Forum Discussion
josh_bodner
Microsoft
MicrosoftIntroducing the new Extensions menu on the toolbar
Extensions are small applications that enhance the browser’s functionality. Once you install an extension, you can notice the extension icon appearing on the toolbar. If you have several extensions installed on your browser, these extension icons take up considerable space on your toolbar. We have received significant feedback from the users asking for the ability to manage these extensions and reclaim space on the toolbar.
To address this feedback, we are rolling out a new Extensions menu on the toolbar. This extension menu allows you to hide one or more of your extensions from the toolbar. Furthermore, you can directly visit the Edge add-ons site to install more extensions or the extensions management page using the two links provided in the menu.
The extensions menu will be shown to you on the toolbar if you have one or more extensions installed on the browser. The default state of these extensions are shown on the toolbar. You can choose to hide them by clicking on the extensions menu icon and the view/hide icon (eye icon) listed inside. Alternatively, you can right-click on the extensions icon on the toolbar and choose “Hide from toolbar” to hiding that extension from the toolbar.
There are extension-specific “more” options (...) available against each extension inside the extension menu. Try out these options to manage the extension level settings for each extension.
If you would like your extensions upfront on the toolbar, you can also choose to remove the extensions menu from the toolbar. This will ensure that all your extensions are available on the toolbar and the extensions menu icon is hidden from the toolbar. For this, you can right-click on the extensions menu icon and select “Customize toolbar” option. This redirects you to the Appearance section inside the Settings page for Edge. You can toggle the button off or on for the extensions menu to hide or show it on the toolbar.
The feature has been rolled out to the Dev and Canary channels as part of the CFR. Do leave us your valuable feedback around the extensions menu by leaving a comment below or sending us feedback via the browser (… menu > Help and feedback > Send feedback). We hope you enjoy this exciting new feature and look forward to hearing from you!
- So this feature that was supposed to clean up a toolbar forces us to add another button have toolbar littered with numbers of icons, great solution, I hate it.
What was wrong with hiding extensions in menu that we need another button to take place on toolbar? - Actually I don't like this new feature. Hope I could disable this.
I'm on Edge 91 beta. I was really hoping I would get the extensions menu on the toolbar, but it is not there.
I'm not sure how to manage all the complaints, but I can tell you I really like not having the ... menu cluttered with the icons of all my extensions. I hope the extension menu is added to the toolbar soon!- @joshbodner
Could you please update us all on which decision the Edge development team has taken with regards to all the feedback about the implementation of the Extensions menu?
Whether they take the feedback into account (many here hope they do), or whether they have decided to leave things are they are (many hope not), either way please inform us about the decision, so that we can move on?
Leaving us in limbo about this (important to many) topic is the least desirable state of things.
Thanks for considering this.- They keep saying they are looking at feedback but they have not been transparent about it. I bet my dollar they got more people complaining about this feature than people liking it. Folks at the Google Chrome community disliked the extension button as much as us but since Google actually has close to 70% market share - they can actually ignore the complaints. Ole MS doesn't have the marketshare and mindshare to pull this off.
It's pretty simple on how to satisfy both parties of this debate: They can make a flag to disable this button so that extensions can still be in the overflow menu. Those that don't care or actually like the button can be left alone then.
Hopefully, they come to their senses and give us an update about this because I'd rather not use the command line solution if they implement this in the stable and beta channels - I'd just go use Firefox 100% of the time.
- What's the most productive way to provide feedback that will land on your developer's roadmap?
In the post, there are two methods mentioned: 1) leaving a comment here, and 2) sending feedback via the browser Send Feedback form. If both are equal, that's great!
The extension change appears have people with passionate feedback (I feel strongly myself), and I'd like to feel confident it reaches the developer team through the right process. Thanks!- Alexandra-RHey there mep001!
For threads (like this one) that we post specifically asking for feedback, both methods mentioned in the post have equal weight. Feature teams and community managers collaborate on these posts and ensure that we're reviewing the feedback in the thread as well as what's sent via the browser.
For feedback that isn't part of a larger discussion, or for reporting bugs/issues, the in-browser feedback is the preferred method and ensures that we (community managers and feature teams) see the feedback.
The feature team is reviewing the feedback around the new extensions menu, but we are still listening to new feedback coming in both here and through the browser. So, if there's something you like, don't like, want to see done differently, or even something you have trouble doing now that you didn't before the menu change - let us know! 😃Hello. I'm glad to hear the team is still keeping an eye out for feedback. Extensions toolbar menu has grown on me over the last couple weeks. Now I actually prefer it. However, for those who used the overflow menu, the transition can be quite rough. Hopefully, team Edge can create a less jarring on-ramp.
