What you need to know
- A new update is going out to the Microsoft Edge Stable channel.
- This update brings highlights like extension sync, automatic profile switching, and Collections improvements.
- The update is rolling out now for the Stable release as version 83.0.478.37.
Microsoft shipped out a new version of the Microsoft Edge Stable channel today, and it brings with it several features and improvements that have been in testing through the Canary, Dev, and Beta channels for some time. The biggest highlight of this release is the arrival of extension syncing, which will keep all of your extensions synced up across Edge on all of your devices. People signed in to multiple work profiles will also now be able to take advantage of automatic profile switching.
There are other updates throughout the browser, including some general improvements to the Collections feature and updates for immersive reader. Here's a full look at what's new in Edge version 83.0.478.37 on the Stable channel.
- Microsoft Edge updates will now roll out gradually. Going forward, updates for Microsoft Edge will be rolled out to our users over a period of a few days. This enables us to protect more of you from accidental buggy updates, which improves your update experience.
- Microsoft Defender SmartScreen improvements: Made several improvements to the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen service, such as improved protection from malicious sites that redirect when loading, and top-level frame blocking, which completely replaces malicious sites with the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen safety page.
- In response to user feedback, users can now exempt certain cookies from automatically clearing when the browser closes. This option is helpful if there's a site that users don't want to be signed out of, but still want to have all the other cookies cleared when the browser closes.
- Automatic Profile Switching is now available to help you get to your work content more easily across profiles. If you use multiple profiles at work, you can check it out by navigating to a site requiring authentication from your work or school account while on your personal profile. When we detect this, you will receive a prompt to switch to your work profile to access that site without having to authenticate to it.
- Collections feature improvements:
- You can use drag and drop to add an item to a collection without opening the collection. During the drag and drop you can also choose a location in the collection list where you want to put the item.
- You can add multiple items to a collection instead of adding one item at a time. To add multiple items, select the items and then drag them to a collection. Or you can select the items, right-click and then pick the collection where you want the items.
- You can add all the tabs in an Edge window into a new collection without adding them individually. To do this, right-click on any tab and choose "Add all tabs to a new collection".
- Extension sync is now available. You can now sync your extensions across all your devices! Extensions from both the Microsoft and Chrome Stores will sync with Microsoft Edge.
- Improved the message on the Downloads management page for insecure downloads that have been blocked.
- Immersive Reader improvements:
- Added support for Adverbs in the Parts of Speech experience we have in Immersive Reader. While reading an article within the Immersive Reader, open the Grammar Tools and switch on Adverbs within Parts of Speech to highlight all the adverbs on the page.
- Added the ability to select any content on a webpage and open it in Immersive Reader. This ability enables users to use the Immersive Reader and all the Learning Tools, such as Line Focus and Read Aloud, across all websites.
- Link doctor provides host correction and a search query to the users when they mistype a URL.
- Allow users to save their decision to launch an external protocol for a specific site. Users can configure the ExternalProtocolDialogShowAlwaysOpenCheckbox policy to enable or disable this feature.
- Users can set Microsoft Edge as their default browser directly from Microsoft Edge Settings.
- Several DevTools updates, including new remote debugging support, UI improvements, and more.
- MCAS (Microsoft Cloud Access Security) warn scenario is now available. This enables admins to set up warn, a new category of MCAS blocks, where the user can override a MCAS block page.
- Disallow synchronous XmlHttpRequest in page dismissal. Sending of synchronous XmlHttpRequests during unload of a webpage will be removed. This change improves browser performance and reliability, but may impact web applications that have not yet been updated to use more modern web APIs, including sendBeacon and fetch.
If you're already using the release version of Microsoft Edge, you should see this stable channel update automatically installed the next time you restart your browser. To install it manually, you can head to the "About Microsoft Edge" section of the settings menu.
To check out the new Microsoft Edge, you can download the stable version from the official Microsoft Edge site. To test new features while they're still in the works, you can also opt to install the Canary, Dev, or Beta channels from the Edge Insider site.
