Just like last week, Microsoft has released this week"s build of the Edge browser to the Dev channel on a Wednesday, bringing the version number up to 86.0.601.1. Unlike the past two releases, which included pretty lengthy lists of changes and new features, this one is slightly more mild, with a handful of smaller new features and the usual array of fixes.
In terms of what"s new, Microsoft has officially enabled support for the Storage Access API, which was previously only available as a controlled rollout to some users. Here"s everything that"s new:
- Added support to Kiosk mode for an automatic browser restart when it’s idle.
- Enabled support for the Storage Access API. Note that this was previously under a controlled rollout.
- Enabled a feature from Chromium that forces websites to specify the SameSite=None attribute in order to use third-party cookies. By default, cookies without this attribute will be treated as if they’re SameSite=Lax. See https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/samesite-cookie-changes-in-february.html for more details.
Of course, there"s the usual two types of fixes, the ones related to reliability and the ones that change Edge"s behavior. The reliability list is fairly short this week:
- Fixed an issue on Mac where browser sign-in or sync sometimes fails.
- Fixed a crash when submitting feedback.
- Fixed a crash when printing.
- Fixed an issue where opening Settings in a Guest window crashes the browser.
As for the behavior fixes, there are quite a few, including a fix for the translation prompt not appearing when visiting a webpage in a foreign language. Here"s the full list:
- Fixed an issue where the smooth-scrolling flag went missing.
- Fixed an issue where certain webpages can’t be translated because the prompt to translate them doesn’t appear.
- Fixed an issue where tooltips sometimes get stuck onscreen, even when Edge isn’t the active window.
- Fixed an issue where changing a profile picture for profiles that aren’t signed in doesn’t work.
- Fixed an issue on Mac where entering fullscreen mode sometimes results in the Shy UI not working.
- Fixed an issue where data sometimes can’t be imported from Firefox because it’s missing from the list of available browsers.
- Fixed an issue where scrolling sometimes doesn’t work when viewing PDFs.
- Fixed an issue where pasting Information Protected content into a PDF sometimes doesn’t work as expected.
- Deprecated the User Agent Client Hints Enabled management policy.
- Obsoleted the TLS 1.3 Hardening For Local Anchors Enabled management policy.
As usual, this release also comes with a lengthy list of known issues, including a potential crash on startup for those running beta version of macOS 11 Big Sur. Here"s the full list:
- Mac users running the OS 11 preview (Big Sur) may have issues with all versions of Edge either crashing or not launching to begin with. We’ve identified the issue and are working to get it resolved before Big Sur is officially released.
- Users with certain hardware are seeing changes in scrolling behavior that are unintended. For example, pages scroll much faster than they used to. We’re currently investigating.
- Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on Youtube. As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed. See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/known-issue-adblock-causing-errors-on-youtube/m-p/14... for more details.
- Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load. This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
- Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before. Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available. However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.
- After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black. Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it. Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window. For users with discrete GPUs, updating graphics drivers may help.
- Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
- There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it. In another, restarting the browser fixes it.
If you"ve been having issues with voice search on Google, Microsoft has a fix in the works and it should be available in September. The latest update should install automatically soon, but you can always head into the browser settings to get it right away.