How to Enable Sleeping Tabs in Edge and Other Tricks

Browsers are known to monopolize system resources. Open a dozen tabs on a laptop or PC with low RAM and could stare at an empty wall for minutes. It slows you down and can be quite annoying if it happens regularly. Microsoft’s Edge fixed this issue with its Sleeping Tabs feature.

This feature helps you optimize system resources by putting inactive tabs to sleep, much like sleeping apps on your Android phone. So, quite naturally, this reduces the load on the processor and in doing so allows you to have a distraction-free routine.

So if you are using Microsoft Edge, or planning to upgrade soon, here is how you can activate Sleeping Tabs.

How sleep tabs work

Browsers tend to hog system resources, and this happens if you have dozens of tabs open together. Even if you don’t actively use these tabs, they still use resources which can slow down browser performance.

Putting tabs to sleep can reduce memory usage by around 32%

Sleeping tabs help prevent this. It puts inactive tabs to sleep and thus frees up CPU resources. According to Microsoft, putting tabs to sleep can reduce memory usage by about 32% on average. At the same time, it also puts less strain on your laptop’s battery life.

As you might have already expected, you can’t choose which tabs to put to sleep. The system automatically recognizes inactive tabs and takes action based on your browser settings.

The reverse is also possible. For example, if you want a tab to never fall asleep, you can whitelist it.

How to activate sleep tabs

Enabling sleep tabs is simple and takes barely a minute to set up.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Edge and click on the three-dot menu in the upper right corner. Now select Settings.

2nd step: Scroll down and select Settings from the left panel. Under Optimize performance, toggle the switch to Save resources.

Step 3: Then select the idle time. The default is 2 hours, but you can choose anything as low as 10 minutes.

Step 4: Once done, press the little Add button to whitelist the sites you don’t want to put to sleep. For example, if you are using the web version of apps like Slack and Basecamp, you can add them to this list to avoid missing notifications and alerts.

And that’s all. You have activated the sleep tabs on your Microsoft Edge.

So how do you recognize a sleep tablet? The color of the tabs will fade. To wake up the tab, just click on it, and that’s it.

Bonus tips:

Startup boost

Another handy feature of Microsoft Edge is Startup Boost. This is especially useful if you are using Edge as your default browser. When enabled, it will help launch Edge quickly even when the system is loaded.

According to figures from Microsoft, activating Startup Boost shows that the weather improves between 29% and 41%.

Like the Sleeping tabs, you can find this feature in the settings. You can navigate via the same path as mentioned earlier.

Or, you can just type the following in the address bar.

edge://settings/system

Now all you have to do is toggle the switch for the same.

Customize the new tab

When you open a new tab on Microsoft Edge, it gives you lots of options. But to be fair, there are some things that can be a bit awkward. If you find yourself clicking through the news section a lot (and slipping down the rabbit hole), your best option would be to tailor the page to your needs.

Right now, Edge gives you three options: Focused, Inspirational, and Informative. If you want an easy way out, you can just select the Focused option. This will remove the wallpaper and add a solid background with only the short links below the search bar.

If you are still not satisfied, you can customize it to your preference. For example, you can choose to keep the picture of the day and remove quicklinks and content.

All you need to do is turn off the switches as shown below.

Finally, go to Settings> Appearance to change the theme to Dark (if your system’s default theme is not dark).

Launch your browser

The way you personalize your browser (bookmarks, new tabs or extensions) plays an important role in improving your productivity and helps you stay focused. The idea is to walk the fine line between minimalism and browser overcrowding. Quite useful when working extensively on online tools.

With Sleeping Tabs enabled, you can rest assured that neither you nor your work will slow down.