive tabs are available from version 88 of Microsoft Edge for Windows, Mac and Linux and it’s quite possible that the feature is already enabled for you by default. In that case, you can take this tip as pure information.

1. Edge

Start Microsoft Edge and click the three dots in the upper right. Choose first Settings and thereafter System in the menu on the left.

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2. Resources

Under the title Save resourcesset the switch to Save resources with tab hibernation in position On.

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3. Time

You can then choose a time for how long a tab can be active before it goes to sleep with the choices below Set inactive tabs to sleep after the specified time.

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4. Never rest

Using the button add you can also easily specify addresses of websites that you want to be always active and never rest.