As of March 2021, Microsoft Edge sits at a meagre 5.7 percent browser market share in Canada, behind Google Chrome and Safari, but the browser might see a growth in users in the coming months. Microsoft is working on a new ‘performance mode’ for its Edge browser.
According to Microsoft’s blog post, performance mode helps you optimize speed, responsiveness, memory, CPU and battery usage, though the improvements might vary depending on the user’s browser habits.
Some testers using Microsoft Edge’s Canary version have been given access to the new mode, while others can activate it manually with a code available here.
The new mode disables the ‘sleeping tabs timer,’ a feature that Microsoft introduced earlier this year that allows RAM being used by background tabs to be freed to improve overall performance. Microsoft claimed earlier in the year that sleeping tabs can reduce CPU and memory usage by 37 and 32 percent, respectively, so we don’t know if disabling them will help or cause more problems.
While these changes look impressive on paper, we’ll have to wait and see if they’re enough for Edge to compete with the likes of Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
Other updates to Microsoft Edge from 2021 here.
Image credit: Microsoft
