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✅ Sleep & Performance

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Sleep Mode helps Wavebox save memory and system resources by suspending inactive apps and tabs—while still keeping them just a click away. When you're ready, they instantly spring back to life, right where you left off. Sleep is essential for keeping lots of tabs open without slowing down your machine.

Wavebbox's built-in sleep manage means you donl't need to use any additional performance extensions for tab suspension or hibernation.

What is Sleep Mode?

When an app or tab hasn’t been used in a while—or if your system is low on memory—Wavebox may automatically put it to sleep. You’ll see the icon or tab greyed out, indicating that it’s sleeping. Once you click on it again, it wakes up and returns to the last page you were on.

Sleep Mode makes it possible to keep hundreds of tabs open without impacting performance.

Default Sleep Settings

  • By default, all apps and tabs will sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity
  • Sleeping spaces, apps or tabs will appear gray, but you can change this in Settings.
  • Only Integrated Apps receive updates when asleep. These are; Slack, Trello, Gmail, ClickUp.
  • All other sleeping apps will not receive updates for badges and notifications, unless you activate the auto-wake feature.

Sleeping Spaces, Groups, Apps, and Tabs

Why are your icons grey? By default, when a space, group, app, or tab is sleeping, it will be greyed out. This can be changed in Settings:

  • App-wide change: Settings > General Tab > Groups & Apps : Show sleeping groups and apps in grey > Toggle ON/OFF.
  • Space icons: Settings > General Tab > Webdock Spaces: Show sleeping spaces in grey > Toggle ON/OFF.

Manually Sleep Groups, Apps, and Tabs

You can manually sleep apps, tabs, or entire groups to free up resources instantly:

  1. Right-click on the app, tab, or group icon.
  2. Select Sleep from the menu.

The item will remain asleep until you click it again.

Manual sleep is great for tab-heavy workflows—e.g., when you're done using a group in the morning and want to pause it for the rest of the day.

⚙️ Customize Sleep Settings

Sleep Mode is flexible! Wavebox offers various global and per-app options so that Sleep runs exactly how you need it to.

Open Settings > General Tab > Sleep to adjust global options:

  • Sleep tabs when memory is low
    Toggle ON or OFF to auto-manage performance using sleep.
  • Sleep tabs after X minutes of inactivity
    Toggle ON or OFF. Then, use the slider to set a timeout period.
  • Exclude specific URLs from Sleep
    Enter URLs you want to keep active at all times.
  • Show sleeping icons in grey
    Space, group, apps and tabs are greyed out when sleeping.
    Turn this off in Settings if you prefer not to show the change visually.
  • Main window tabs inherit sleep
    Tabs opened in apps will follow that app’s sleep settings.
    Turn this off to use global sleep settings instead.
  • Sleep on low memory
    When your system is under memory pressure, Wavebox will force-sleep selected apps.
    You can disable this option if required.

⚙️ App-Specific Sleep Settings

Each app also has its own sleep settings:

  1. Right-click on any app icon.
  2. Go to Settings > App Settings > Account & Behaviour.

Here, you can turn sleep on/off or fine-tune timing for specific use cases:

  • Keep productivity apps (e.g., Zendesk or Gmail) always awake
  • Enable sleep on occasional-use tools (e.g., Grammarly)
Customizing per-app sleep options helps balance performance and responsiveness.

📊 See How Much Memory Sleep Saves

Use the Stats Widget to track how much memory Sleep is saving in real-time:

  1. Open any workspace.
  2. Click the Add Widget button (top-right corner).
  3. Choose My Wavebox from the Widget Library.

The widget displays sleep savings over various timeframes:

  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • This week
  • Last 30 days

It also shows time spent in each app and how many apps/tabs have been slept.

For example: Over 30 days, Sleep might save 65GB of memory—keeping both Wavebox and your entire system running smoothly.

Sleep Mode is a powerful way to keep Wavebox fast, light, and efficient—no matter how many tabs or apps you use. Try manually sleeping a few groups or customize settings in the Sleep panel to tailor your experience.