Microsoft Edge could soon let you control how much RAM it uses

DragonSlayer101

Posts: 372   +2
Staff
Something to look forward to: Since it replaced Internet Explorer as the default Windows browser a few years ago, Microsoft Edge has kept on adding new features and steadily gained market share, even replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser on the Windows platform. It is now poised to add another new feature that could make its use even more convenient, especially for gamers and power users.

Microsoft is reportedly testing a user-defined memory limiting feature for Edge that could prevent it from using too much RAM and slowing down the entire system. The new feature was spotted in the latest Edge Canary build by reliable tipster @Leopeva64, who posted a screenshot on X (formerly Twitter), showing the new "Resource Controls" option in Edge.

As can be seen in the screenshot, the feature will allow users to restrict the browser's RAM consumption by using a progress bar that will display a scale from 1 to 16 if the device has 16GB of RAM. Similarly, if the system has 32 or 64GB of memory, the bar will show a scale from 1 to 32 or 1 to 64, respectively. Users can also specify whether the browser should abide by the chosen limit only during gaming or at all times

The feature could be especially useful in older devices with limited memory. However, Microsoft warns that choosing a very low limit could affect browser performance, so it's imperative that you choose a number that will allow Edge to work smoothly.

To check whether you have the new memory limiter feature, go over to Edge Settings > Performance > Performance Detector and switch on the toggle next to Resource Controls. You will now be able to customize Microsoft Edge's memory usage limit and decide when you want the browser to follow the restrictions.

Do note that the feature is currently rolling out only to a handful of Edge Insiders, so you may not see it on your device yet, even if you're running the latest version of Edge Canary. We expect Microsoft to slowly make it available to more users in the coming days and weeks, but there's no ETA for its release in the stable channel.

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Assuming it works, this is a feature I’d like to see in EVERY application. Love going to my memory manager and seeing some random app using 4GB of RAM for some reason…
 
Stupid. It's the OS' memory manager's responsibility. You bought your RAM to use it, not to preserve it. If it stays empty, it's wasted money.
 
Instead of adding a slider, how about not running a TON of background processes even when the browser isn’t open?

Edge, and MS-Teams in particular are the two single largest memory hogs on my work PC.
 
Knowing how chromium works (where every extension, tab etc. Is a process and therefore difficult to control all the little seperate sandboxed memory usages), I highly doubt this will work well, more than likely you will be able to open a finite number of tabs based on their expected memory use, or it will just start crashing them or unloading them aggressively (which extensions like the great suspender could already do) - both chromium and firefox eat memory like its nothing due to the way modern web design and technologies work, so I struggle to see this working well.
 
The best way to control how much RAM Edge uses is to delete it entirely and use a better browser.
 
Such a weird feature. If people (web devs) even attempt to optimize the consumption of ram would not be an issue.

This page only 108MB leightweight use; but an avg youtube video page eats 450MB.

 
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