Group policy to disable the "Welcome to the new Microsoft Edge" dialog from FirstRun wizard

[csrswalch]

Any chance you could provide a group policy to hide the FirstRun Get Started dialog? In a managed environment it's largely redundant, or at least will be. Also more often then not these changes are communicated internally.

Our customer site is heavily locked down via group policy, using automatic AAD sign in and sync, importing all existing settings from Internet Explorer; so the FirstRun experience is largely seamless which is great. Removing that extra click and allowing customers to get straight into the browser is what we're after - no doubt the majority of your enterprise customers would appreciate having the ability to manage this setting too.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

[#2]

Same to us.

[#3]

@csrswalch 

Yes please.

Another scenario is VDI where the VM is destroyed and redeployed as soon as the user logs off.

The VDI:s do have public access and they are used for banking, social security and government interaction so we need to be 100% sure they are "clean" for the next user

[#4]

@csrswalch Full ACK.

[#5]

@csrswalch also looking for this. I'm testing in a Citrix environment. I had to add an inclusion in Citrix for the EdgeBeta user directory so it would save the first run having been applied already. So any subsequent launches do not show it even after logging off and back on again. I do wish I could prevent it for brand new users as well though. So far nothing I've found or tried has been able to disable it.

[#6]

@csrswalch we are looking for something similar as it's driving me crazy with our local roaming profiles on our domain.

[#7]

I already reported this in October 2019, see: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Enterprise/Edge-v78-asks-User-on-first-start-which-New-Tab-De... 

But no response yet.

I figured out how this "First Run Experience" ist triggered:

In the Edge UserProfile there is a file "Local state" which is as JSON formatted Settings-File. 

The setting "has_user_seen_fre" has to be true, if not existent or false the First Run Experience is shown.

To prevent the First-Run-Experience I create an empty Edge-Userprofile just Containing a almost empty "Local state" file, just having this one setting in it. This solution is ugly but works.

As there is no Solution provided by Microsoft, I created a Script (as a workaround). I published it here: https://github.com/gunnarhaslinger/Microsoft-Edge-based-on-Chromium-Scripts

[#8]

I too would like a policy to disable this.

[#9]

Hi everyone

I am a PM in the Edge team and I am happy to say that we are currently working on this very policy. While I can't give a hard timeline, we should be good to release it in the next couple of months.

[#10]

@rishavsharan That is good news, thanks. Whilst looking at GPOs, could you take a look at this issue please? https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/enterprise/new-tab-logo-gpo/m-p/1087949#M724

[#11]

@LBXComputers, Thanks. I have taken a bug on this and notified the appropriate team.

[#12]

How are we looking for this with the recent release of the stable version of Edge?

[#13]

@itsupportBH 

According to the docs the policy is slated for a realease in version 80, stable is version 79 so we probably have to wait for the first update:

Hide the First-run experience and splash screen

Supported Versions: Microsoft Edge on Windows and Mac since version 80 or later

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies#hidefirstrunexperience

[#14]

Nice sleuthing. 😄
The current plan is to push it out in E80 stable. We are on track so far.

You should be able to test it right now in Beta/Dev and Canary channels

[#15]

@rishavsharan I'd like to deploy this setting using Endpoint Manager, is there any idea on when this is being deployed? The article above seems to mention only ADMX and reg key settings.

[#16]

@JornMich I don't think the policy has any effect on any version below 80. I tried the reg key settings and only the Beta Edge honored the "HideFirstRunExperience" reg value. Stable build does not honor this setting.

[#17]

@rishavsharanDid you guys ever create a gpo setting to disable this? If so, what is the name of the setting?

[#18]

@MSITAdmin1 Hello!  The HideFirstRunExperience Policy was released in V80.  Here is a link to our documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies#hidefirstrunexperience 

Thanks! 

-Kelly

[#19]

@Kelly_YThanks for the response. I will give this a shot.