Discussion - Allow users to put individual tabs to sleep

[MissyQ]

Hi Insiders, thanks so much for your feedback on the sleeping tabs experience in the new Microsoft Edge. From reading your comments, it is clear that many of you would like an easy way to put individual tabs to sleep. A couple examples we've heard include requests to right-click on a tab to put it to sleep or set a shorter timer than 5 minutes in Settings.

Top Feedback Item: Allow users to put individual tabs to sleep

As we investigate this feedback further, we'd like to ask for your help to make sure we are solving the right problem and get the experience just right. Can you provide us some examples of situations or sites where this would be helpful to you, and why? What are some struggles that you've had without this capability? Note that not all sites can go to sleep (some are prevented by our heuristics to help you stay on task and limit potential compatibility issues) - does this influence your perspective at all?

Thanks for your help, we look forward to working with you to improve the new Microsoft Edge in this area.

-The Microsoft Edge Team

[#2]

@AhlieFS There are some specific tabs that won't be put to sleep based on what's occurring on them, there's a full list in the Sleeping Tabs FAQ but it does include tabs playing audio! You can also add sites you never want to sleep to a block list in Settings by going to edge://settings/system. 

The manually choosing tabs bit is on the team's radar as a feature request, but please keep sharing reasons you'd like to see it and how you'd use it! =)

[#3]

@Alexandra-R 

There we go.  I like the way you changed the wording less than a minute choice.

 Dennis5mile

[#4]

I myself would like to see just the opposite. When I'm researching something I will often be going back and forth between up to 4 tabs sometimes. The tabs going to sleep makes what I'm doing harder and takes more time.

[#5]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I have my tab sleeping set to as close as they allow to immediately as you can get and when I click one that is sleeping it wakes immediately fully functioning, so I'm not sure how you could be losing any time and how it is making what you do harder?   Every morning I open a collection that has eight different tabs for eight different websites that I edit 7 days a week.  I lose no time waking them as they sleep as I'm going between the eight tabs back and forth updating info on them.  No time loss.  

Dennis5mile

[#6]

@MissyQ sorry for posting on a dead thread but is there any chance that an extension api for sleeping tabs will be available. I would love to make an extension to organize misbehaving website (I'm looking at you amazon.com) and force them to sleep faster than other tabs

[#7]

@TheProphetOfSoup No worries at all, friend! Solid question. I legitimately do not know the answer to this, but I reached out to the team to see if I can get an answer for you. In the meantime, would you mind hopping over to the new Feedback portal and posting this as a request? This is the best spot for feature suggestions, and I think your request would work well there. I can ensure the team knows that you have posted it up there if you let me know when you do. :)

I'll get back to you once I hear from them! Do not hesitate to poke me for an update if I don't come back with any news for too long, but just as an FYI December is Super Holiday Vacation Time(TM) at Microsoft so an answer may be slightly delayed. :3

Missy Quarry (she/they)
Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
Join us on Twitter, or over on Reddit in r/MicrosoftEdge or r/edge

[#8]

@MissyQ I too would like the option to manually put tabs to sleep.  The 30 second timer is helpful but I find it insufficient.  Moving between tabs and groups with any alacrity means many might stay awake and use resources even after they are no longer needed.  Having the option to quickly right click and select put to sleep would be great.  Further - and I understand that some sites cannot be put to sleep - I feel that sometimes, particularly with tab groups, the sleep function does not take effect when it should.  I know this issue was addressed in November, but as there is no existing functionality to "Allow users to put individual tabs to sleep," I feel it needs to be addressed further.

Thank you