Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge browser is available for Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, macOS, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Microsoft will even release a version of it for Linux in the future. The new Microsoft Edge is excellent. It's a massive departure from the old Microsoft Edge, which didn't work well in many areas. If you were someone who tried to switch to the old Microsoft Edge. Get Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android. Learn more: Accessibility with Microsoft Edge Skip to main content. Specifically, concerning the new Edge browser. This is a very good browser. It's like Chrome - Redmond based it on the Chromium platform, after all - but it's better. Microsoft has, however, been. See what's new on the latest version of the Microsoft Edge browser. Explore features, rewards, and more before you download the browser today.

1. The New Microsoft Edge Is Here Pop Up
2. The New Microsoft Edge
3. Update To The Latest Edge
4. Download The New Microsoft Edge

People are going on about the “Welcome to the new Microsoft Edge” window that seems to come up out of nowhere after certain Windows 10 updates (usually after you restart your computer). If your fight-or-flight mode is triggered by the appearance of such screens, you might want to take a look around and try to understand where it’s coming from. I can already reassure you: this is not some virus or malware threat but rather Microsoft’s way of introducing their new web browser, Microsoft Edge on your computer.

In what follows I’ll explain what this is and how you should deal with it.
Please note: if you’re not entirely sure what exactly a web browser is, you can read more about web browsers here.

The “Welcome to The New Microsoft Edge” Window

If you are suddenly greeted by a window that says “Welcome to The New Microsoft Edge”, you’ll also be informed that the new Microsoft Edge is “A fast, safe and productive web browser that works for you”. The screen will look like this:

It’s worth saying that the blue 'e' icon on the left and the little arrow pointing to the 'wave'-shaped e on the right indicate that the icon on the right is now the new icon for the new Microsoft Edge, replacing the icon on the left from the 'old' Microsoft Edge.

As mentioned earlier, this is part of Microsoft updates that are being rolled out so there’s no need to worry that your computer has been hijacked by some virus or malware.

However, 'Welcome to the new Microsoft Edge' windows are not very sociable, they don't interact much. Other than a 'Get started' button there's not much else for you there.

So let's click the “Get started” button to proceed. If you click the button, this is what you’ll see:

In this “Let’s set up your new tab page”, you get to decide whether you would like your Microsoft Edge screens to look inspirational, informational or focused.
Don’t worry, the choice you make here isn’t super important and can easily be changed later on. In a nutshell, what it comes down to is that the inspirational mode will use photos from the Microsoft image gallery to populate the background, informational will show news feeds and trending topics, while focused will remove most of the distractions so that your Edge screen looks cleaner. You can find some more details about the differences and how to change these settings later on in my Microsoft Edge new tab article.
My advice would be to select a setting now and not fret too much about it. You can click the different options and Microsoft Edge will immediately reflect the changes in the background so that you get an impression of how it looks. In the example below I have selected “Focused”.

With the option of your choice selected, you can now click the “Confirm” button so Microsoft Edge can continue its “Welcome to the new Microsoft Edge” tour. Now you’ll see something like this, where can opt to sync browser data across all your signed-in devices using your Microsoft account:

If you have a Microsoft account, you can “allow” this in order to see your favorites, passwords and more on any device. If you don’t have a Microsoft account, select the option “Don’t allow” to proceed (or you can learn how to create a free Microsoft account here).
Whether you select “Allow” or “Don’t allow” in the previous screen, this is what you’ll see next in either case:

Here you have to decide whether or not you want to “improve personalization”. In this example I chose not to do that, which basically concluded my settings and I was ready to start using my new Microsoft Edge browser:

That's another “Welcome to the new Microsoft Edge” message, along with a few options to either find your favorites, install extensions or try collections.
You don’t have to do any of these right away and you can always return to that later. You can also learn more about favorites and extensions in my other Microsoft Edge tutorials (more on that in a minute).
You can simply close the window by clicking on the “x” in the top right corner (illustrated in the previous image with the red arrow) to start using your new Microsoft Edge browser.
From now on, whenever you want to do something on the internet with your new Microsoft Edge browser, you can simply click the Microsoft Edge icon on your taskbar to start using it.

If you’re interested in finding out more on how to actually use Microsoft Edge or how to search with Google or set your Microsoft Edge homepage, I invite you to read all about it in my Microsoft Edge tutorials. It’s all there and it’s free. Learning how to set your Microsoft Edge homepage is a good one to start with. From there on you'll find links to my other tutorials as well.

