Since its launch, Edge Browser has not only added many practical features that Chrome users envy, but also included many peripheral features that are not suitable for domestic users. According to The Verge, these features even pose a risk of browsing privacy leakage due to design flaws.
How to make your Edge browsing experience more pure? We have updated this article by adding a closure note for “following creator suggestions” and attaching configuration methods that macOS users can also refer to.
Due to a chip change, Microsoft Edge browser made a remarkable comeback from the Chrome downloader, not only successfully taking over the mantle of Internet Explorer, but also introducing many unique features that make Chrome users envious and even directly “feed back” on the relatively more mature Chromium foundation.
In April of this year, Edge’s market share in desktop browsers finally surpassed the 10% mark. On the one hand, it has attracted many Windows users with advantages such as vertical tabs, highlights, loud reading, modern appearance design, pop-up toolbar download menu, and better font rendering effects. On the other hand, it has also added many lace functions that are somewhat cumbersome for domestic users and even affect their actual experience.
If you also like Edge or want to try migration, this article introduces some setup tips that can make the Edge browser experience cleaner and purer.
Whitening new tab
Edge’s new tab provides multiple page setup options. Without installing third-party new tab extensions, we can customize them in the gear settings in the upper right corner of the default new tab.
Page Settings Panel for New Tabs
The three default page layouts provided by Edge here are focus, inspiration, and information, which essentially control the proportion of information flow presented on new tab pages. For example, in a focused layout, only the information classification title bar is exposed in the information flow. At the beginning of the inspired layout, a daily image/video from Bing will be added to the new tab. In an information layout, the information flow will be fully presented in the new tab.
If we open all the settings, the new tab of Edge browser will look like the following:
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“This is my ultimate form”
It’s not that the practice of pushing information on the browser homepage is not good, after all, Chrome currently does the same on mobile devices. However, the actual experience of this model is largely influenced by the quality of the information source website itself – and the domestic Chinese information sources provided by Edge not only have average quality, but also only support attention and blocking of large information categories, and do not support manual setting of attention to specific website information flows. Therefore, the practicality is not high. Coupled with the increasing number of advertisements recently, the actual effect of Edge’s new tab information flow is also becoming increasingly difficult to see.
For users who pursue a concise experience, the personal recommended settings for the new tab are as follows:
Custom layout selection. Manually adjusting any item in the page settings will cause the layout to become “custom”, so there is no need to worry about it here.
Quick links can be selected according to actual needs, remember to easily turn off “Show Promotion Links”. It should be noted that if you are not a user who likes to have a fixed favorites bar, you can also choose to place the quick link position at the top as an alternative feature of the favorites bar.
The effect of using the top quick link
The background is determined by personal preference, after all, Bing’s daily image quality is quite good; It is not recommended to enable videos on low configuration, low data traffic, or laptop devices.
Turn off displaying greetings, which are the default weather reminders in the upper left corner.
Close the Office sidebar unless you are a web version of Office user.
Close the new tab prompt, occasionally pop up some new tab layout customization feature recommendations and guidance, unnecessary.
If the language and content selected here are Simplified Chinese, it is recommended to synchronize and turn off the content display below.
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The effect after setting
After completing this setup, your new tab should be much cleaner.
Turn off useless functions
Compared to Chrome, the updates of Edge browser in the past two years have been known for their functionality. However, in addition to the popular features, Edge has also added some “vase” features that are not practical for domestic users in the past period.
Firstly, shopping.
After a certain version update, Edge introduced shopping assistance features such as automatically obtaining available discounts on the current shopping website. When accessing e-commerce websites, the browser will automatically search for available discount redemption codes and pop up prompts.
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Schematic diagram of Edge shopping function
However, this feature has not been optimized for mainstream domestic e-commerce websites such as Taobao and JD.com so far, and occasional discount prompts are also available on international sites rather than domestic sites. Therefore, it is recommended that domestic users directly turn it off: open the Edge browser settings page, click on “Privacy, Search and Services” in the left navigation directory, and then drag to the bottom of the page to find and turn off the “Shopping in Microsoft Edge, Save Time and Money” option.
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The closing position of shopping function
Next is the Edge column.
The same source of information can repeatedly appear in different products within the Microsoft ecosystem, and can coexist independently of each other. In addition to the new tab information flow mentioned above and the familiar Windows 11 built-in widgets panel, which will be introduced here, the Edge bar has caused this spectacle.
Draw a dragon on the left (Windows 11 widget panel), and a rainbow on the right (Edge bar)
The effect of fully opening the Edge bar is shown in the above picture. In addition to this “vertical layout” that can compete with the Windows 11 widget panel left and right, the Edge bar also supports edge docking automatic hiding and a search layout similar to the appearance of PowerToys Run, which takes up less space. However, for domestic users, in the end, besides low-quality information, it is their own Bing search service entrance.
