Microsoft Edge Windows Task Manager Improvements

Microsoft

 

Performance is essential to your success, which makes it core to ours. To help ensure the browser doesn’t slow you down, we always keep performance in mind as we continue to improve Microsoft Edge. We’re also working to help you understand how Microsoft Edge is using the resources on your device to deliver fast, efficient web browsing.    

 

Let’s imagine that one day you are browsing the internet and suddenly your computer starts to slow down, your fan turns on and your computer gets hot. You’re not sure what’s causing the issue, so you open Windows Task Manager to try and diagnose the issue. When you open Windows Task Manager, you struggle to understand what is using your browser’s resources, so you find yourself randomly closing tabs in hopes that it will fix your performance issue.

 

Not understanding what is happening on your computer can be a very frustrating situation and we want to improve this experience for you while using Microsoft Edge. With that in mind, we have made improvements to how Microsoft Edge is represented in Windows Task Manager and the changes are now available to insiders who are selfhosting BOTH the Microsoft Edge Dev channel 91.0.852.0 AND the Windows Dev channel 21364. Our goal with these improvements is to allow you to better understand where your resources are going and to help you make educated decisions when you experience a performance issue.

 

Currently, when you open Windows Task Manager and expand Microsoft Edge on the Processes tab, you see a list of processes named Microsoft Edge.

 

This is what it currently looks like:

 

Allison_Pastewka_39-1619026098516.png

 

With the latest improvements to Windows Task Manager, you will now see a detailed view of the Microsoft Edge processes. If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Edge’s multi-process architecture, you can find an easy to understand explanation here. In this blog post you will learn why Microsoft Edge has multiple processes running, what the purpose of each process is, and the benefits of a multi-process architecture.

 

This is how Microsoft Edge is represented in Windows Task Manager, with the latest improvements:

 

MissyQ_0-1619107483741.png

 

 

The improvements include:

  • For the browser process, GPU process and crashpad process, you will see the process type

        Allison_Pastewka_22-1619025361686.png

       Allison_Pastewka_23-1619025361691.png

       Allison_Pastewka_24-1619025361692.png

  • For the utility, plug-in, and extension processes, you will see the process type and the name of the service, plug-in, or extension

        Allison_Pastewka_25-1619025361694.png

        Allison_Pastewka_26-1619025361695.png

  • For renderer processes:
    • For tabs you will see the word ‘tab’, and the site name and icon (Note: For InPrivate tabs, site name will be removed and icon will updated to a default tab icon)

                 Allison_Pastewka_27-1619025413856.png

                 Allison_Pastewka_28-1619025413858.png

  •         For subframes (typically used for ads), you will see the word ‘subframe’, followed by the subframe’s URL

                Allison_Pastewka_29-1619025413859.png

  • All dedicated workers and service workers will be listed

        Allison_Pastewka_30-1619025461623.png

  

Each line under Microsoft Edge in Windows Task Manager is NOT ALWAYS a separate process. Some processes contain multiple items and will be represented by multiple lines in Windows Task Manager.

There are multiple ways to distinguish which items are in their own process and which items share a process.

 

Single item in process

Multiple items share a process

There is no arrow next to the icon

 

Allison_Pastewka_31-1619025716205.png

 

There is an arrow next to the icon indicating that the item shares a process with other items. At the end of the title, there will also be a number in parentheses indicating how many other items share that process. The arrow can be clicked to expand the process

 

When the process is collapsed, the arrow points to the right and you will only see one of the items in the process

 

Allison_Pastewka_32-1619025716209.png

 

When the process is expanded, the arrow points down and you will see all the items that share a process with that item (items that are revealed once the arrow is clicked will not have an icon next to it)

 

Allison_Pastewka_33-1619025716213.png

When clicked, only one line is highlighted

 

Allison_Pastewka_34-1619025716214.png

 

When clicked and the process is collapsed, only one line is highlighted

 

Allison_Pastewka_35-1619025716215.png

 

When clicked and the process is expanded, all the items that share a process are highlighted

 

Allison_Pastewka_36-1619025716216.png

Since there is only one item in each process, each line will have its own resource usage

 

Allison_Pastewka_37-1619025716217.png

 

Since multiple items share a process, the item that has the arrow next to it will show you the total resource usage for that process. When expanded, the resource usage for the remaining rows will remain blank

 

Allison_Pastewka_38-1619025716219.png

When clicking ‘End Task’, the single row that is highlighted will be closed

When clicking ‘End Task’, all rows that are highlighted when a process is expanded will be closed. You can only close processes, not individual items in Windows Task Manager

 

When ending tasks, depending on the process that you are ending, you will see different behaviors. A few examples of what you may see are:

  • Browser process: All processes related to that instance of Microsoft Edge will close.
  • GPU process, utility processes: Processes will close and restart. When the processes close, you may see a brief change in your Microsoft Edge window. For example, when the GPU process is closed, your Microsoft Edge window will briefly go black and will return to normal once the process is restarted and when the audio utility process is closed, if you are listening to music, your audio will briefly stop and will return to normal once the process is restarted.
  • Renderer processes: Process will close. If the process contains tabs, all the tabs in the process will be replaced with an error page saying, “This page is having a problem.” If the process contains subframes, the visible subframes will be replaced with a crashed tab icon. For invisible subframes, you likely won’t see a difference, but the page may be affected in some way.
  • Extension and plug-in processes: A balloon will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen saying the extension or plug-in has crashed and will ask you if you would like to reload the extension or plug-in.
  • Crashpad processes: Process will close. Crashes in Microsoft Edge may be reported by other means.
  • Dedicated workers/service workers: Functionality of a tab may break.

