Microsoft Edge Getting New Performance Mode That Optimizes Memory, CPU, and Battery Usage

[Tsing]

Image: Microsoft



Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser is getting a new feature that may help it steal a few more users away from Chrome, Firefox, and other competitors. Dubbed “Performance Mode,” the toggle helps improve Edge’s performance by automatically optimizing its speed, responsiveness, memory, CPU, and battery usage. Microsoft Edge users can preview the new feature now by downloading the latest Canary Channel build (91.0.856.0) and enabling it with the code “–enable-features=msPerformanceModeToggle,” but they should be aware that the browser’s timeout for the memory-saving Sleeping Tabs function will be locked to five minutes when Performance Mode is engaged...

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[Elf_Boy]

Sounds nice enough - wish windows as a whole would get a turbo button.

 

[Dogsofjune]

Many of us run multiple cores and lots of ram. Would it be something we would notice really? Or is this targeted to low end laptop users and older hardware?

 

[Brian_B]

Sounds like it just sleeps non-foreground tabs? Probably won't make a difference on most of our rigs, may even be somewhat slower on a well-kitted rig - but yeah, resource-starved laptops that are hammering swap files on old spinners will probably notice a decent boost.

Most of the tabs I keep open I do so specifically ~not~ wanting them to sleep. I have a lot of web-based dashboards that I like to keep updated for work, and if every time I click over they take another minute or two to refresh, it's frustrating.

Chromium was never the most svelte software. A lot of people complain, but I've never really had issues with it on anything other than Pis, where it tends to crawl (but then again, so do most things).

 

[LazyGamer]

Many of us run multiple cores and lots of ram. Would it be something we would notice really? Or is this targeted to low end laptop users and older hardware?

On the desktop, I mostly just don't want browser tabs doing things that really interrupt say frametimes in games. Which has happened.

On laptops, every bit of power saving helps! But also, think in terms of future ARM-powered Windows... mobile computing platforms. Give me a reasonable alternative to the Macbook Air M1, and I'm interested. I'm down for a couple of workdays of battery life myself!

 

[Armenius]

Chromium is still a memory hog. Good to see Microsoft is actually doing something about it in their fork. I had to work with 16GB of memory for a little bit, down from 32GB, due to a motherboard issue and I was running out of memory with Chrome open just doing things I normally do. How anybody can still recommend only 16GB in this day and age is beyond me.