Microsoft Claims Edge Browser's Sleeping Tabs Saved 274 Petabytes Of RAM In 28 Days
The idea behind sleeping tabs, which we talked about in September of 2020, is to make it so that the tabs that are not actively being used by the browser do not start to gobble up more RAM. The benefit here is that because things are not operating as much in the background it helps reduce the overall PC load. Additionally, the reduced interaction prevents things like the next set of ads loading, another bit of a video loading unnecessarily, and other factors that can definitely help. For laptops this is fantastic for battery life.
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Use sleeping tabs to save resources? You aren’t alone! Over the past 28 days on Windows devices, we slept 6 billion tabs resulting in a savings of 273.7 Petabytes of RAM. That’s roughly 39.1 megabytes saved per tab. 😲 pic.twitter.com/hgTcpcMwvh
— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) June 6, 2022
Ultimately the question becomes whether 40MB of RAM saved per-tab on your device will actually affect you. In some cases, if you're like us, who often have numerous resources open while researching our stories, it might actually help. If you don't, it'll likely be negligible at best. If you're on a computer that still has limited RAM overall, it might make a difference. Even then, your device might have enough RAM where that excess usage when a lot of tabs are open creates next to no impact on the performance of your device.
Screenshot of Sleeping Tabs options interface