When Microsoft released Windows 10 build 17623 to Skip Ahead today, one of the "changes, improvements, and fixes" listed was that the company is going to start testing a feature that will force users of the Windows 10 Mail app to open links in the Edge browser. Dona Sarkar, who wrote the blog post, said that Edge "provides the best, most secure and consistent experience on Windows 10 and across your devices."
The only problem is that not everyone feels that way. Many users have Chrome, Firefox, or something else set as their default browser, and Microsoft wants to subvert that in order to get them to use its own in-house solution. Luckily, Windows 10"s default Mail app isn"t the only email client that you can use.
This isn"t the first time that Microsoft has done something like this with Windows 10. In April 2016, it announced that Cortana will be locked down so that it will only work with Bing and Edge. Then, last May when the company launched Windows 10 S, it confirmed that users won"t even have the option to switch their default browser or search engine on the new SKU of the OS.
Luckily, Microsoft is only testing the feature, and it will take feedback from the Windows Insider community. Depending on how that goes, it may decide to push the feature. But make no mistake, despite the fact that this showed up in a Redstone 5 build, it will be made available through a Mail & Calendar app update, meaning that this could be pushed through at any time.
If you"re in the Skip Ahead subset of the Fast ring and you want to leave feedback on the new feature, you can do so via the Feedback Hub.