Hello Insiders! Today we’re releasing build 87.0.664.8 to the Dev channel. This is the last build for major version 87, so except for maybe a small patch or two, this is the build that will soon be going to Beta. We have one important known issue in this build that’s actually a fix for a previous issue. A couple of weeks ago, people who were expecting their session to be restored, either because they have Edge set to start up with their previous session or they intentionally checked for updates in Settings, lost their sessions. Today, the bug that caused that behavior has been fixed, but the fix causes the exact same behavior. If you’re in that group of people who lost their tabs, there’s a good chance they’re recoverable. Go to … > History, and look for entries in the “Recently closed” section that mention multiple tabs, since they will restore entire windows. Other methods, like the ctrl + shift + T, should also work if done right after Edge is opened.
Canary users should also check to see if they’ve been signed out of the browser. A bug over the last week may have caused that to happen, which will also affect features like sync that rely on being signed into the browser. Now, for everything noteworthy that’s been added this week:
Added features:
- Changed the Favorites menu to now be a pinnable pane that lists all favorites in a single vertical list instead of multiple flyout menus.
- Added a price comparison feature to Collections.
- Added data recovery to PDFs so that edits or annotations aren’t lost in the event of a crash.
- Improved support for AV1 encoded videos. Note that the Windows extension is still required to be installed from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/av1-video-extension/9mvzqvxjbq9v.
- Added a keyboard shortcut to open and close Collections.
- Added a button to the Profile flyout to turn on Sync if it’s not already turned on.
- Added a setting to control whether or not the button to reveal passwords on webpages is shown, as well as a management policy for Password Reveal Enabled. Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates are still needed.
- Added a management policy for Kiosk Address Bar Editing Enabled. Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates are still needed.
- Added a management policy for Web Capture Enabled. Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates are still needed.
- Merged the News and Office new tab pages for work and school users. Note that the Office-only new tab page can still be set for users via management policy.
- Rolled out the pre-rendered new tab page more broadly.
- Deprecated the management policy for New Tab Page Set Feed Type.
Improved reliability:
- Fixed an issue where navigating to certain websites crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where Read Aloud sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where Read Aloud on PDFs sometimes crashes the tab. Note that there is still a known hang with Read Aloud that may cause the tab to eventually crash if it hangs for too long.
- Fixed a crash when syncing Collections.
- Fixed an issue where dragging items into a Collection sometimes crashes the Collections pane.
- Fixed a crash when playing certain videos.
- Fixed an issue where certain videos fail to play.
Changed behavior:
- Fixed an issue where updating Edge causes the current session to be closed instead of restored (if it was set to be restored).
- Fixed an issue where users are signed out of Edge after an update.
- Fixed an issue where downloaded PDFs always open in Edge instead of opening in the default PDF viewer.
- Fixed an issue where the Favorites list sometimes won’t open.
- Fixed an issue where some website permissions are unable to be deleted from Settings.
- Fixed an issue where items can’t be added to a Collection from within Immersive Reader.
- Fixed an issue where disconnecting a monitor while Edge is fullscreen sometimes results in Edge no longer being visible on the remaining monitor(s).
- Fixed an issue where Password Monitor sometimes reports different numbers in the alert popup than it does in Settings.
- Fixed an issue where websites pinned to the Start menu sometimes don’t show the name of the website.
- Fixed an issue where the Taskbar shortcut sometimes looks pixelated or rough.
- Fixed an issue where Amazon Assistant doesn’t work when Tracking Prevention is enabled.
- Fixed an issue where Open All in Collections sometimes doesn’t work.
- Fixed an issue where certain forms on webpages are autofilled when they’re not expected to be.
- Fixed an issue where non-password forms on webpages are sometimes detected as passwords.
- Fixed an issue where the Web Capture preview sometimes doesn’t match the area selected or shows the area selected to be outside the window.
Known issues:
- Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on Youtube. As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed. See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/known-issue-adblock-causing-errors-on-youtube/m-p/14... for more details.
- Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error. The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it.
- Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load. This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
- Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before. Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available. However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.
- After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black. Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it. Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window. For users with discrete GPUs, updating graphics drivers may help.
- Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
- There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it. In another, restarting the browser fixes it.
Last week, major version 86 was promoted to Stable, so be on the lookout for that!
