To access this feature, click the tab actions menu (a rounded square icon at the far left end of your row of tabs). Edge gives you the option to organize them vertically, with the tab headings listed down the left-hand side of the browser. Tabs are an essential way of getting around the web, and we’re used to having them up at the top of the screen. No matter which privacy tier you choose, you can always click Exceptions to list particular sites that are allowed to use trackers.

It’s worth noting that getting too aggressive with blocking cookies and trackers can cause problems on some sites-pop-up messages are likely to appear repeatedly, for example, because the site doesn’t know you’ve visited before. You can find details of what each tier means, and set your preference by clicking the three dots to the top right of the browser window and choosing Settings, then Privacy, search, and services.įeel free to experiment with all three and choose what’s best for you, but Edge recommends the Balanced approach. It’s not always easy trying to figure out how companies are tracking you across the web, so Edge has simplified the necessary privacy controls into three tiers: Basic, Balanced, and Strict. Edge also works well on any device running the latest versions of Windows, whether you’re using a desktop or a tablet. You can easily pin frequently-visited websites to the taskbar for quick access: Click on the menu button (the three dots), go to More tools, and then choose Pin to taskbar. While Chrome and Firefox still work perfectly well on Windows 10, the experience is a bit more seamless when you’re using all-Microsoft programs. For example, if you run a web search from your computer’s taskbar, the results will show up in Edge, even if you have a different program as your preferred default browser.Įdge also integrates neatly with other Microsoft products, like the Windows Defender antivirus tool for spotting dangerous sites. If you spend a lot of time with Windows 10 or 11, Edge is the perfect companion.

Smooth integration with Windows 10 and 11 This page, called My Feed, offers an instantly accessible motherlode of relevant content when you’re looking for something to watch or read.Ĥ.

A feed of personalized contentĮdge’s default startup page will show you a selection of news stories, snippets of information, and videos tailored to your interests. And if you’ve got Edge installed on other devices, your collections will sync across. Good uses for Collections include: managing a shopping wishlist, planning a trip, and pulling together research for an essay, to name a few examples. If you’re a fan of notes, you can add those too, via the sticky note icon at the top of the collection pane. You can also right-click on an image or a block of text within a page, then select Add to Collections to save it. Click Start new collection, then hit Add current page to begin collecting. Whereas bookmarks keep track of web links, Collections can store snippets of text from websites themselves, enabling you to quickly gather information from the internet and get it organized in a way that makes sense.Ĭlick the Collections icon on the toolbar to get started-it looks like two squares with a plus inside one of them.

One of Edge’s flagship features is Collections. This investment has paid off, as speed tests have shown. Key to this process were a variety of under-the-hood tweaks that help the browser’s pages load faster and react more responsively, while preventing the program from overwhelming your computer’s system resources. That reconstruction enabled Microsoft to remove support for older, outdated technologies and code, making Edge a lot leaner than bulky old IE. It initially launched in 2015 alongside Windows 10, but was rebuilt four years later using the same open-source Chromium code that Chrome uses. Part of the reason Edge is so much better than its precursor is that rather than upgrading Internet Explorer, Microsoft decided to build Edge from scratch, not once, but twice.

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