thanks for the additional info, ill compile a 4MB version and test soon.You should compile it for a 4MB board. It will still work on your board (but the flash will show less space).
I think you are confused about sleep functions, you should check this page - https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/api-reference/system/sleep_modes.html
It will show you how they work, that code line to sleep for 1 micro second was added on purpose so that the esp32-s3 had time to do something else in the browser or something else, I can't remember of the top of my head but it wasn't just added for no reason.
ill also have a peek at that sleep modes documentation. i left the esp_deep_sleep(1) /reboot alone and added a ESP.restart() call at /reboot-hard and am only using it for the firmware update page after a firmware flash (this worked great when i tested). the other pages are still using the /reboot call which does the esp_deep_sleep(1)







