The Most Annoying Microsoft Edge Features Everyone Should Disable
Now that Microsoft Edge is based on the Chromium engine (the same engine that powers Google Chrome), it’s a really good browser. You can think of it like Chrome, but better for privacy and battery life. But it’s still a Microsoft product and has a penchant for bloat and annoying features. Fortunately, there is everything that can be fixed in a couple of minutes on the settings page. If you’re using Microsoft Edge as the default browser on your Mac or Windows PC, consider turning these features off to make browsing even easier.
Get rid of the search icon on every image
Google Chrome has added a fantastic feature that allows you to search for similar images using Google Lens (also with OCR). Microsoft Edge got the same feature but uses Bing instead of Google Images. To make matters worse, Edge shows an image search icon when you hover over any image (in the top right corner). This alone will be annoying. However, you can disable this feature. Go to ” Settings ” > ” Appearance ” > ” Visual Search ” and turn off the ” Show visual search when hovering over an image ” option. If you wish, you can still use this feature from the context menu.
Get rid of Bing search
If you’ve just started using Microsoft Edge, you may have noticed that the default search engine is Bing. If that’s not your issue, go to Settings > Privacy, Search & Services > Address Bar & Search > Search engine used in the address bar . Here you can switch to ” Google ” or ” DuckDuckGo “.
Disable all annoying coupon pop-ups.
Coupon add-ons are great, but Microsoft’s built-in Shopping tool will pop up every time you visit any storefront. If you want to turn them off, go to Settings > Privacy, Search & Services and turn off the Save time and money shopping in Microsoft Edge feature.
Remove everything unnecessary from the start page
The start page in Microsoft Edge will be great if you get rid of everything you don’t need. You can get started by going to the start page and clicking the ” Settings ” icon. Here you can switch to ” Focused ” mode to keep only the search bar. You can also go to the Custom section, keep the Quick Links section, and enable the Background of the Day feature. Be sure to disable the Content feature to get rid of the Microsoft News panels.
Get rid of the download popup
The era of the Downloads bar at the bottom of the browser is behind us, but Edge still likes to remind us by opening the Downloads panel every time you start a new download. If you can find the Downloads button at the top (which visually shows progress), disable the pop-up feature. Go to ” Settings ” > ” Downloads ” and turn off the ” Show the download menu when starting a download ” option.
Prevent opening Office files in the browser
Because Edge is made by Microsoft, it insists on opening Microsoft Office documents or files in a browser first, rather than in dedicated apps. You can override this by going to Settings > Downloads . Here, disable the ” Open Office files in browser ” feature.