Microsoft Edge has steadily been seeing improvements over the course of the year, and a fresh innovation in testing promises to boost the performance of the browser. It does so by keeping a close eye out for any misbehaving extensions which are consuming too much in the way of resources.
Neowin spotted the introduction of the feature called ‘extension performance detector’ in Edge (Canary v130, meaning an early test version), which warns you if any browser extensions are slowing down Edge repeatedly over time.
The notification that pops up as a warning when this happens tells you how much slowdown your browser extensions are causing, and breaks down the impact of each extension, with the worst offenders at the top. You can hit a button to turn off any of these extensions right there and then to improve your browser’s performance.
Extensions can be really useful - but they can also carry potential pitfalls
For the uninitiated, browser extensions are compact add-ons installed in Edge (or other browsers) that add extra features. For example, they can instantly translate the contents of a web page, or read a page out aloud to you.
While such add-ons can deliver powerful bits of extra functionality in a convenient way, some extensions can malfunction and potentially drag down your browser’s performance, or worse still, perhaps the overall performance of your device.
Right now, as noted, this feature is only available in the Canary build of Edge (where it can be enabled using a flag). It’s likely to be unstable in its current experimental form, but hopefully, Microsoft will iron out any problems, and the extension performance detector tool will come to the full release of Edge eventually.
I’m looking forward to this capability arriving in the stable version of Edge, as extensions can certainly mess with your browser’s performance in some cases, and sometimes without you even realizing that it’s an extension that’s causing the trouble. So, a feature that keeps a constant lookout for such misfiring extensions is going to be worth its weight in gold.
Microsoft has made a number of improvements to Edge throughout 2024, including other work to boost performance of the browser, and to better organize and streamline Edge’s Settings page, which is a rather sprawling mess these days.
