Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

Glad to see someone else chasing this down, and not surprised this is still not yet reproducible.<p>Paul Thurrott and I were also scratching our heads with this one on August 25. After failing to reproduce the behavior, he wrote up our collective experience [1] the next day. We chalked it up to yet another Windows Insider screw up, marked it as an unsolved case, and moved on.<p>I certainly hope the change eventually makes it into the OS before the Windows 11 &quot;23H2&quot; release is finalized (imminent).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thurrott.com&#x2F;paul&#x2F;287711&#x2F;scaling-back-the-terrible-in-windows-11-and-other-stories-id-like-to-tell" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thurrott.com&#x2F;paul&#x2F;287711&#x2F;scaling-back-the-terrib...</a> (pay-walled)

I&#x27;m surprised no one has brought up United States v. Microsoft yet. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...</a>.<p>They were successfully sued for favoring their browser over others, and faced being broken up. Though their actions now are not as egregious as those actions 25 years ago, it&#x27;s obvious that no lesson has been learned.

Every time I log into windows and that “Lets finish setting up your computer” wizard starts, I feel abused, betrayed, and forced into whatever bullshit Microsoft wants to shove down my throat.<p>It sucks.

I don&#x27;t care for edge for the most part, but there is actually one integration with edge that I have come to like. When I click on an email link inside outlook, edge opens the link, and also displays a sidebar which displays the email. Super handy IMO.<p>Somehow we need to find a balance that allows vendors to tightly integrate their apps but prevent abusing this.<p>MS is everyone&#x27;s favorite whipping boy, but I fear what kind of ads Google while shove through if they ever get a dominant market share in desktop OSs. Apple seems to be the only sensible alternative.

This was one of the straws that finally got me to switch to Linux.<p>Enough complaining about M$, change to Linux and email every company that isnt fully supporting Linux that they need to adopt to 2023 computing.

I’m using Windows 11 and nothing forces open Edge on my machine. Every link opens in Brave like I told it to.

Win10 in professional use turned me into Linux user. Sorry but I always lol&#x27;d people, when their box stopped working because of pending win update, ridiculous.<p>I&#x27;m running a lot of Win builds on VMs for debugging etc. and it&#x27;s enough for me.

My wife’s laptop just upgraded itself to windows 11 pro form 10 pro unasked &amp; unsolicited and all prefs were changed to microsoft traps including edge being the default. Dark patterns galore. Luckily I could revert back to the previous version.

I gave my old parents the latest hand-me-up laptop and installed ubutntu on it because of windows 11. The install process and default configuration is so user hostile to someone that &quot;just needs to use chrome&quot;. My niece &amp; nephew have only known ChromeOS&#x2F;iOS&#x2F;Android. They will never use windows until a college course requires some specific software, or they get a desk job. I think they will for sure eventually &quot;learn windows&quot;, but I don&#x27;t think the generation behind them will.<p>I get the feeling more and more that peak Windows is upon us.

I used to be <i>ambivalent</i> about Edge. It actually has some nice integrated features I would normally need (slow) addons for, and better integration in Windows features (like better DRM for video streaming).<p>I even used it in linux some.<p>...But I just recently tested it on a brand new Windows desktop, and I can&#x27;t believe how slow and spammy it feels out-of-the-box compared to Thorium&#x2F;Chromite now.

The only time I&#x27;ve felt Edge was forced on my was MS Teams has its own browser binding and defaulted to Edge. Otherwise? The system-level &quot;firefox is my browser&quot; seems to be working fine.

Horrible! At least Apple doesn&#x27;t force Safari on iOS users.

They finally convinced me to try bing chat. Made a shortcut like so:<p>microsoft-edge:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bing.com&#x2F;search?showconv=1&amp;sendquery=1&amp;form=MY02CD&amp;q=is%20microsoft%20forcing%20edge%20on%20people&amp;pl=launch" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bing.com&#x2F;search?showconv=1&amp;sendquery=1&amp;form=MY02...</a><p>Can also use it to create your own bing chat links on your home page.<p>They&#x27;ve promised not to do it anymore in the EU apparently.

This makes me mad because I actually do like Windows. I don&#x27;t understand the need to make it crappy considering their market share.

I deleted Edge from my new laptop installation. Yet I now have problems opening certain apps because they rely on Edge.

Why would anyone assume they will stop?

I&#x27;m trying to uninstall edge, but can&#x27;t

Edge is my default browser on my Mac, and I get annoying when Safari gets launched somehow.

This is such a non issue. Might as well complain about ios shipping with safari as default.

I like windows, but really considering jumping to NixOs. Edge really feels like spyware.

Edge is fun to use but has too many ads.

How’s this making ms any money?

