Yesterday Microsoft released Windows 10 Build 21364 to the Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel. The latest build from the co_release branch comes with some new features and improvements. If you are a WSL fan, this build comes with support to run Linux GUI applications on Windows.
This build also includes two new features to Windows 10 Task Manager. The first one is the ability to reduce resource consumption, and the second one is an experimental feature to throttle the process resources. Let's drive into the features and learn more about them.
With the latest Windows 10 Preview Build 21364, Microsoft now allows you to identify the resource consumption of Microsoft Edge within the Windows 10 Task Manager. The classification is broken down into several different components like tabs, browser processes, plugins, workers, etc. It also features separate icons for each process to help you identify them including the favorite icon for websites.
This feature is now available to a subset of Windows Insiders who are running the latest version of Microsoft Edge Canary or Dev builds. Microsoft said that the feature will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel. So, if you don't see it immediately after upgrading to this build, please have some patience.
The next new feature of Windows 10 Task Manager that comes with this build is an experimental "Eco Mode". It provides users with an option to throttle process resources. It will also help you to easily identify the apps that are already running in Eco Mode. By assigning a process as "Eco mode", you can limit its resource consumption and provide priority to other apps. Microsoft said that it will lead to faster foreground responsiveness and better energy efficiency.
If “Eco mode” is greyed out, then it’s a parent/group process. You can expand the process tree to apply Eco mode to one of its child processes. And if Microsoft Edge (or Chrome) is showing “Eco mode” as enabled but you did not apply it, this is due to both Microsoft Edge and Chrome experimenting with lowering base priority and applying power efficiency APIs to improve performance which is similar to what Task Manager is doing to identify “Eco” efficient apps. You may see other apps with “Eco mode” if they adapt to similar techniques to improve performance.
This feature is also rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel. You may have to wait for few days if you don't get it immediately after upgrading to this build.