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Allison_Pastewka
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Joined Aug 29, 2019
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Efficiency mode in Microsoft Edge: Save even more battery life with recent updates
Note: We are in the process of deploying improvements to the feature. Look forward to seeing this soon on your device as we roll this out! Have you ever been working away on your laptop, with a deadline looming, and suddenly, you realize you’re low on battery with your charger nowhere in sight? No one needs that kind of stress – so it’s a good thing Microsoft Edge can help with that. Efficiency mode is designed to help extend battery life and we have made improvements to save you battery not only when unplugged and low on battery but also when just unplugged! The feature was originally released in Stable 101 and in initial testing on Surface devices, efficiency mode has been shown to save you on average 25 minutes of battery and with these new improvements, you can expect your battery life to be further extended. We stretch your battery life as much as we can by reducing your devices resource usage and that leads to less power being used. Benefits may vary depending on your device, applications, and individual browser habits. With our latest improvements, when your laptop detects that you are on battery, efficiency mode kicks in, enabling power saving features when you’re both interacting and not interacting with the browser. There are multiple options for efficiency mode and each option will behave differently. ‘Balanced Savings’ - recommended option: When your device is unplugged but not low on battery -> Efficiency mode will take moderate steps to save your battery. Changes made to the browser will have little to no impact on your browsing experience. When your device is unplugged and low on battery (on Windows, device enters battery saver mode, on Mac, device reaches 20%) -> Efficiency mode will take additional steps to save battery. The increased changes being made to your browser may have a visible impact on your browsing experience, for example, it may cause videos to be less smooth. You will know when efficiency mode is taking these additional steps when the filled “heart pulse” icon appears in your toolbar. ‘Maximum Savings’: When your device is unplugged and at any battery level -> Efficiency mode will take additional steps to save battery for the entire time that your device is unplugged. The changes being made to your browser will be the same as when additional steps are taken in ‘Balanced Savings’. The changes to your browser may have a visible impact on your browsing experience, for example, it may cause videos to be less smooth. ‘Turn on efficiency mode when connected to power’: When your device is connected to power -> Efficiency mode will take moderate steps to save power if ‘Balanced Savings’ is selected and will take additional steps to save power if ‘Maximum Savings’ is selected. We do our best to minimize efficiency mode’s impact to your browsing experience, but for scenarios where performance is important like gaming in the browser, we recommend excluding those sites from efficiency mode by adding them to the block list in edge://settings/system. We are eager to get your feedback on efficiency mode. If you see an issue with this feature, turn off the feature to see if it fixes the issue and let us know through Microsoft Edge by pressing Shift+Alt+I on a Windows device or going to Settings and more … > Help and feedback > Send feedback. You may see the newly updated version of efficiency mode in Microsoft Edge 106. If you see this feature while browsing, please join us here on the Microsoft Edge Insider forums or Twitter to discuss your experience or send us your feedback through the browser! We hope you enjoy these exciting new improvements and look forward to hearing from you! - The Microsoft Edge Product TeamMicrosoft Edge Windows Task Manager Improvements
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: 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: The improvements include: For the browser process, GPU process and crashpad process, you will see the process type For the utility, plug-in, and extension processes, you will see the process type and the name of the service, plug-in, or extension 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) For subframes (typically used for ads), you will see the word ‘subframe’, followed by the subframe’s URL All dedicated workers and service workers will be listed 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 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 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) When clicked, only one line is highlighted When clicked and the process is collapsed, only one line is highlighted When clicked and the process is expanded, all the items that share a process are highlighted Since there is only one item in each process, each line will have its own resource usage 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 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!Re: Have feedback on the memory/CPU usage on Edge? We're Listening!
rickyromero Thank you very much for your feedback! Are you and your wife on the latest versions of Edge Dev and Edge Beta? There have been some product changes made recently addressing high CPU usage on Mac. The changes are in Edge Dev but have not made it to Edge Beta yet. If you are still experiencing issues on the latest versions, can you please submit in-product feedback and we can follow up with you for more information if need be. Thanks!Re: Have feedback on the memory/CPU usage on Edge? We're Listening!
josegime47 For privacy reasons, can you please file feedback (click on the smile in the top right hand corner) and in that feedback item can you please provide what device you are seeing the issue on, including the specs of the device (memory/RAM + processor), what OS build you are on, what beta build you are on and steps that I can follow to try and repro the issue. Please be sure to provide your email address in the feedback item so that I can continue to follow up with you. When you have submitted the feedback please let me know. Thanks for your willingness to provide more information!Re: Have feedback on the memory/CPU usage on Edge? We're Listening!
harbortype Thanks for reaching out! I just tried the repro steps that you provided on Dev build 79.0.301.2 and didn't see a spike in CPU. Can you please try updating your Dev build to see if the issue still persists and let me know. Thanks!Have feedback on the memory/CPU usage on Edge? We're Listening!
Greetings Microsoft Edge Insiders! My name is Allison and I am a PM working on improving the performance of the new Microsoft Edge browser. Previously, your feedback let us know that there are times when Edge uses too much memory and CPU. When was the last time this happened to you? What were you doing in this situation? What was your biggest concern about that amount of memory and CPU usage? We are curious about this and would love to learn more. Thank you for giving us your honest feedback. I look forward to hearing more about where you see Microsoft Edge meeting your expectations, and where it isn’t. Allison -The Microsoft Edge Team-