Why I Prefer the New Extensions Menu:- All your extensions plus hide, more actions, manage and find more extensions are all together and just one click away. It's a better overall experience once you get used to it.
- Being able to see full extension titles rather than having to hover over each one is better for the same reason vertical tabs are better. I memorized all my extension icons. But the more you have, the more helpful this new design should be (IMO).
- Discoverability is better—especially for users who rarely venture into Settings and right-click menus.
- Makes for a cleaner, more consistent Settings menu. I like Edge's overflow menu compared to some other browsers. But in retrospect, it always looked a bit like a hack—increasingly so as you push more extensions into overflow.
Ideas for a Smoother Transition:
If you're someone who hides toolbar icons by carefully reordering then expanding your address bar and/or using the right-click hide menu, this change can feel downright rude. It's not likely to be a problem for users who rarely if ever customize or use extensions, but it's not a good idea to upset thousands of geeks who do.- Do NOT dump all the icons a user has carefully hidden back out onto the toolbar without warning. The extensions menu should at least start with all the same icons hidden.
- Alphabetical order is a good default IMO, but previous icon order should optionally be preserved if possible. The ability to at least reorder by drag and drop, as mentioned by HotCakeX, would probably be appreciated by many.
- Using the same icon for the new toolbar menu and settings menu was confusing at first (at least for me). Since I hadn't heard about the new toolbar icon yet, I thought "how did this get promoted to my taskbar?" So, instead of left-clicking to open, I immediately right-clicked to hide it. After that, one pretty much has to do some reading and/or digging through menus to find it again. Somehow, make it as obvious as possible that this is not the settings menu control—at least on first use and before someone has a chance to right-click on it.
- The greater surprise and pain is when you discover none of the previous methods of hiding icons works anymore—especially after you've hidden the darn icon before realizing what it was. Maybe add a warning about that too in a first-experience pop-up?
- I don't know if you can make this feature optional and maintain both methods. I've already reached the point where I'm okay with the change, but we all know not everyone will be quite as receptive.
- Alexandra-RHey everyone,
Several comments on this post were removed because they contained personal attacks and other rule violations. This is a friendly reminder to focus on the feedback not the person. We're all here to improve the product and provide feedback while keeping a friendly and open community.
Unfortunately, many comments that did contain legitimate feature feedback were removed because they also contained personal attacks. I encourage those of you whose feedback was removed to post again and focus on the feedback.
Additionally, please remember that everyone here is welcome to provide feedback, both good and bad, and that feedback is not wrong because you disagree with it. Please be respectful and constructive, even when you disagree with one another. - I like new button. But I don't like that when I choose to hide it from toolbar all my extensions shows again on toolbar. And that when I turn on this button in "appearance" it don't hide extensions that was hidden before automatically
- I hate this button.
where it put them in the menu is exactly where I want them to be. turning off the extension button disables hiding them at all.
can we just make it so that turning off the extension button returns the old functionality of putting the hidden buttons in the menu?
while we're getting rid of buttons added for no reason; can we have an option to turn off the downloads button and return them to the statusbar at the bottom of the browser?
every .exe I download, I have to click the downloads button, click the menu on the .exe and click keep, because it insists everything is unsafe and that I don't know what I'm doing. It was minorly annoying in the statusbar, now that it's in a menu it's 3x as annoying. - I ended up giving up and disabling the extension menu and letting the extensions shrink my URL bar to an inch in size.
In the old dock I had the extensions ordered for use and usefulness. Most of my extensions only did stuff passively so letting them hide away is fine, while only 15-20ish of them actually had some sort of either toggle or interactable menu that I occasionally used. Only 3 of them commonly enough to warrant on the URL bar.
I now have a choice, deal with having 15-20 extensions on my URL bar or try to perfectly remember the names of each and every one of my extensions in order to find them in the alphabetical list without spending 4-5 minutes each and every time.- Ebsolas
But, isn't that a bit strong what you're claiming? I've clearly spoken against how the feature is now,
but you are claiming that you have a choice about _all_ your extensions in the toolbar, or _none_ of them. And that's simply not true. You can still have a few select extensions in the toolbar, and the rest in the alphabetical menu-button. If you have the button showing, you can toggle which extensions you want directly on the toolbar or not.
The annoyance most have is that this claims to reduce clutter (for the people who were unaware you could move extensions away from the toolbar), but for the people who actually _did_ manage their toolbars, it now adds a forced button.. which is just plain annoying and backwards.. but also not more than a single button.
- It's useful and I like it.