Glad I switched to ReviOS and don’t have to deal with these shenanigans.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;revi.cc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;revi.cc&#x2F;</a>

Last time I tested an extension of mine on Edge, I counted four or five distinct ways Windows and Edge tried to convince or coax me into setting Edge as default. (Coaxing includes but isn’t limited to full-screen one-click “finish setting up your computer” on boot which includes adopting “Microsoft-recommended” browser security settings which of course means resetting the default browser. It appeared on every reboot until someone told me about a setting to disable it.) Mind you, the four or five ways I encountered were from using Windows 11 Pro normally or opening Edge briefly; I’m not even counting additional conditional shenanigans like special banner on chrome.com, or asking you to use Microsoft everything (including on mobile devices) to bump up your position in Bing Chat waitlist.<p>The brazenness and shamelessness is really appalling.

<i>the new version still aggressively prompts you with a captive full-screen experience on start-up</i><p>IMHO that is the peak of user-hostile behaviour. The urge to pull the power cord or hit the reset button when I encounter things like that is very hard to resist because of how insulting it feels, but I do wonder if most of the user population have already been beaten into submission and consider it only a minor annoyance and almost trivial.

On my work computer there is Windows 11, and what we build can only be built on windows.<p>So naturally, I just accept almost all defaults. If you just go along with their (sometimes mindbendingly horrible) choices, you get to actually get work done.<p>Of course it&#x27;s a wonderful moment to boot up my machine at home, which has ArchLinux on it, with KDE and all the things I chose because I like them, and I&#x27;m at least 2x more productive. Reading code is much easier without distractions, with the right font, with the right colorscheme that I&#x27;m used to. Writing code is much easier when the IDE doesn&#x27;t hijack Tab to insert AI autosuggestions (which as I said, I leave on, because I dont want to fight MS as its a waste of time). I can use bash without 194728 incantations of setting up path variables and installing all the tools I want.<p>Yeah this is a rant, but man, Windows does a lot of work to force its defaults on you, and man, theyre horrible.

Edge is insidious too, from a privacy stand point. There are literally dozens of settings that effectively send &quot;tracking&quot; data to Microsoft from Edge. All of the sync, shopping, points, url protection, etc. settings all effectively send data to Microsoft for evaluation. And they automatically sign you into your Edge profile (from your Windows profile). Ugh.<p>I get that HTML has taken over the world and that most of Office now is effectively a web app. So Edge is definitely a required piece of library software on any Windows install. But the inability to just open simple hyperlinks in an alternative browser combined with Edge&#x27;s insistence that every &quot;feature&quot; is basically Microsoft profiling you... I guess it just boggles my mind how they get away with this.

Has to be pretty embarrassing for the Edge developers that something they&#x27;ve worked on is mostly known as a punchline or an annoyance shoved down people&#x27;s throats, rather than a product that can stand and compete on its own two feet.

This stems from modern companies’ obsession with <i>measurable</i> impact. If it can’t be measured it might as well not exist. Unfortunately UX has to become very very bad before the effect is measurable (losing users) and by then it is much too late, especially when the company has near monopoly power. I hope they figure out that they need to make feedback easier to gather so that they can get back to making good products.

Microsoft probably has better data than me, but I can&#x27;t imagine that that many people switch to Edge after Microsoft forcefully opens it when you try to search for a local file.<p>Just show some fucking respect to your users, it will be worth more than the 0.003% market share you get from opening Edge when I click a pdf

I use Edge on my laptop (because of Bing Chat, easy to use on Edge, without faffing around on OpenAI), and Microsoft still won&#x27;t stop trying to push it on me every once in a while.<p>(on windows 10, because of TPM1.2, small blessings)<p>Like chill, you already got me. I am not going to remove Chrome and Firefox, but you are the default browser already and I use Bing too, now go away.

Windows 10 is just fine for my needs. Yet every weeks my system is kidnapped on startup by a menu full of dark patterns that tries to lure me into installing Windows 11. Not only is it hostile and deceitful, but it fails to explain the advantages of upgrading to 11, which makes it useless.

