[Tip] Enable Secret “Sleeping Tabs” Feature in Microsoft Edge Web Browser

This article will help you in activating and enabling a hidden secret feature called “Sleeping Tabs” present in Microsoft Edge web browser. This feature will help in saving system resources (CPU and RAM) by automatically putting unused or inactive tabs to sleep after specified time interval.

When we open multiple tabs in any web browser, the web browser starts using more system resources (such as CPU and RAM) to keep the tabs running in background. Even if we are not using those tabs (i.e. not visiting the webpages opened in those tabs), the tabs keep utilizing lots of system resources.

Microsoft Edge web browser comes with a very useful feature called “Sleeping Tabs” (also known as Tab Freeze in Google Chrome, Tab Suspend in Mozilla Firefox or Tab Hibernation). Sleeping Tabs feature automatically detects tabs which have not been used for a specified time period and puts those inactive tabs to sleep (i.e. unloads or suspends those tabs from memory). It helps in saving system resources. According to Microsoft, Sleeping tabs feature helps in saving up to 29% system resources which also helps in saving battery power.

Following screenshot shows sleeping tabs feature working in Microsoft Edge web browser:

By default Sleeping Tabs feature in not enabled in Microsoft Edge, so interested users need to manually activate and enable it. Microsoft has provided a secret preference/flag to turn on/off Sleeping Tabs feature.

Sleeping Tabs feature is available in Microsoft Edge 87 and later versions only.

If you also want to try new Sleeping Tabs feature in Microsoft Edge web browser, following steps will help you:

1. Open Microsoft Edge web browser and type edge://flags/ in addressbar and press Enter. It’ll open the advanced configuration or experiments page.

2. Now type sleep in the “Search flags” box.

It’ll directly go to following options:

3. To activate and enable Sleeping Tabs feature, set “Enable Sleeping Tabs” option to Enabled using the drop-down box.

PS: Other 2 options are not necessary to enable. You can enable second option “Enable immediate timeout for Sleeping Tabs” if you want Microsoft Edge to immediately put inactive tabs to sleep as soon as you leave the tabs. We’ll advise you to not enable this option. Options to customize time period to put inactive tabs to sleep are automatically added to Microsoft Edge settings once you enable Sleeping Tabs feature. If you enable this option, those options will be grayed out i.e. disabled and you’ll not be able to modify them.

4. Microsoft Edge will ask you to restart the browser. Click on “Restart” button to restart Microsoft Edge.

That’s it. You have successfully activated and enabled Sleeping Tabs feature in Microsoft Edge web browser.

5. Now you can customize or configure Sleeping Tabs functionality using Microsoft Edge Settings page.

Click on the 3-dots menu button present at the right-side of the toolbar and 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.

Now go to System tab and in right-side pane, you’ll see a new section called “Save Resources“.

In this section, you can enable/disable Sleeping Tabs feature by modifying “Save resources with sleeping tabs” option.

You can also adjust the time period after which inactive tabs are put to sleep by modifying “Put inactive tabs to sleep after the specified amount of time” option. By default, it’s set to “2 hours of inactivity“. You can change it to 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 6 hours or 12 hours. Remember, if you enabled “Enable immediate timeout for Sleeping Tabs” option on Chrome://flags page, the option to adjust time period will be grayed out as mentioned above.

You can also add exceptions. For example, you may want Microsoft Edge to never put some specific sites to sleep. You can add such sites to exceptions or whitelist using “Never put these sites to sleep” option. Click on “Add” button and enter the website URL.

That’s it. Now try to open multiple tabs in Microsoft Edge browser and after specified time period, Microsoft Edge will automatically put inactive tabs to sleep to save system resources.

When tabs are put to sleep, their tab buttons in tab bar become grayed out or faded. When you move mouse cursor over those tabs, Microsoft Edge shows “This tab is sleeping to save resources” message in tab tool-tip.

You can switch to a sleeping tab any time to activate/resume it and it’ll start working immediately.

Also Check:

[Fix] Internet Explorer Automatically Redirects to Microsoft Edge for Incompatible Websites

[Tip] Disable and Remove Microsoft Edge Tabs Showing in ALT+Tab Screen in Windows 10