SOLVED

The Missing Sync Items from "Settings"

Bronze Contributor

Just want to make sure: even Settings sync is 95% unfinished for everybody, right? I'm perpetually needing to add the same words back to the dictionary on each system. The same with search engines. I took a look at edge://sync-internals and nearly nothing at all is being synced.

 

I've highlighted two that I can confirm are not syncing anything:

 

8ZEUTi5

 

I've checked this page on both Dev 81.0.389.2 and Stable 79.0.309.65, both installed on two systems running Windows 10 Pro x64 1909 (18363.592). 

 

 

Settings sync already shipped in Stable, but it syncs only a very select set of data. Of the ~10 available "Settings types", just one—"Preferences"—has actually synced a single thing. From my count, all but one of these does not sync:

 

  • Preferences
  • Dictionary
  • Printers
  • Search Engines
  • Managed User Settings (Site Permissions?)
  • Managed User Whitelists (Site Permissions?)
  • Priority Preferences
  • OS Priority Preferences
  • OS Preferences

Is this what everyone else is seeing? It's a little uncanny to see "Settings sync on", but it actually not sync a lot of things. For stable users, this should be noted in the sync area that not all Settings are currently available to sync (as most won't ever bother to check edge://sync-internals). 

 

z0ItRG4

19 Replies

@ikjadoon 

 

I'm on Canary and only these rows are working for me

 

Autofill

Bookmarks

Collection

Passwords

Preferences

 

the rest are empty. zero. 0

so that means even though I'm using all of the features of Edge canary Version 81.0.396.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)

but the sync does not recognize them.

majority of the unrecognizable rows in the sync internals fall under "Settings sync"

Thank you for checking, @HotCakeX, on Canary.

Sync, for all the planning done otherwise, was not planned out as well as other features.

To reiterate, if MS is not going to sync significant amounts of data from Settings, it'd be nice if they informed Stable users who might otherwise think, "Huh, I guess sync isn't working." Instead, it's going to be fixed soon, but it's not there yet.

After all the other browsers have figured out sync, I'm just surprised Microsoft couldn't nail this from the get-go.
Totally agree, Settings sync also should be changed to "coming soon" status until it is fully covering all of the bits in Edge settings.
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@ikjadoon 

Hi there, I work on Edge. You are right that there are many settings that do not sync. Right now, only a few sync (homepage, homepage is your new tab page, restore on start up, for example). We are actively working on expanding the number of settings that sync. 

It's been over a year and Settings are still not being fully synced.
Specifically custom search which saves so much time. No need to open the actual website, wait for it to load, type in the search term and then again wait for the results to load. Is there a flag I can enable in stable or beta builds to make that work?
It is depressing when I have to add everything manually each time.
Sigh... The stuff I'd give for a seamless browser experience...

@Araragi  Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I struggle to believe that syncing my preferred search provider is so difficult that it is among the last remaining features missing from Microsoft Edge. I believe it is a conspiracy, and here is my theory--having tried and failed to gain traction with Bing as a search engine for over a decade, pushing it down users' throats at every opportunity much like they have done with Edge and a gaggle of other half-baked consumer products no one was asking for...Microsoft refuses to concede that for all their awkward and pushy tactics, users simply don't want to use their bloated unnecessary search. But why should they respect their users wishes? Hasn't done anything for them in the past.

 

So they made a browser! Or more accurately, they built a fancy hat and put it on top of Chromium. It's got everything Chrome offers and more! It's honestly a better web browser by just about every possible metric. Well done Microsoft. Now they are truly excited about this, because it's effectively putting them back into the same game they had going around the turn of the century where simply by virtue of coming pre-installed with Windows it will pick up some market share (sshhh! don't let the Federal Trade Commission hear you!!), and by taking much of its design cues from Chrome, users might not be so instantly predisposed to loath its very essence and to seek out an alternative as literally the very first action they take with their new PC. Especially considering any effort to change the default browser in Windows away from Edge will be met with a pathetic whine about how unfair it is that the market has driven consumers to have choices. But then the moment they use the address bar to search, they find that their results are strange...unsettling...not exactly wrong, but not good.

