There may be a new challenger for the most efficient browser title if Microsoft’s latest update is to be believed.
The computing giant claimed that its Microsoft Edge offering is saving a large amount of RAM usage for users across the world due to one of its most popular tools.
On a tweet (opens in new tab)Microsoft Edge Dev account revealed that it saw the browser’s Sleeping Tabs tool save 273 petabytes of RAM in the last 28 days alone.
Use suspension guides to save resources? You are not alone! In the last 28 days on Windows devices, we slept 6 billion tabs, resulting in a saving of 273.7 Petabytes of RAM. That’s approximately 39.1 megabytes saved per tab. 😲 pic.twitter.com/hgTcpcMwvhJune 6, 2022
Microsoft Edge sleeping tabs
The stat is all the more impressive given the fact that it only appears to be on Windows devices, which means the total number could be even higher. Microsoft says that’s equivalent to about 39.1MB saved per tab, all contributing to better efficiency and battery life on users’ devices.
Sleeping tabs for Microsoft Edge (opens in new tab) were first revealed in December 2020, when the company said that using the feature will help reduce memory usage by 32% on average and will reduce browser CPU usage by around 37% in most cases.
The tool received a useful update in August 2021, which means that Edge users can choose to have the tabs fall asleep after just one minute of inactivity, minimizing the time before the resource saver starts to take effect compared to the previous one. initial period of two hours.
Microsoft has also given users the ability to view specific memory savings by hovering over a sleeping tab at the top of the browser window.
The company now hopes this news will be enough to help bring users back to Microsoft Edge after a stagnation in user numbers in recent months.
The latest figures from Statcounter showed that Microsoft Edge lost or failed to gain market share in four of the last six months.
It put Edge at a 4.05% market share (on desktop and mobile platforms), which equates to around 200 million users – far below Google Chrome (64.34%) and Apple’s Safari. (19.16%), but ahead of Firefox (3.41%).
