Web browsers: Microsoft Edge: observations

Self-tutoring about web browsers: the tutor continues about Microsoft Edge.

The following is according to my understanding.

I mention in my post from Dec 20, 2025 the idea of checking the memory use of individual tabs in a browser. With Edge, it seems, one might click the three horizontal bars top right, mouse down to More tools, then over to Browser task manager. A new window opens up, revealing the activity related to the open tabs on Edge.

Therein, one might see “Subframe.” Such is a process for handling one aspect of a webpage, such as displaying an ad. Interestingly, it seems some subframes report no memory usage, while others, 200MB or more.

Back at the browser window, if one mouses over various tabs that haven’t been visited for awhile, one might see messages like “This tab is sleeping to save resources. Estimated savings 72%.” Moreover, one might see “This tab was discarded to save resources.” A discarded tab can still be visited, but won’t have reported memory usage in the Browser task manager while it’s discarded. A sleeping tab, on the other hand, will have reported memory use.

At the writing of this article I had, in Edge, about 35 tabs open (it was a slow day) for total memory usage of about 1.7GB. The desktop didn’t seem to notice.

Source:

learn.microsoft.com