As is customary every week, Microsoft is releasing a new Edge Dev build to users running the Dev version of the Chromium-based browser. Today’s build has a few new features for highlighting text in PDF using a pen tool, Collections improvements, and the ability to record and submit a video when submitting feedback from the browser.
The release also brings the recently spotted secure DNS feature that lets users to default to DNS over HTTPS (DoH), making DNS requests secure by encrypting them. The firm released Edge 86 to the Dev branch back in July and added a host of new features. However, the subsequent releases have been light on features.
Here is the list of all new features being added with this release:
- Added the ability to use a pen to highlight PDFs.
- Added a setting for using a secure DNS.
- Added the ability to get suggestions for Collections from Pinterest and to export Collections to Pinterest.
- Added the ability to sort items in a Collection by name.
- Added a Paste option to a Collection’s … menu.
- Added support for creating a video reproduction of an issue when submitting feedback.
- Enabled support for the Default Serial Guard Setting management policy from Chromium.
- Enabled support for the Serial Ask For Urls management policy from Chromium.
- Enabled support for the Serial Blocked For Urls management policy from Chromium.
As with all releases, there are fixes for reliability and changed behavior. Here are the fixes that will improve the reliability of the browser:
- Fixed an issue where popups such as the Translation or Sign In popup sometimes crash the browser when they’re closed or dismissed.
- Fixed an issue where opening certain links from the New Tab Page in a new InPrivate window crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where uninstalling a website installed as an app sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where an Edge hang sometimes causes the entire device to hang.
- Fixed an issue where Edge Insider channels can’t be uninstalled.
- Fixed an issue where browsing data is not deleted when windows for a specific profile are closed (instead, it’s only deleted if all windows are closed) if the option to automatically delete it is enabled and there are windows for another profile that remain open.
Here are the fixes for changed behavior, including a fix for the issue with Discord:
- Fixed an issue where certain websites like Discord don’t load.
- Fixed an issue where websites installed as apps sometimes open in regular tabs instead of their own tab-less windows.
- Fixed an issue where usernames are incorrectly identified as non-username fields or vice versa in autofill suggestion popups.
- Fixed an issue on Mac where the video Touchbar sometimes appears on pages without videos.
- Fixed an issue where refreshing a page after it’s been translated prevents it from being translated again.
- Fixed an issue where there is sometimes no dialog confirming that caret browsing mode is being turned off.
- Fixed an issue where clicking a link in a PDF that’s supposed to scroll it to a different location in the PDF doesn’t scroll it to the correct location.
- Fixed an issue where the Autofill popup sometimes doesn’t display completely.
- Fixed an issue where Guest windows are sometimes incorrectly detected as InPrivate windows.
- Fixed an issue where Read Aloud sometimes highlighted the wrong words when reading PDFs.
- Fixed an issue where exiting fullscreen sometimes causes the Tab band to become all black.
- Fixed an issue where certain context menu icons, such as for “Move tab to another window”, are missing.
Lastly, there are a bunch of known issues that users must be aware of:
- 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.
- Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error. The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it.
- 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.
The firm recently detailed a new URL pasting feature that directly pastes copied URLs as linked text instead of plain text in text boxes on Windows. The feature is currently available for Canary users and will make it to other branches soon.
As usual, today’s Dev channel update will automatically pulled by the browser in the background. Users can also get the update by heading to the ellipsis menu (…) > Help and feedback > About Microsoft Edge to force the browser to check for updates.