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Have you encountered the"High Memory Usage Detected"warning while browsing on Microsoft Edge? It means some of the browser processes are using too much memory (RAM).
Thankfully, you can easily identify and close those resource-hungry processes and customize a few browser features to reduce memory usage.
1. Preliminary Checks
Start the Microsoft Edge troubleshooting process by applying the following checks and fixes:
If the above preliminary checks don’t fix the problem, and you encounter the warning again, apply the remaining fixes.
2. Close Resource-Intensive Processes
Next, close the resource-hungry processes to free up memory resources. The built-in task manager in Microsoft Edge makes this very simple.
Ensure you don’t shut down essential browser processes (like the GPU process or the browser process itself) and save changes before closing any tab.
3. Enable Edge Efficiency Mode
Edge efficiency mode is designed to minimize power consumption, and it does so by reducing resource usage. When enabled, efficiency mode puts inactive tabs to sleep and optimizes the other tab activities to keep memory usage to a minimum, reducing memory usage.
4. Disable Hardware Acceleration and Startup Boost
Hardware acceleration offloads some processing tasks from the CPU and uses your specialized hardware, such as GPU, to handle them, improving browser performance. Likewise, startup boost preloads some necessary browser processes to launch your browser more quickly.
These features speed up your browser but at the cost of slightly more memory usage. So, you’re able to free up your system resources by disabling them.
5. Check for Browser Malware
Browser malware is often programmed to mine crypto or assist other computing needs of cybercriminals. When your device gets infected with malware, memory usage will increase dramatically as the malware uses your system resources.
To ensure your browser isn’t hijacked, close all tabs after saving progress and restart it. After that, leave the browser idle for a few seconds. Then, open a resource monitoring application, such as Windows Task Manager or macOS Activity Monitor, and determine how much memory the browser consumes as it sits idle.
If the memory consumption is high, even when no processes are running, your browser could be hijacked or infected. Therefore, scan your browser using a security extension or an anti-malware app and remove the hijacker.
6. Disable Browser Extensions
Turn off any browser extensions and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, then one (or more) of your browser extensions is consuming too much memory. To figure out which browser extension is causing the issue, enable all extensions and then turn them off one by one. As you do that, observe memory usage in the browser’s task manager.
If turning off a particular extension suddenly decreases memory use, that’s the culprit. So,keep that extension disabled or remove it permanently.
7. Apply Browser-Specific Fixes
If the error persists after applying the above fixes, you shouldclear the browser cacheto remove outdated records. If this doesn’t work, try resetting your browser to ensure misconfigured settings aren’t to blame. If that also fails, reinstall the browser from scratch—but hopefully, it doesn’t come to that!
