Modern browsers consume a lot of resources, especially RAM and processor memory. This not only affects performance, but also battery life in laptops. Microsoft Edge adds a feature under development that allows us to manage the amount of RAM that the browser uses.
First of all, you should know that Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium, which is the basis of the Google Chrome browser. This base is used in other browsers, each making the adjustments they want to adapt to their requirements.
Recently, a feature has been integrated that allows you to control the amount of system memory used by Edge. It is not a very well-known option, as Microsoft has not reported on it, it has simply added it and that’s it. We are going to explain how to activate the feature and how you can use it.
Manage the RAM used by the Edge browser
This new feature is not currently available to all users, it is only accessible to those who have the “Canary” version. This version is for testing new functions and features before anyone else, which will later be rolled out in the general version.
To enable the RAM management feature in Edge you must follow these steps:
- Download Edge Canary directly from this website and then install it. Note that this installs an alternative version of the browser, so we will have two different Edges on our PC.
- Next, you need to right-click on the Edge Canary shortcut.
- Within the menu we have to go to the “Properties” option
- The “Properties” window now opens on the “Shortcut” tab.
- We go to “Destination” and at the end of the address that appears, just after the quotation marks msedge.exe We must put the following code: –enable-features=msEdgeResourceControlsRamLimiter
- We click on the “Apply” button.
- We close this window and the browser.
The new feature will already be enabled in the browser, only in the Canary version, not in the ‘normal’ one. Once we have everything, we open the Edge Canary browser (the label “CAN” appears on a yellow background). Now, you must follow these steps:
- Tap the three dots in the top right corner.
- Scroll down to the “Settings” option.
- In the left column, click on the “System and performance” option.
- You should scroll down until you find the “Manage your performance” option.
- You will see the “Resource Controls” option appear with the label “New.” Tap the toggle to open this feature.
- The “Control how much RAM Edge can use” feature tells us the total amount of RAM in the system and how much is available to the browser. We can move the slider and enable 8GB, 10GB, or whatever amount we want.
- Now we need to tell it when the amount of RAM will be limited, which is under “Choose when to control resources.” We have two options:
- When you play on PC: It is designed so that when we play, Edge does not occupy the RAM memory. We can enable 2 GB for browser cache and the rest available for games.
- Always: If we activate this option, the browser will never be able to exceed the amount of RAM allocated. This may cause it to clear the cache of background or inactive tabs.
At the very least, it is an interesting feature that can be useful in games or when performing heavy tasks that require a lot of RAM.