Microsoft has announced that it"s changing the way that its Edge browser updates on macOS, and it should be making it easier on everyone. Right now, it uses Microsoft AutoUpdate, a service that"s typically used for updating Office apps. Naturally, Microsoft listened to feedback and is going to make it work more like Edge on other platforms.
There were three key pieces of feedback noted. One is that it"s confusing to use AutoUpdate, since it"s primarily for Office apps, and you might have to wait for pending updates to finish before you can get your Edge update. Also, edge://settings/help wasn"t always consistent with what showed in AutoUpdate, and finally, update experience wasn"t fast. When you restart your browser, you have to wait until the update is applied before you can open it again.
If you only use Edge on Windows, all of this sounds insane. On Windows, Edge silently updates in the background, and if you restart the browser to apply an update, it restarts instantly. Edge on macOS is going to work like that from now on, so instead of AutoUpdate handling the job, Edge is just going to update itself.
As of right now, this change is available on Edge Canary for Intel-based Macs, and it"s behind a feature flag that you have to enable. It will be available for Apple Silicon Macs soon.