14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Edge already ships with a set of customization options that come in pretty handy, especially on the New Tab Page, which itself is an essential feature of the browser.
Without a doubt, one of the top goodies in Microsoft Edge is the support for the Bing image of the day, which technically replaces the background on the New Tab Page with a new image powered by the Bing search engine.
All photos are generally high-resolution and super-high quality, so most people just keep this feature enabled to have a new cool wallpaper on the New Tab Page daily.
But by the looks of things, the software giant is looking to give users more control regarding the customization of the New Tab Page, and one option will allow setting a custom photo as the wallpaper.
At this point, the Custom setting in Microsoft Edge provides you the following options:
- Show quick links
- Image of the day
- Show greeting
- Content type
The latest Canary version of the browser (82.0.457.0) introduces new options – it’s worth knowing, however, that this update is part of a controlled feature rollout, which means not everyone gets it right now, as Microsoft only wants to collect additional feature before the public release to all testers.
So beginning with this new update, Microsoft Edge will provide the following options in the Custom setting level:
- Show quick links
- Background
- Show greeting
- Content type
- Off
- Image of the day
- Your own image
Thanks to the migration to the Chromium engine, Microsoft Edge is no longer just a Windows browser, but a cross-platform application, just like Google Chrome. This means it’s also offered to macOS users, and soon it’ll also make its debut on Linux – Microsoft has already confirmed that it’s planning to build such a version, but for the time being, no ETA is available as to when it could be released.
In the meantime, it’s important to know that Microsoft has temporarily suspended the release of new Microsoft Edge versions in the stable channel due to the coronavirus outbreak. This means the company would only ship security improvements and changes to the other channels, as Microsoft wants to avoid rolling out major updates that would force developers to work on resolving any compatibility issues that might arise.
With the entire world working from home, including developers, both Microsoft and Google have decided to suspend new browser releases, especially as major updates typically introduce new functionality and changes that would require additional work on the devs’ side.
Microsoft is yet to announce when the New Tab Page customization options are supposed to reach the stable channel, and at the time of writing, the controlled feature rollout continues as part of the Canary builds. For example, I still don’t have these new options on my laptop running Edge Canary, albeit other users confirmed they got them in the last few days.
According to Microsoft’s release schedule, Microsoft Edge Canary receives updates on a daily basis, whereas the Dev build is updated every week. The beta gets more improvements every six weeks.