 

If you are familiar with the Task Manager in Microsoft Edge, which can be opened by pressing Shift+Esc while in Microsoft Edge or by going to the top corner of the browser and selecting Settings and more (…) More tools > Browser task manager, you will see that the improvements made to Windows Task Manager look similar. We wanted to provide the same level of detail in Windows Task Manager as we do in Browser Task Manager to help you better understand where your resources are going and to help you make educated decisions when you experience a performance issue. One thing to note is that Windows Task Manager shows a different memory value than Browser Task Manager. If you want to learn more about what each value represents, we explain this in detail in the blog post How to investigate Microsoft Edge’s memory usage on Windows and if you are generally interested in learning more about how your browser manages memory, you can learn more here.

 

The changes are currently available to insiders who are selfhosting BOTH the Microsoft Edge Dev channel 91.0.852.0 AND the Windows Dev channel 21364. If you are interested in trying out the improvements and you are not a Windows Insider, you can sign up to become one here and you can find the official Windows announcement here.

 

We would love to hear about your experience troubleshooting Microsoft Edge with the improvements made to Windows Task Manager. If you would like to share your experience/feedback, you can do so by right clicking anywhere on Microsoft Edge in Windows Task Manager and then clicking ‘Provide Feedback’. This button will launch the Windows Feedback Hub. You can also submit feedback directly through Microsoft Edge by going to Settings and more … > Help and feedback > Send feedback or by pressing Shift+Alt+I on a Windows device after you’ve clicked on your browser window.

We hope you enjoy these improvements and look forward to hearing from you!

18 Replies
Hello. Good artkuł any performance improvement thanks to optimisation, it's a step forward!
But I do not see here the default automation consisting of diagnostics and not only it is about showing how it is, but something more = Button eg enable automatic performance improvement as an option! People need it most - IT enthusiasts no longer have time to analyse manually!
Great feature, now Windows task manager is as detailed as Edge's built-in task manager.
Will there be public API, so that we can use this feature, to add better names to subprocesses, in our applications?
Hi!

In build 21370 the echo mod is missing for some reason. in the previous build, the echo mod worked as expected.

@haosmos 


@haosmos wrote:
Hi!

In build 21370 the echo mod is missing for some reason. in the previous build, the echo mod worked as expected.

it's still a controlled feature rollout, Not available to everyone.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/04/21/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-213...

 

NOTE: This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

 

These improvements are welcome! Now the Windows Task Manager is as efficient as the Browser Task Manager in displaying resource usage.
It is very unfortunate that these changes require an insider build of Windows. It will be a while before I can see them because my IT department delays the OS updates by maximum duration allowed (1 year from release date).
Hello!
But this ensures full security of the stable version of Edge - so please understand everyone because I see that the desire to have the latest versions is always
some risk and this must be remembered, and even more so in the enterprise, where to this day some companies use Windows 7 so a one-year delay is the standard!
While I don't like the delay, I leave it to my IT guys to decide what they want to do about the OS updates. My concern here is that the edge team decided to add this only to the latest preview OS. I hoped to see this in at least some older versions. The exact same thing happened with classic edge but in that case, browser was only updated with OS updates.

@PNvmkpk 

 

Hello!

Edge team really trying to dispel your product is this visible and fine-tuning new features requires a common environment and diagnostics. It is unlikely that it is possible to deploy on older versions that are not prepared and do not have the right environment to install! Thank you very much for your interest. Good luck Andrew.

Hello,
I have version 92.0.881.0 canary (64 bits)
I don't have this task manager view. :(
Is it only for dev channel ?
It's still strange how the versioning system is working, Canary 92 has less feature than Dev 91...
Thanks.

@CodeKiller 

Spoiler

@CodeKiller wrote:
Hello,
I have version 92.0.881.0 canary (64 bits)
I don't have this task manager view. :(
Is it only for dev channel ?
It's still strange how the versioning system is working, Canary 92 has less feature than Dev 91...
Thanks.

it's still a controlled feature rollout, not available to everyone. and yes you need to be on the latest Dev build to have this.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/04/21/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-213...

 

 

I would very much like a one-step solution to disabling all Edge system/explorer integration. I have incurred an ungodly amount of Edge-related instability since the Windows update that lets browser tabs populate the alt tab menu (20H2).

(Needless to say, disabling what I can in "Multitasking" does not help. It doesn't actually do much, from what I can tell, since explorer.exe still incurs huge CPU activity spikes based on Edge behavior.)

Besides, the browser task manager has a relatively big performance overhead. How will people be able to use task manager like they always do without these features turning on?

@Allison_Pastewka it is a breeze to see this in action. Thank you to everyone involved for this amazing feature. It is a big step forward.

K_Wester-Ebbinghaus_0-1623270399163.png

 

Entire browser crashes when ever I close the last tab of 'InPrivate' window. This started happening several updates earlier. Couple updates later, it appeared to be fixed but one more update later it came back. It has been almost 10 updates since it started but it is still happening. I hope it is a known issue and will be fixed soon.
Awesome work!
FYI Task Manager crashed on me (22000.120) when in Processes view while Edge Canary was starting in the background.