A few days ago, Microsoft restored the ability to enable the Mica material in Edge Canary using an experimental flag. Customers who do not like the translucent user interface can opt for one of the prebuilt themes or create a custom one using a new feature Microsoft introduced in the latest Canary update.
The option sits in the Appearance > Theme section. Click the first theme with a color picker and specify your desired color. You can use a color palette or HEX, RGB, or HSL codes. Clicking outside the selector will apply the selected color to the tab strip, toolbar, and sidebar. Note that using a custom theme will turn off the Mica material.
The ability to create a custom theme in Microsoft Edge Canary is available to a subset of Edge Insiders. Here is how to force-enable it using the enable-features command if you do not have access to the feature without tinkering:
- Update Microsoft Edge Canary to version 120.0.2183.0 by navigating to edge://settings/help.
- Close the browser, right-click its shortcut, and select Properties.
- Click the Target field and place one space after the path.
- Paste the following command: --enable-features=msSettingsThemesColorPicker
- Click OK to save the changes, then launch Microsoft Edge using the modified shortcut.
- Go to Settings > Appearance or use the edge://settings/appearance link.
- Click the Pick a color button.
Other changes and features Microsoft is testing for its browser include improvements for the Split Screen feature, password manager enhancements, better inking, and more. If you are tempted to try using Edge Canary, keep in mind that the channel is extremely bug-prone, and its updates often break Edge or render it borderline unusable.
You can download Microsoft Edge Canary from the official website. It is available on Windows 10 and 11 (older versions are no longer supported), macOS, Linux, and Android.