Microsoft releases Edge 128 with Edge Bar improvements, SSE3 requirements and more

Microsoft has released Edge 128 to the general public on the Stable Channel. Specifically, the new version number is 128.0.2739.42. This latest version has quite a few new features, improvements, bug fixes, security patches and more

Microsoft Edge 128 contains all the fixes and changes from the many previous updates it got in the Dev Channel. You can find them here:

The Stable Channel version of Edge 128 has some security patches specific to the browser:

The security release notes adds:

Microsoft has a fix for CVE-2024-7971 to Microsoft Edge Stable Channel (Version 128.0.2739.42) which has been reported by the Chromium team as having an exploit in the wild. For more information, see the Security Update Guide.

Here are the rest of the release notes for Edge 128:

Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused high CPU usage of renderer processes when running Selenium tests and calling driver.quit() to end the testing session.

Feature updates

SSE3 Requirement. Microsoft Edge stopped supporting CPUs that lack SSE3. Devices with such CPUs won't receive any more updates. For more information, see Microsoft Edge Supported Operating Systems.

Copilot browser Context Policies. The DiscoverPageContextEnabled policy is obsoleted in Microsoft Edge version 128 and doesn't work after Microsoft Edge 127.

To summarize and answer questions based on browser context in Microsoft Edge, Copilot needs to be able to access the browser context. We're providing two new policies to offer more flexibility for admins to customize Edge browser context access across Copilot chats in Edge sidebar.

CopilotPageContext - Control Copilot access to browser context for Microsoft Entra ID profiles.

CopilotCDPPageContext - Control Copilot with Commercial Data Protection access to browser context for Microsoft Entra ID profiles.

Deprecation of the followable web feature. To improve end user experience, the followable web feature is deprecated. The EdgeFollowEnabled policy is also obsolete.

EnforceLocalAnchorConstraintsEnabled policy obsoletion. The EnforceLocalAnchorConstraintsEnabled policy was previously deprecated and is now obsolete in Edge version 128. Since Microsoft Edge 112, constraints in certificates loaded from the platform certificate store are enforced. The EnforceLocalAnchorConstraintsEnabled policy existed as a temporary opt-out in case an enterprise encountered issues with the constraints encoded in their private roots.

New Policy for Insecure Downloads over HTTP. Users that download potentially dangerous content on HTTP sites will receive a UI warning in a future Microsoft Edge version. To prepare for this change, the ShowDownloadsInsecureWarningsEnabled policy is now available for admins to enable or disable the warnings related to insecure downloads

Edge Bar improvements. Edge Bar, the detachable version of the Edge sidebar in Windows 10, has a changed entry point from the gear icon at the bottom of the Edge sidebar's fly out menu to the edge://settings/sidebar page.

For Windows 11 and Windows 10 users, clicking the gear icon will now automatically open the edge://settings/sidebar page.

Also, the ability for Edge Bar to start automatically when starting a Windows 10 device has been enabled again and the Close "X" icon has been moved below the ellipsis menu at the bottom right corner of Edge Bar.

Disabling Edge Bar through the StandaloneHubsSidebarEnabled policy continues to work, there is a fix to make the UI and briefcase icon appear on the edge://settings/sidebar page coming very soon.

Policy updates

New policies

ApplicationBoundEncryptionEnabled - Enable Application Bound Encryption

DynamicCodeSettings - Dynamic Code Settings

ExtensionDeveloperModeSettings - Control the availability of developer mode on extensions page

ExtensionExtendedBackgroundLifetimeForPortConnectionsToUrls - Configure a list of origins that grant an extended background lifetime to connecting extensions.

KeyboardFocusableScrollersEnabled - Enable keyboard focusable scrollers

ShowDownloadsInsecureWarningsEnabled - Enable insecure download warnings

Obsoleted policies

DiscoverPageContextEnabled - Enable Discover access to page contents for AAD profiles (obsolete)

EnforceLocalAnchorConstraintsEnabled - Determines whether the built-in certificate verifier will enforce constraints encoded into trust anchors loaded from the platform trust store (deprecated)

SiteSafetyServicesEnabled - Allow users to configure Site safety services (obsolete)