Category: Microsoft Edge

In a post on the official Windows Blogs website, Microsoft announced major changes in how the Edge browser reports its resource usage in Task Manager. Those improvements will help users better understand the browser's behavior and quickly detect tabs that consume too much RAM or CPU. No more closing pages blindly to spot the problematic component.

After killing Reading List in the Edge Legacy (Microsoft stopped supporting the browser in March 2021), Microsoft puts a lot of effort into improving the Collections feature. Collections allow you to store various web pages, notes, images, pins from Pinterest, and other content in customizable sets, which you can also export to other apps.

Earlier this month, Microsoft Edge users started reporting issues using digital pens (styluses like Surface Pen or similar) in the browser. The official Microsoft Edge Dev account confirmed the problem and notified users that the necessary patches are already available in the Canary and Beta channels. A few days later, Microsoft started rolling out the bug fix for all users in the stable channel.

Microsoft Word and Outlook have a built-in extension for advanced spelling and grammar correction called "Microsoft Editor." Those not using Office apps and not paying for the Microsoft 365 subscription can still use Microsoft Editor in their browser: the company offers the Microsoft Editor extension for Chromium-based browsers, such as Edge or Chromium.

Microsoft has released a new Chromium-based build of Microsoft Edge, 96.0.1032.0, to the Dev Channel. The update brought with it several new features as well as various fixes and improvements.

Unlike Edge Legacy, which Microsoft buried earlier this year, Edge Chromium works much better with progressive web apps (PWA). The browser can automatically detect when a website has a PWA, and allows installing it with a single click. Users can even turn regular websites into apps to pin them to the taskbar for quick access.

The latest version of Microsoft Edge Canary has finally fixed one of the most annoying issues related to how the browser handles extensions on the toolbar. In the current stable version of Edge, disabling the Extensions button will cause all your extensions to instantly appear on the toolbar. That might not be a problem for those with one or two add-ons, but things get ugly when the user has lots of them installed. Luckily, Microsoft has finally listened to users and addressed the issue.

You can disable the Visual Search button in Microsoft Edge, which appears for images starting in version 96 of the browser. In Edge 96, Microsoft introduced a new Visual Search button that allows users to pick an image on the open web page and search for similar images using Bing Visual Search. The new feature saves users lots of clicks and makes looking for pictures much more convenient.

Google, Bing, and other popular search engines have a tool that lets you upload a picture and search on the Internet for similar images. The procedure is not the most convenient because it requires saving an image locally, opening a search engine, launching an image search, and uploading the picture. To make things easier, Microsoft is working on a dedicated Visual Search button to pull an image off a webpage and directly upload it to the Bing Image search for finding similar pics. All it takes is just a single click.

Microsoft today released a new version of its Chromium-based Edge browser. It is a significant update to the Dev channel, as it comes with a number of new options. For example, the Web Widget is now customizable, and the Office viewer feature is now enabled by default.