Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Jun 14, 2020

Solved

Do the Group Policy templates actually work for stopping/controlling Microsoft Edge Updates?

Hello I am current testing MS Edge for Business with the specific goal of controlling the update cadence for the Stable channel. I want complete control on when these updates are applied and ONLY...

azeigler
Jun 17, 2020
Hi Bruce_McDonald,

Setting the "Update policy override" to "Updates disabled: Updates are never applied" will prevent Edge from being updated on any domain-joined machine. Setting this is sufficient to prevent any updating from happening. When configured, the services / scheduled tasks will not update the browser. They're still scheduled in the case that the policy changes from "off" to "on".

Thanks,

Andy Zeigler

Edge Team

Bruce_McDonald

Copper Contributor

Jun 16, 2020

Fawkes

Appreciate the info and update.

While I may consider letting Edge update itself in the future - it needs some maturity and historical context before I would consider it. All you need is one dicey update to wreak havoc. Would rather be safe than sorry.

Having full control of the app update cadence is well established here and would most certainly apply to vetting major items like the web browser.

Hoping that the enterprise team can shed some light on what is happening here so I can sort this out quickly. Should not really be this difficult. By way of contrast - Chrome is super easy to control and has a specific set of policies that just work all of the time.

Cheers

B

azeigler

Microsoft

Jun 17, 2020

Hi Bruce_McDonald,

Setting the "Update policy override" to "Updates disabled: Updates are never applied" will prevent Edge from being updated on any domain-joined machine. Setting this is sufficient to prevent any updating from happening. When configured, the services / scheduled tasks will not update the browser. They're still scheduled in the case that the policy changes from "off" to "on".

Thanks,

Andy Zeigler

Edge Team

Bruce_McDonald
Copper Contributor
Jun 19, 2020
azeigler

Andy

Would also like some insight into what the Edge "About Edge" dialog is doing once that GP/Reg edit you suggested has been placed. During testing this week - I see that the dialog now displays a different, more confusing message:

This now indicates that "something" is happening and to come back in a bit and see what it is. When I come back into "About Microsoft Edge" 5 minutes or 10 minutes or any minutes after - the same message appears - yet the version of Edge installed does not change.

So - while the GP setting seems to work - it would just be nice if the user was told straight up that the updates are "Managed By your Organization" like this:

I also found out today that this message above only appears if Edge is running on a domain connected device. All of my user machines are in a workgroup and do not display this message.

Cheers

Bruce
Bruce_McDonald
Copper Contributor
Jun 17, 2020
azeigler

Andy

Appreciate the update - but does the logic apply to a "non-domain" joined machine? I manage several small business layouts and there are no domains present.

And - what does this setting do if a user chooses "About Microsoft Edge" from Help and Feedback under the main menu on the right. This action kicks in the upgrade mechanism and I need to close that vector as well.

Please advise.

Cheers

Bruce