Microsoft has released its weekly build of the new Chromium-based Edge for those in the Dev channel, and it's one of the bigger updates so far for Insiders in this channel. It brings the browser to version 76 of the Chromium backend, up from version 75 where it's been for the past couple of weeks.
But Microsoft added a lot more in this new build. Spellchecking is now built into the browser, and the pages for Favorites, Downloads, Settings, and more have all received a visual refresh. The changelog also mentions improvements to the dark theme, even though it's not officially supported by the browser yet. Here's what's new:
Spellcheck is now enabled by default for everyone.
Downloads, Extensions, Favorites, History, and Settings all have refreshed colors and layout.
Read Aloud will now select one of the new cloud-powered voices by default.
The logic for quick links on the New Tab Page has been updated. Any site you add manually or edit will remain in the list unless you delete it, while other sites will continue to update based on your browsing history.
Added support for Dolby AC3/E-AC3 audio decoding for some media playback sources.
You can now sort favorites by name from the manage favorites page by right-clicking on the page background and choosing “Sort by name”.
Favorites in the favorites bar can now be reordered using ALT+SHIFT+LEFT/ALT+SHIFT+RIGHT.
When viewing history, you can now filter by time range and then search within the filtered results.
While viewing history, CTRL+A will now select all items in the current list.
The “Add a profile” flyout now uses dark colors in dark theme.
The default profile icon now has a gray background instead of a white background in dark theme.
Tooltip improvements for tabs: new tooltip for tab close button, keyboard shortcuts added to tooltips, and special tooltip notes when a tab is in an error state.
The title of an InPrivate window now contains “[InPrivate]”.
In addition to new features and improvements, Microsoft also fixed a significant number of issues in this release. Again, some fixes for dark mode are mentioned, which makes sense as the team is planning to add the feature at some point.
- The escape key now cancels profile creation.
- When the window width is small, the “Profiles” and “Appearance” items in the Settings nav bar no longer overlap.
- Installed sites now show the “Customize and control” menu button in the title bar.
- Fixed a case where a page would scroll the wrong amount when using the keyboard to scroll in high DPI modes.
- The first item in a context menu is no longer showing a hover effect when the menu is opened.
- Fixed a bug which could cause updates to stop if you upgrade to the next Windows 10 release.
- We fixed some problems with keyboard navigation through the toolbar and favorites.
- Fixed an issue where Netflix sometimes temporarily stopped playing video after seeking.
- Fixed an issue where Read Aloud would stop reading if it encountered certain characters.
- Fixed an issue which could cause the list of pages in “On startup” settings to render incompletely.
- When creating or editing a profile, the profile icon choices now appear in two tidy rows as expected.
- Removed an extra vertical separator that was incorrectly appearing between an active tab and its neighbor tabs.
- Fixed an intermittent crash in the send feedback dialog.
- Site permissions for USB devices are now shown properly in Settings.
- When a web page is using your microphone, a microphone icon now shows instead of a camera icon.
- Fixed some dark text on dark background in the profile flyout in dark mode.
- In dark theme, disabled toolbar buttons are now much easier to see.
Again, this is one of the biggest updates to the Dev channel so far, which is always nice to see. At its Build developer event this week, Microsoft announced some new features that are coming to the browser soon, but we're still without an official release for the Beta channel.
It's worth noting that the Beta version that leaked earlier this week also has an update available, but it's not the same as this one. Microsoft is likely stabilizing the current build in preparation for a public release.
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