Looks like nothing much has changed on Microsoft&#x27;s end.<p>I posted this 2 years ago on HN[1] about how Microsoft goes out of its way to manipulate users when they search for &quot;Firefox&quot; on Bing using Edge:<p>&gt; <i>Tangentially related, but I recently spun up a Windows VM and used Edge to search Bing for &quot;Firefox&quot; and this is result I got[2].</i><p>&gt; <i>It&#x27;s a giant banner that says, &quot;You&#x27;re already browsing in Microsoft Edge. Keep using to get world class performance with more privacy, more productivity, and more value.&quot;</i><p><i>&gt; That banner is followed by another giant banner image telling me to get &quot;Get Robux using Microsoft Edge. Join Microsoft Rewards and use Microsoft Edge. Get a 100 Robux eGift Card on us when you search with Microsoft Bing on Microsoft Edge for 5 days after you join.&quot;</i><p>&gt; <i>I had to scroll to even see the relevant search results for my search term. I&#x27;m assuming most non-power users won&#x27;t scroll because they were just assured that they were &quot;already browsing in Microsoft Edge&quot;, which is apparently more private, productive and valuable than what they intended to search for.</i><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28517187">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28517187</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;blHGMgX.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;blHGMgX.png</a>

Wasn’t this breaking the law the last time?<p>I remember it was calls to split Microsoft into separate companies, one for the operating system and one for the internet divisions. Looks like it’s time now.<p>Last time Microsoft had the default web browser they were horrible stewards of the web. I’ll never forget them delaying supporting PNG.

Looks like they really learned a lot from that $613M EU fine. I hope they double it next time. How much exactly do they make from forcing IE down users throats? Apparently enough to justify this behavior given the past penalties, just mind blowing that they’re able to continue to do this and just pay fines. You’d think there’d be more backlash at the board level to this type of behavior.

Every day of bad new for Microsoft and Windows is another great day for Linux. You all have a choice. Make it.

All these comments about coercing Windows into some semblance of usability. After several years of not having a PC, I recently bought a new one to use Windows to play ONE game that several of my other friends play on it, and it has been extraordinarily frustrating to configure. From the on-topic charade of browser choice, to denying Microsoft&#x27;s many attempts to take over several other defaults, or install Office, to power management robbing me of the performance I paid for, to OneDrive and it&#x27;s confusing integration with the awful Explorer, to all the nagware buried in all the drivers, to the giant FUCK YOU in the Bluetooth stack that shuts it down after a minute to save energy(!?) forcing me to plug in a keyboard and mouse to fiddle with it until I <i>finally</i> found the setting to turn that off... And then making you go through the routine of turning down all their attempts to take everything over again every time there&#x27;s a Windows upgrade. Seriously, how does anyone with a choice put up with an operating system that continually slaps you in the face and treats you with so little respect? Or, God forbid, think this user experience is superior to macOS or Linux?

&quot;Freedom of choice for customers!<p>Microsoft edge is bringing me inconvenience. Just because a product is good doesn&#x27;t mean I&#x27;m obligated to use it. I as a customer do not like this browser. I like another one and I want to have the options very clear to download the browser you want. Your browser edge is almost like a virus does not let me download another browser and we know clearly that all this is not to benefit customers and to direct us to the microsoft download store. I can&#x27;t download another product other than microsoft this seems to me like monopoly syndrome,<p>I request a change to a list teaching me the steps to have other free browser options, I don&#x27;t want to remove the edge any more than other options.<p>This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread.&quot;<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;answers.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;microsoftedge&#x2F;forum&#x2F;all&#x2F;freedom-of-choice-for-customers&#x2F;b5c507eb-9136-4804-a332-9b8a19f73e9b" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;answers.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;microsoftedge&#x2F;forum&#x2F;all&#x2F;...</a>

Microsoft is weird. People where pretty happy about Edge initially and Microsoft fail to capitalize on that.<p>Why not just create a good browser, bundle it Windows, ensure it has excellent privacy features and if people use it then great, if not, to bad. I really fail to see Microsofts end goal here. They don&#x27;t need people to use Edge, they don&#x27;t need to spy on people... So why do they feel like they must?

&gt; You may have read stories in the tech media celebrating that Windows will finally respect the default browser setting.<p>As someone who hasn&#x27;t daily driven Windows since Windows 7 this statement is hilarious, because back then, it did respect default browser settings.

Most of the people who participate in Windows Insider are amateurs, they don&#x27;t have several PCs for functional verification, they don&#x27;t have in-depth knowledge of software testing, and there is no point in blaming them. On the contrary, Windows 11 is entrusted to these amateurs for functional verification instead of QA, so it is not surprising that Windows 11 has bugs in every update.

I used to be a huge Windows fan, but shoving Edge upon me so aggressively has made me decide it’s time to move on. Moving forward, I’m only buying Apple or Linux devices.

Microsoft Edge is a privacy nightmare. They have buried dozens of data-collection settings in so many menus under so many different names and categories it&#x27;s insane. You literally need a book to know which settings to turn off, and even then they keep adding new settings at a very high rate hidden in &quot;security updates&quot;

I&#x27;ve stopped forcing myself on Microsoft. Works wonders. Moved my workflow off the platform over the last 6 months entirely.

I used a debloater on my windows 11 laptop which also removed edge. No big deal since Firefox is my browser if choice, but I&#x27;m a Web developer and need to test my apps in different browsers. I&#x27;ve tried to install edge multiple times, but I can never get it to work.

