Microsoft releases Edge Dev 85.0.564.8 with a bunch of new features

Earlier this month, Microsoft said that it was taking a couple of weeks off from updating its Edge browser in the Dev and Beta branches. Today, it has returned with the release of Edge Dev version 85.0.564.8, and it actually has a bunch of new features.

While the list of new features is long, it mostly consists of minor improvements. Here's the full list:

Added a button to the PDF toolbar for highlighting text.

Added the ability to undo certain actions in Collections.

Added the ability to reorder the extension icons on the toolbar using a keyboard shortcut (Alt + Shift + arrows).

Added an option to the … menu for each item that appears on the Downloads shelf to report it as a safe or unsafe file (which option appears is dependent on SmartScreen’s determination of the file’s safety).

Added the ability to import certain settings and cookies from Internet Explorer.

Added a management policy to Exempt Domain File Type Pairs From File Type Download Warnings. Note that Administrative Templates will come later.

Added a management policy to control New Tab Page Allowed Background Types. Note that Administrative Templates will come later.

Added a management policy to control pre-rendering of the new tab page. Note that administrative templates will come later.

Enabled support for the Chromium management policy for Intensive Wake Up Throttling.

Added support for the Chromium management policy to Auto Launch Protocols From Origins, which allows admins to define a list of protocols that can launch an external application from listed origins without a prompt.

Added a feature to Kiosk Mode to close the browser when it’s idle (with the time limit being adjustable).

Added an alert to the … menu of installed websites and apps when Edge has an update ready to be installed.

Of course, there are a bunch of fixes, improvements, and known issues. Here's what got fixed for improved reliability:

Fixed a crash when closing the browser after creating a new profile.

Fixed an issue where opening a tab in IE mode sometimes crashes the browser.

Fixed an issue where signing into the browser sometimes crashes the browser.

Fixed an issue where moving a tab when it has the search sidebar open sometimes crashes the sidebar.

Fixed an issue where attempting to print a PDF sometimes crashes the tab.

Clicking links from external applications while Edge is waiting to restart to apply an update sometimes results in those links not loading properly.

Fixed an issue where the Kindle reader website doesn’t load.

Fixed an issue where attempting to share video, such as in a Microsoft Teams call, sometimes fails, and the recipient only sees a blank screen.

Fixed an issue on Mac where the Sidebar Search option appears to be available but doesn’t do anything.

Fixed an issue where pasting content into a Collection sometimes fails.

Fixed an issue where pasting content into a text note in a Collection sometimes fails.

Here are the fixes for changed behavior:

Changed the PDF reader to no longer prompt where to save an edited PDF every time it’s saved.

Fixed an issue where data imported from other browsers during the first run experience sometimes isn’t deleted properly if the browser is closed before the first run experience is completed.

Fixed an issue where the top border of the window can’t be used to resize it.

Fixed an issue where the Pull To Refresh flag from upstream Chromium disappeared.

Fixed an issue where clicking on the Switch button in the Guided Switch dialog sometimes does nothing.

Fixed an issue where pinning an Edge shortcut to a specific profile or website to the Taskbar sometimes results in that shortcut not opening to the correct profile or website.

Fixed an issue where pages sometimes try to translate into the same language they’re already in.

Fixed an issue where pages are sometimes offered to be translated from random languages into the language they’re already in.

Fixed an issue where browser profiles that aren’t signed in with work or school accounts sometimes incorrectly get Information Protection applied to them when another profile in the browser is signed in with a work or school account that has Information Protection applied to it.

Fixed an issue where Immersive Reader is no longer available on certain webpages.

Fixed an issue where the undo dialog when deleting a saved password from Settings doesn’t appear.

Fixed an issue where the PDF toolbar sometimes doesn’t appear when it should.

Improved the number of websites where Collections can retrieve an image for a website added to a Collection.

Fixed an issue where the feedback dialog sometimes appears too big or cut off.

Improved the performance of Edge updates that are manually triggered by viewing edge://settings/help.

Improved the performance of clearing browsing data.

Removed the Network Prediction setting.

Removed the ability to search using the sidebar in PDF files because it is not functional.

Finally, here's what's still broken:

Attempting to watch video in fullscreen will sometimes not work properly. Instead of showing the video fullscreen, it will blow up or zoom the video to the size of the browser window. This issue affects all Chromium-based browsers.

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.

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.

Still missing, of course, is history sync and open tabs sync, things that have been promised since the very beginning. In fact, Microsoft hasn't even talked about those critical features in a while, so it's unclear when they'll arrive. Presumably, they're still coming, since the options are in settings, albeit grayed out.

As usual, you can force today's update by going to Settings -> About Microsoft Edge, or you can just wait for it to update in the background.