In addition, although the information in the Edge bar, Edge new tab, and Windows 11 widget panel has the same quality, the personalized customization results are independent of each other, and the tracked topics and news categories in one product cannot be synchronized with the other two products, which is quite interesting.
If you are not an ultra wide screen user and do not like to waste valuable screen display space, you can find the “Edge Bar” setting in the navigation window on the left side of the browser settings, and then uncheck the “Automatically open Edge Bar when computer starts” option.
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Edge bar settings
Of course, just avoiding the Edge bar from booting up is not the root cause. If you accidentally press the shortcut key Win+Shift+F while using the Edge browser, you will still be called out. A more fundamental approach is to use the registry:
Start menu search registry editor and run
Find the directory computer \ HKEY-LOCAL_Machine \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft, create a new entry below it, and name it Edge
In the Edge entry, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name it WebWidgetAllowed
Because the default numerical data for creating new values is 0x0000000, restarting Edge directly will take effect
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New Item
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Be careful not to make the wrong choice
After the above operation, the Edge bar setting has been completely disabled from the settings. Modifying this path to the registry can be described as clean and thorough, but the disadvantage is that the browser will have a few more “browser hosted” prompts.
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The effect of modifying the registry
It is worth mentioning that due to a design flaw in the “follow creator suggestions” feature, in addition to some sites that are filtered through whitelist, the latest version of Edge browser will also send most of the URL links that users have browsed to Bing’s API sites.
Microsoft has responded that it is currently investigating the issue. Prior to this, we also suggest that you go to “Settings>Privacy, Search and Services>Services” to disable this feature to avoid unnecessary data leakage.
Finally, if your browser is primarily for non academic purposes, Math Solver can also be closed in a similar way. Please refer to the comments section for specific closing methods. Please do not elaborate on this in the main text.
Control Privacy Data
On the one hand, innovative privacy data protection features are being introduced, and on the other hand, collecting user usage data for personal use and providing users with various complex privacy data control options… This is currently the main gameplay of large companies in privacy data, and Microsoft Edge Browser is no exception.
In addition to viewing and managing usage data collected in all Microsoft services through the privacy dashboard provided by Microsoft, Edge Browser also provides many privacy data control functions, which can be found in the “Privacy, Search, and Services” section of the browser settings.
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Suggest managing privacy data projects as needed
Among them, both the “search result data for product improvement” and “personalize your web experience” settings can be directly turned off. The former mainly collects the search results when we use the Windows Start menu to search for services and Bing search services. You can view and manage the specific information collected in the privacy dashboard mentioned above; The latter mainly serves personalized advertising, search, news, and other Microsoft services, which can be understood as using Edge as the entry point for Microsoft’s “big data”.
Search history retained by privacy dashboard
As for “necessary diagnostic data” and “optional diagnostic data”, these two data are mainly used for telemetry and cannot be directly modified in Edge browser settings. In Windows 11, you can find and turn off “Send optional diagnostic data” in “System Settings>Privacy and Security>Diagnosis and Feedback”. However, there is no entrance to directly turn off mandatory diagnostic data.
If you have strict requirements for privacy data collection, you can consider adopting a more aggressive approach to this issue: the Group Policy Editor. The configuration method is as follows:
Start menu search, edit group policy, and run
Go to “Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Data Collection and Preview Version” path
Find the Allow Diagnostic Data Policy and double-click to open it, select enabled, and then select “Diagnostic Data Off” from the options below
Restart the system
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Group Policy Editing Methods
After restarting and entering the system, both the required and optional diagnostic data in the system settings are completely turned off. It is worth noting that this approach will result in the Windows Preview Experience Program no longer providing system updates. Given that Microsoft does not provide an independent Edge telemetry data shutdown method outside of the system, this is also a necessary choice for privacy control.
Disabled Windows diagnostic and feedback settings
Finally, if you are a Mac version user, Microsoft also provides a method to set specific configuration policies for Edge through a property list. You can manually write plist files according to the steps provided by Microsoft or obtain templates for editing on the Edge commercial version download page. After generating available plist files, we also need to use Microsoft Intune for deployment in macOS, which is a relatively cumbersome operation process. Interested friends, please refer to our other article.
Related reading: You are still one configuration file away from the refreshing Mac version of Edge browser
Template obtained from Edge Business Edition page
The above is all the content of this article. In addition to providing a cleaner and purer browser experience, we can also use the group policy editing method mentioned in the article to gain deeper and more personalized comprehensive control over the actual functions of Edge browser. If you are interested or have relevant experience to share, please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.
From feature customization to minimizing data collection: Unlocking a cleaner Edge browser
Since its launch, Edge Browser has not only added many practical features that Chrome users envy, but also included many peripheral features that are not suitable for domestic users. According to The Verge, these features even pose a risk of browsing privacy leakage due to design flaws.
How to make your Edge browsing experience more pure? We have updated this article by adding a closure note for “following creator suggestions” and attaching configuration methods that macOS users can also refer to.
