Back in December 2018, Microsoft first announced that it"s rebuilding its Edge browser from the open source Chomium. Today, the new browser is generally available. Of course, that leaves the next question, which is how you"ll be able to get it, and what Microsoft"s plans for the rollout are.
First of all, if you want it right now, you can download it here. In fact, if you want it on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or macOS, downloading it that way is the only way that you"ll get it. If you do this on Windows 10, it will hide the old Edge browser.
If you"re on Windows 10 and you don"t want to grab it manually, then it will arrive in a future Windows update, at least for Home and Pro editions. However, it"s going to be a gradual rollout over the next few months, and the first users to get it automatically will be Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring.
Managed devices are not going to be automatically upgraded, nor are devices running Windows 10 Education, Enterprise, or Pro for Workstations, at least at this time. You can also block the automatic upgrade on Windows 10 Home or Pro using the Blocker Toolkit.
Microsoft says that eventually, it plans to have Edge on a six-week update schedule, and that was always the plan. Right now though, things are a bit behind. Microsoft announced the Edge GA date back in early November, putting Edge 79 in the Beta channel. That means that it"s been about 10 weeks since Edge Beta got a proper refresh.
Edge 80 is actually going to hit the stable channel in early February. In fact, the Canary and Dev channel have been on Edge 81 for weeks now. So, Edge 80 will hit the Beta channel soon, probably some time this week, and then it"s going to be pushed out in a few weeks, to be replaced by Edge 81 in the Beta channel.
Once installed, Edge Chromium won"t require Windows updates to keep itself updated, like Edge Spartan did. It will be able to keep itself updated, and it will do so in the background.