What made you think they&#x27;d stop?<p>I just want them to use clippy to force you into going from google sheets back to excel just for the memes. (and don&#x27;t tell me to stop giving them bad ideas, I know the higher-ups love them)

I want the Chrome to stop being the majority shareholder of the market. But not like this.

Windows continuously monitors what browsers users have installed. If you uninstall Chrome, it immediately tries to make Edge the default browser.<p>And it never respects my wishes for a default browser. Any OS embedded help link will open Edge, wasting me time, memory and screen space.

Microsoft is also forcing office 365 support to end on windows servers in 2025&#x2F;2026. It&#x27;s going to be a blood bath if you run on prem.

Microsoft and their stupid OneDrive needs to stop trying to co-mingle all my data all the time.<p>It’s gonna start getting really hard to have all these affairs on the side &#x2F;s

I ended up blocking Edge in the firewall so it would at least close quickly without loading any useless stuff. Even then the firewall rule would reset periodically so I made a new one that points to the Edge binary.

Is it really that hard to innovate to differentiate yourself and steer the browsing experience somewhere else, away from this mess? Maybe the employee selection program is completely flawed at big companies like these or these people are purposefully suppressed. Because today&#x27;s browsers, with their antiquated ui and the non existing user experience is really disturbing.

Windows 11 is awful. I&#x27;ll continue to use windows 10 on my personal laptop for as long as possible.

&quot;Hey friends :wave:, I call everyone my friend because I am a creepy old Influenza(tm) on TikTok trying to advertise snake poison to young folks. Don&#x27;t be afraid, I&#x27;m just an innocent friendly neighbour hood virtue signalling Microsoft advocate. Look, here I use Edge, here I use Windows 11 with some bullshit hack to run Linux in my terminal and then I use (innocently) a bunch of other toxic Microsoft software to advertise this spyware to you in an unsuspecting way.&quot;<p>Yawn... I think people are slowly waking up to Microsoft and their antics and fake people.

I refuse to use browsers that come tied deeply with the os. Last one I used was IE6<p>Thats all I have to say about these tactics over the last decades

Who forced you to use Microsoft (at home).

Smells like typical knee jerk reaction for a product that doesn&#x27;t perform to a vp&#x27;s expectations. PM&#x27;s asked to do something about it, and between making the product better to attract users, or implementing defaults and such to force it on them, they choose the expedient.

I am shocked a company with a very sketchy history with repeated violation with anti trust related to internet browsers.<p>But to be serious, I wonder what sketchy nonsense Microsoft would do if they could only compete on Linux or MacOS.<p>On steam and other stores they force you to login into Xbox services.

Edge is trash. If Microsoft wants to do something positive for the browser diversity landscape they should match Google $ for $ on support for Mozilla, with the stipulation that the funds can <i>only</i> be used for FireFox.

... If they could just do it to Chrome but leave Firefox alone.

It&#x27;s their OS. Seems like an odd issue.

Good! Chrome is a monstrous application, and it&#x27;s good when people are coerced off of it.

Am I the only one who thinks it&#x27;s expected behavior for microsoft-edge:&#x2F;&#x2F;bing.com to open in Edge as opposed to any other browser? Edge isn&#x27;t being forced onto people. People are just opening a deeplink into Edge.

Better than Google constantly asking me to switch to Chrome on google.com when I&#x27;m in Edge.

I share all criticism on the subject but I must admit there is a killer feature that alone converted me to use Edge on MacOS - native vertical tab bar with tab grouping. It worked much better for me than all Chrome and Firefox extensions I tried before.<p>I know Brave implemented it recently too so Edge is not the only player in town now, but it was the first! Hopefully the rest of browsers will follow the trend.

Microsoft only continue to make Windows desktop because businesses &quot;need it&quot;, and it&#x27;s a gateway to sell people azure and office. Eventually they will open source as much of it as they can, or rather, build a flavour of windows that is Linux and essentially distribute binaries for the directx stuff and other things they&#x27;re not willing to fully release the code on.<p>mark my words, Windows isn&#x27;t dying a natural death, it&#x27;s parent is suffocating it in its sleep as a mercy killing.. mercy from having to support it forever

I use Windows 10&#x2F;11 daily. The number of times Edge was &quot;forced on me&quot;: 0 The number of times Edge launched when I expected or wanted my default browser (Firefox): 0 The number of times my browser default was reset to Edge: 0<p>I just don&#x27;t understand this outrage. I spend 90% of my time in Firefox&#x2F;Chrome - I&#x27;ve only started using Edge lately to play with Bing &quot;AI&quot; Chat. I had to search for it!