If you have dozens of tabs open in Microsoft Edge and you click the “X” in the top-right corner to close the browser, you might expect a fresh, clean slate the next time you launch the application. However, Edge is often configured to automatically resume your previous browsing session, instantly reloading all 30 of your previously opened tabs the moment the browser starts.
While this is an excellent feature if your computer crashes unexpectedly, it is incredibly annoying if you intentionally closed the browser to clear your workspace. Automatically loading dozens of heavy webpages on startup consumes massive amounts of RAM and severely bottlenecks your internet connection, making the browser feel sluggish for the first few minutes of use.
You can change Edge’s startup behavior so that it always opens to a clean, empty New Tab page.
How to Stop Edge from Reloading Old Tabs
This setting is controlled in the “Start, home, and new tabs” menu.
- Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
- Click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Start, home, and new tabs.
- Look under the “When Edge starts” section at the top of the page.
- You will likely see that “Open tabs from the previous session” is currently selected.
- Change the selection to Open the New Tab page (or select Open these pages if you want it to always open a specific website like Google.com).
The next time you close Microsoft Edge and reopen it, you will be greeted by a single, lightweight New Tab page, ensuring your browser launches instantly and doesn’t drain your system resources.