Microsoft today released a new Edge 95 build to the Dev channel users with a few nifty features. With Edge releases now following a condensed schedule, the next few builds should add most of the significant features that are planned for version 95. The first of the features is the ability to hide the Extensions button directly from the address bar or from the ellipsis menu. Since the update has not yet rolled out, it is not clear if hiding the button actually hides the extensions’ shortcuts from the address bar as well, which will be a welcome change.
Mac users are also receiving the ability to hide the Picture in Picture overlay controls in the browser. Additionally, the firm notes that the ability to fill custom data is available to all users by default. As for users on Android, the Read Aloud feature now supports natural voices and the firm has enabled the Surf game as well. Lastly, there are a bunch of management policy additions, which the firm has detailed in the release notes.
Here is the complete list of features:
- Added the ability to hide the Extensions button by right-clicking it on the address bar or in the … menu.
- Added a setting on Mac to hide the Picture in Picture overlay controls.
- Completed feature rollouts:
- Enabled by default improvements to Windows Task Manager when running on Windows 11.
- Enabled by default the ability to autofill custom data.
- Mobile:
- Added support for natural voices to Read Aloud on Android.
- Enabled the Surf game on Android.
- Management policies (note that updates to administrative templates or documentation may not have occurred yet):
- Added policies to set an Internet Explorer Integration Window Open Width Adjustment and Internet Explorer Integration Window Open Height Adjustment, which add extra pixels to the size of popup windows opened from IE mode tabs.
- Added a policy to control if Visual Search is Enabled, which controls reverse image search.
- Added a policy to control Shadow Stack Crash Rollback Behavior, which controls if the hardware-enforced stack protection security feature in certain devices should be enabled following a crash that’s triggered by it.
- Enabled support for the policy from Chromium to control if Browser Legacy Extension Points Blocking is Enabled, which controls if legacy extensions are allowed to load code into the browser’s main process for compatibility with other applications.
- Developer:
- Added support for the No Frame Merging in IE mode tabs.
- Added support for the navigator.share API in PWAs on Mac OS.
As usual, there are a bunch of improvements that the firm categorizes into reliability improvements and fixes to address changed behavior. The notes segregate the fixes for desktop and mobile, which is also a welcome one for mobile users.
Here are the fixes that improve the reliability of the browser:
- Fixed a crash on launch.
- Fixed a crash on startup when certain extensions are installed.
- Fixed a crash when switching profiles.
- Fixed a crash when changing languages in Settings.
- Fixed a crash when logging into a website.
- Fixed a crash when using Smart Copy.
- Fixed a crash when using Application Guard.
- Fixed an issue where tabs sometimes crash with a breakpoint error.
- Fixed a crash when closing PWAs or websites installed as apps.
- Fixed a crash when using Overlay Scrollbars.
- Fixed a crash when saving autofill info via a popup.
- Fixed an issue where the browser is blank and unusable when opened on a non-default desktop.
- Mobile:
- Fixed an issue where the browser won’t open.
- Fixed a crash when signing into the browser.
- Fixed a crash when closing tabs.
- Fixed a crash when adding a favorite.
- Fixed a crash when using the SwiftKey keyboard.
- Fixed a crash when typing in the address bar.
- Fixed a crash when using Guided Switch in InPrivate mode.
- Fixed a crash when using Citrix.
And here are the fixes that address changed behavior:
- Reduced the number of one-time validation fields that autofill tries to fill with previous results.
- Fixed an issue where autocomplete doesn’t work in places it should.
- Fixed an issue where certain videos don’t play in HD/4K when they should.
- Fixed an issue where navigations sometimes never complete when using Family Safety.
- Fixed an issue where the Read Aloud controls sometimes don’t work.
- Fixed an issue on Linux where the Collections pane sometimes can’t be opened.
- Fixed an issue where Collections are sorted incorrectly.
- Fixed an issue where the button to close a tab sometimes isn’t visible when the Vertical Tabs pane is too narrow.
- Fixed an issue where spellcheck sometimes triggers even when it’s disabled.
- Fixed an issue where Smart Copy copies more than just what’s selected.
- Fixed an issue where debug.log files sometimes mysteriously appear on the device.
- Fixed an issue where the different headers of the History menu don’t show the correct sections when clicked.
- Mobile:
- Fixed an issue where SSO no longer works.
- Fixed an issue where signing into the browser sometimes doesn’t enable sync as well.
- Fixed an issue where the browser can be signed into with the same account multiple times.
- Fixed an issue on iOS where signing into the browser fails.
- Fixed an issue where a sign-in error is shown in Settings even though there is no error.
- Fixed an issue on Android where autofill sometimes fails.
- Fixed an issue where images sometimes don’t render properly.
- Fixed an issue on iOS where certain webpage resources sometimes don’t load.
- Fixed an issue on iOS where certain popups will close as soon as they’re opened.
- Fixed an issue where links that open in new tabs sometimes close or navigate back as soon as they’re opened.
- Fixed an issue in WebView2 apps where flickering appears (Issue 1621).
- Fixed an issue where popups opened from IE mode tabs are sometimes scaled incorrectly.
- Obsoleted the management policy to control if Legacy Same Site Cookie Behavior is Enabled.
Lastly, the firm has listed the complete list of known issues in this build. Here is the list:
- 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 this help article 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 still seeing favorites get duplicated. This issue should be reduced now that automatic deduplication has been introduced into Insider channels, but we’re still rolling that out in Stable. We’ve also seen duplication happen when running the manual deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.
- 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.
Since the rollout has just begun, it might take a while for the update to show up for all users. As always, you can try and force check for an update from the About Microsoft Edge settings page.