Edge Dev gets bumped to version 87, brings PDF improvements and download options

After releasing the final build of Edge based on Chromium 86 last week to Insiders in the Dev channel, Microsoft is now doing exactly what you'd expect and bumping the browser up to version 87. Build 87.0.634.0 includes a handful of new features, and one of the more notable additions is that of download options being brought back from Edge Legacy. Microsoft actually announced this change in a separate blog post earlier.

Aside from that, the new features include a table of contents for PDF files, among other things:

Added the ability to Open and Save As for downloaded items on the Downloads shelf before they begin downloading.

Added the ability to view a PDF’s table of contents and use it to navigate to locations within it.

Added a Website Permission Setting for sites that ask to open an application after clicking on a link.

Changed ClickOnce support to be enabled by default.

Enabled support for a Printing Paper Size Default management policy from Chromium.

Enabled support for management policies for Default File System Read Guard Setting, Default File System Write Guard Setting, File System Read Ask For Urls, File System Read Blocked For Urls, File System Write Ask For Urls, and File System Write Blocked For Urls from Chromium.

As usual, this week's build also includes a handful of improvements and fixes, which Microsoft separates into two different categories - reliability and behavior. Starting with the behavior changes, the list is fairly long:

Fixed an issue on Mac where links from other applications always open in the last used profile, regardless of which profile is chosen as the default for opening links.

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Search for Business doesn’t work.

Fixed an issue where text on the address bar dropdown is too small.

Fixed an issue where setting the browser to delete cookies when it’s closed but also setting some exceptions sometimes results in those exceptions getting deleted.

Fixed an issue where opening Edge from a shortcut pinned to the Taskbar sometimes doesn’t associate the window with that shortcut but instead creates a new entry on the Taskbar.

Fixed an issue where disabling the setting to show search results in the address bar from local data like favorites and history sometimes results in the inability to directly navigate to certain URLs like chrome:// URLs, since they have to first redirect to edge:// URLs.

Fixed an issue where some website permissions in Settings are missing icons.

Fixed an issue where opening a link that initiates a download in a new tab sometimes fails to start the download if the setting is enabled to choose where to save every downloaded file.

Fixed an issue where pasting URLs that have been formatted using the Link style via Share, Copy, and Paste Settings sometimes pastes only the title of the underlying page and not the actual URL.

Fixed an issue where re-opening a closed tab that had the Immersive Reader activated doesn’t open the page back in reading view.

Fixed an issue on Mac where Shy UI sometimes isn’t visible when it should be.

Fixed an issue where typing in the address bar sometimes fails to produce any search suggestions.

Fixed an issue where selecting all items on an internal page like the History management page sometimes doesn’t bring up the option to delete them.

Fixed an issue where a website can appear multiple times in the list of top sites on the new tab page.

Fixed an issue where Edge sometimes leaves behind a huge data cache.

Changed PWAs and websites installed as apps to no longer re-open after the browser is restarted due to an update, crash, etc. due to user feedback. This area is still being explored and will likely be revisited.

Obsoleted the New Tab Page Company Logo management policy. Updates to documentation and administrative templates will come later.

Removed the ability to translate the new tab page using the built-in translator.

Removed the ability to save passwords in Application Guard windows.

The list of reliability fixes is far smaller, and as you'd expect, features a number of fixes to prevent browser crashes that may have happened before. Here's what's changed:

Fixed an issue on Mac where users running the OS 11 preview (Big Sur) may have issues with all versions of Edge either crashing or not launching.

Fixed an issue where opening a local file sometimes crashes the browser.

Fixed an issue where exporting a Collection in an InPrivate window crashes the browser.

Fixed a crash on launch.

Fixed a crash related to sync.

Fixed an issue where zooming in PDFs crashes the tab on certain devices.

Fixed an occasional crash when uninstalling a website installed as an app.

Fixed an issue where Edge can’t update.

Fixed an issue where deleting a saved password from the Passwords management page causes the page to freeze.

Fixed an occasional hang when viewing files protected with Data Loss Prevention.

Fixed an issue where trying to sign into the browser with a work or school account fails on certain versions of Windows.

Fixed an issue where new Collections sometimes can’t be created.

While there's plenty of fixes, this release isn't without its own set of issues, and the list is also significant. Here's what you might run into in this new build:

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.

With Edge 87 now being available in the Dev channel, version 86 is heading to the Beta channel, as Microsoft noted in the feedback summary post for this week. It takes about six weeks for Beta versions to be promoted to the Stable channel, so it will be some time before these changes are available for everyone.