[Tip] Disable Sleeping Tabs Fading Feature in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge web browser comes with Sleeping Tabs feature which automatically puts unused tabs to sleep to save device battery and system resources (CPU and RAM). This feature is present in almost all modern web browsers and known with different names such as tab snooze, tab freeze, tab suspend, tab discard or tab hibernation.

Sleeping Tabs feature was introduced in Microsoft Edge to improve performance of the web browser. Microsoft Edge checks for inactive tabs which haven’t been used by the user since predefined time and then it discards or unloads those inactive tabs from memory. It helps the browser to consume less system resources.

When a tab is put in sleeping mode, Microsoft Edge displays the tab as faded to easily distinguish it from other active tabs.

Following screenshot shows faded sleeping tab along with other active tabs in Microsoft Edge:

Some Microsoft Edge users didn’t like this UI effect and they requested Microsoft to disable faded sleeping tabs feature.

Microsoft listened to users requests and added an option to disable fading feature in newer versions of Microsoft Edge web browser (version 91 and later).

If you use Sleeping Tabs feature in Microsoft Edge but don’t like the fading effect, you can remove this feature using following steps:

1. Open Microsoft Edge browser and click on the 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar. Now select Settings option from the main menu.

Alternatively, you can press ALT+F keys together to show Edge Menu and then press S key to open Settings page. You can also directly open Edge Settings page using edge://settings/ URL in address bar.

2. Now click on System tab in left sidebar and in right-side pane, you’ll see Optimize Performance section.

Look for “Fade sleeping tabs” option.

Set the option to OFF i.e. disable the option and it’ll immediately turn off fading of sleeping tabs in the web browser.

In future, if you want to restore the default behavior, set the above mentioned option to ON.

Also Check:

[Tip] Disable or Enable Tab Sleep or Tab Snooze Feature in Web Browsers

[Tip] Enable Hidden Secret “Performance Mode” in Microsoft Edge