Microsoft has released the latest build of the Chromium-based Edge browser to Insiders users in the Dev channel of the Insider program. The release is happening a little later than usual, and Microsoft says that"s because of the ongoing events around COVID-19. Nonetheless, it"s a brand new build, and it"s the first Dev build to be based on Chromium version 83, which has so far only been in the Canary channel.
Builds that update the Chromium version often don"t come with much that"s new, but Microsoft does list a few additions this time around. However, things like the ability to add all tabs to a Collection were already added last week, so it"s not really new with this build. Either way, here"s the official changelog:
- Added the ability to sync Extensions.
- Added a page to Settings to manage Family Safety settings.
- Added the ability to add all tabs to a Collection.
- Added the ability to drag multiple items from a webpage into a Collection at once on certain websites.
- Added support for adverb highlighting in Immersive Reader.
- Added support for the Scroll To Text Fragment management policy from upstream Chromium.
- Added a management policy to configure the deletion of cached files and images when the browser closes.
As usual, it"s not all shiny new features, and there"s a large dose of fixes and improvements. Starting with reliability fixes:
- Fixed a crash when closing the browser.
- Fixed an issue where closing a tab sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where installing an extension sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed a crash when opening the Collections pane.
- Fixed an issue where adding an item to a Collection sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where switching profiles sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where clicking the icon on the address bar to open the popup that shows more information about a website and what permissions it has sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where the Time Trial mode of the surf game sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where navigating to an intranet website sometimes causes a browser crash if IE mode is enabled.
- Fixed an issue where trying to log into a website that uses the browser profile’s credentials to automatically log in sometimes hangs the browser.
- Fixed a hang when using Read Aloud.
- Fixed an issue where DRM-protected video, like on Netflix, stutters when the stream’s resolution changes.
- Fixed an issue where the Apps management page sometimes crashes.
Microsoft has also made some changes to the browser"s behavior:
- Fixed an issue where the profile icon on a Taskbar shortcut to a specific profile sometimes shows the default avatar instead of the correct profile picture.
- Fixed an issue where the ability to install a website as an app or pin it to the Taskbar is broken.
- Fixed an issue where corrupted extensions aren’t properly detected as corrupted.
- Fixed an issue where opening an item from the History page’s Recently Closed section doesn’t remove it from that section.
- Fixed an issue where tabs show up in the “Recently Closed” section of History even though the option to delete browsing data on exit is enabled.
- Fixed an issue where clicking the link on the Favorites Bar to import favorites if none exist triggers the First Run Experience unexpectedly.
- Fixed an issue where middle-clicking on the Collections button opens the Collections pane.
- Fixed an issue where dragging and dropping certain types of images into a Collection fails.
- Fixed an issue where the Collections pane doesn’t immediately update its theme if it’s open when the browser’s theme is changed.
- Fixed an issue where the dialog to save a payment card sometimes appears on the wrong tab if a tab is switched to quickly after entering payment information.
- Fixed an issue where cookies sometimes are not properly saved in IE mode tabs.
- Fixed an issue where the button to fix an issue that’s preventing IE mode from launching sometimes doesn’t fix it.
- Fixed an issue where a website’s ability to request geolocation information doesn’t work in IE mode.
Finally, it wouldn"t be an Insider build without a few known issues. Here"s what you need to look out for:
- 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 Beta or 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 Beta and 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. UI popups like menus are not affected and 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.
- 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.
- Some users are unable to see screenshots in the feedback tool. Once cause is that they have their media autoplay settings set to “Block”, so turning the setting back to “Limit” or “Allow” should fix it.
- At certain zoom levels, there is a noticeable line between the browser UI and the web contents.
The update should be making its way to everyone soon enough, but if you don"t like waiting, you can head into the browser"s settings and check for updates manually. If you haven"t yet, you can download Edge Insider builds from this page.