Microsoft finally caves and will let some users actually use their preferred browser in Windows 11
It’s time for the pettiness to stop
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When you’re browsing onWindows 11and click on a link in another part of your computer, say a different app or a news reader, regardless of your selected default browser your link will be opened inMicrosoft Edge. That can be incredibly annoying when you’re trying to navigate your computer and have to keep manually copying and pasting links into your preferred browser, but that may be about to change.
This this is good news for people tired ofMicrosoft’s pushy habit of trying to force users to use Edge over other preferred web browsers likeGoogle ChromeorFirefox.
If you set your default browser to anything aside from Microsoft Edge you should be able to discard Edge and move on, with your choices being respected.
Bye bye Edge
There are some tools likeEdgeDeflectorandMSEdgeRedirectthat allow users to bypass this and use their chosen browsers. The clear intention was to push Microsoft Edge despite users wanting to use a more popularweb browser, but it seems like Microsoft has admitted defeat and has released a new build that will curb this.
According toGhacks,Build 23531was released to the Dev Channel recently and will change the forced opening of Microsoft Edge onWindows 11when you click on website links within the Start menu or Search bar. Ghacks notes that Microsoft added, “In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links".
Users not in the EEA will have to wait it out to see if Microsoft will extend this ‘courtesy’ to them as well. At the moment, however, it seems like Microsoft is only dropping its pushy behavior because of pressure from lawmakers, not because it’s the right thing to do.
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Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison.
Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she’s joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you’ve got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you’re in the right place.
Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook’s Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).
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