 

"Oh, gross it's f***ing Bing! OK, how do I change this, I know with Chrome I can just right click in the address bar and Manage Search Engines, will that--no. OK, Settings then, I know with Chrome I just scroll down to the "Search Engine" section on the main settings page, and Manage Search Engines, surely that will--no. F***ing Microsoft. Alright, what do I have to do? Let's see, Settings then..."Privacy, Search, and Services"--good lord that's a lot of crap! Fine, whatever. 5th option on the 8th section down and...oh for Christ's sake, you stuffed everything in the world on this single page with 8 sections spanning dozens of options, but "Address bar and search" takes me into yet another separate sub-page! Finally, a drop down to set my preferred search provider. Fortunately my preference is pre-installed, otherwise I would have to go into yet a 4th sub-page to manage my available search engines...

 

Nice! I have a sweet new browser that, albeit after more effort than should be necessary, allows me to search using a functional service! Cool. Now let's be sure I sign in and setup sync so I never have to do that again!"

 

I am an I.T. consultant, and I maintain user accounts on dozens of PCs that I use on a regular basis. Not wanting to install additional software on my client's PCs, and just generally being quite impressed by it, I opted to use Edge as my primary browser for work. But having to constantly go in and set such a fundamental and frequently used setting because it's the only thing that refuses to sync is annoying. It can only be that Microsoft has seen real growth in their search market share because of users who don't care or don't realize that it's happening, that they're intentionally leaving it out of the sync. Because they know their search traffic, and all of the related activity that goes with their overstuffed search provider, will take an actual hit if people can set it to Google once and never think about it again, as they should be able to do. It cannot be that difficult. They have done so much good work on so many other aspects of Edge, having a simple string argument in a JSON cannot be beyond their abilities. It must be because they don't want to do it.

Is there any roadmap for this development? (Search Engines synchronization)
Thanks!

Two years later! For such a simple thing. Wow! I'm starting to agree with the conspiracy theory above.

Over 2 and a half years later... I still have to manually add my custom search engines. I wish Microsoft sprint boards were public!
Synching search engines would save us a lot of time when we have to setup a new PC.

Aaaaaand now it's been three years. C'mon, the Edge developers aren't that incompetent, are they??

Are they?

 

 

Custom search engine sync now works in Vivaldi - just an FYI.
It's bliss, no more manual setups.
Chrome too, far as that goes, but I need it to be Edge as that's what the locked down work PC has.

But I'm going to check out Vivaldi on my home system for sure. Thanks!

Waiting....

 

 

 

Still waiting...

?????

Hi Edge Developers! Just wanted to chip in and say the only reason I haven't moved completely from Chrome to Edge is THIS! I spent a half hour of my life transferring search engines into the new Edge from Chrome when reinstalling after some error because Edge had wiped them when I reinstalled. It would save EVERYONE time if you fixed the sync so it saved search engines and loaded them on reinstall (like Chrome does....what a great browser 🙂 ). I have actually been impressed by the new Edge for a lot of reasons but this problem stops me moving over and finding out that other users have been waving their arms at you about it for 3 YEARS is mind-blowing! You want to have your OS on everyone's computer with this browser....but you don't want to listen to your users? That's very strange...very odd indeed. I mean, think of the money you could make actually listening to your users! It might even be a first for a tech company! Anyway, just chipping in to this 3 years old discussion....Hope you have a nice day doing whatever your doing.

I have created a feature request for this. If everyone can up vote it then at least we have something else they can ignore
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/209f4153-8e0d-ef11-989b-000d3a0dd73d
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@ikjadoon 

Hi there, I work on Edge. You are right that there are many settings that do not sync. Right now, only a few sync (homepage, homepage is your new tab page, restore on start up, for example). We are actively working on expanding the number of settings that sync. 

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