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With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft also introduced a brand new browser called Microsoft Edge. Now, four years later, the company has redesigned and rebuilt it from the ground up. It’s not ready for mass consumption just yet, but you can give it a trial run right now.

Bear in mind this is still a very early version of the next-generation Edge, so you should expect bugs and the occasional crash. Still, if you want to see if what Microsoft has been working on can supercharge your browsing, now’s your chance.

Why the new Edge?

You might not realize it while you’re using them, but underpinning every web browser is a browser engine: The bits of the software that translate raw website code into something presentable on screen. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all use different browser engines.

The differences between browser engines aren’t as big as they used to be—at least not from a user’s perspective—so when you view most websites they look the same in most browsers. When Microsoft first started work on Edge, though, it also created a brand new browser engine for it, called EdgeHTML.

The New Microsoft Edge Is Here Pop Up

Late in 2018, Microsoft announced it was switching to the Blink engine and open source Chromium code that powers Google Chrome. The aim was to reduce fragmentation of the web, and to work towards one group of standards for web developers (when you’re building a website, making it work in multiple different browser engines can be tedious).

The New Microsoft Edge

That means both the new Edge and Chrome are now running on the same foundations, with extra features, functions, and visuals added by Microsoft and Google respectively. The core of your web browsing (how pages are loaded and appear) will be the same between both browsers, but the extras on top won’t be.

Taking a test run

If you’re on a Windows 10 computer, you can test out the early builds of the new Microsoft Edge by downloading the software from the Microsoft Edge Insider Channels page. At the moment there are two versions to pick from: the Dev channel, updated weekly, and the Canary channel, updated daily.

The Dev channel is the more stable of the two, and probably the one you want—you’ll find fewer bugs and more stability in the Dev channel. If you want to get new features and experiments as early as possible, the Canary channel is the one to go for.

Update To The Latest Edge

There’s also a Beta channel coming soon, which will be more stable and reliable than both the Dev and Canary channels. At the time of writing Microsoft hasn’t made this available for download, but it might be one of your options when you read this. Test versions for macOS and older versions of Windows are also on the way.

Pick your download, then follow the instructions on screen to get the software installed. As the program opens, choose Start with your data to import bookmarks and autofill data from Google Chrome (if you’ve got it installed), or Start from scratch to launch Edge with a clean slate (you can still import this data later if you want to).

Features and functions in Edge

When the new Edge launches, you can pick from three options as to how your new tabs look (you can change this later too, from the new tab page): Inspirational (with a large background image), Informational (with a smaller background image and top news stories), or Focused (a plainer look with fewer shortcuts).

At the top of the screen you’ll see you’re already logged into the Microsoft account associated with your current Windows user account, if one is attached. This means you can take your browsing history, bookmarks, and other browsing data with you from computer to computer, and keep your stuff separate from other users on your computer.

The main app menu is in the same place as the first, original version of Edge—just click the three dots in the top right-hand corner to open it. From here you can access your bookmarks, browsing history, downloads, extensions, and more.

As we’ve said, this is still an early, test version of Edge 2.0, but a few features are available to play around with. Choose Read aloud from the program menu to have the current webpage read out to you, for example, or choose More tools then Cast media to device to send video or audio on a site to a compatible Chromecast device.

Download The New Microsoft Edge

The settings hub of the browser is under Settings in the Edge menu. No doubt plenty more options are on the way, but there’s already plenty to explore: Use the Reset settings link if you want to get the browser back to the way it was set up when you first installed it.

Under Profiles, you can see all the data being synced to your Microsoft account (like passwords and autofill data), if you’ve got one attached—you can also sign out if you need to. One reason for using Edge over Chrome, despite the similar code base, is if you’re more comfortable with Microsoft storing your browsing data than Google.

Click Appearance to show or hide the Home button, show or hide the Favorites (bookmarks) bar, and to change the fonts and font size that Edge uses. Under On startup, meanwhile, you can configure what happens when you open Edge: You can start with a new tab, with a specific page or set of pages, or carry on from where you left off last time.

You can clear your browsing history, passwords, and site cookies from Edge under the Privacy and services menu. Speaking of privacy, click Site permissions to enable or disable access to the camera, microphone, and other parts of your system (like your location) for specific websites.