Users not allowed to change Recommenced Policy

Copper Contributor

I set the NewTabPageLocation as a recommended setting using the following registry key:

 

SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\Recommended

 

When the users try to go in to change the New Tab Page, the "Customize" button is grayed out. I tried setting the key in the LOCALMACHINE area as well as the CURRENTUSER area, both have the same symptom. Am I missing something?

7 Replies

Pinging in on this. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Is there another place I should post this for the Edge team to see?

@Jeff Poblocki 

We have the same issue, did you receive any reply?  Would really like this one to work to roll it out.  Thanks

Nope. I never found a solution to this. I ended up just customizing the home page setting instead.

@Jeff Poblocki 

 

I also have this issue in all versions I've tested, using recommended reg keys and recommended group policy. I submitted feedback through the browser itself, but have not gotten a response. I'm glad I saw this thread because I was thinking about posting this myself. 

 

I've tried setting all of the other policies related to home page and new tab page to Recommended as well in case there is a dependency that is not documented, but this didn't change anything. 

 

Andrew

Is this on the team's radar? I have not received a response to the feedback I submitted and there is no official response here. I tested this again today in Canary Version 84.0.516.0 and the behavior is the same. 

 

Andrew

@Jeff Poblocki 

I think I figured out what the deal with this policy is. I had been using it to set the new tab URL to our intranet home page, for context. 

 

My expected behavior would be that I set this URL as a recommended policy, which would then allow the user to change the URL or set it to the default Edge new tab page. 

 

However, once I unset this policy, I noticed that clicking the 'Customize' button Under Settings>New tab page takes you to the actual new tab page with the customization popup open. There is no option here in the UI to specify a custom URL. 

 

I think this means that the only way to specify a custom new tab URL is using this group policy. So when you set it, the customize button grays out because there is no corresponding UI option the user has access to. This makes it act like a mandatory policy. 

 

Usually when you change recommended policies it does not affect users' current settings, but I noticed when I turned this policy off it does change the current setting for the user back to the default new tab page. Again, as though it were a mandatory policy. 

 

I wish I would have understood this a few months ago. I would have just left the new tab page alone and pin the intranet home page to the quick launch. As it is, I now have to decide whether to disrupt all of my users by changing the page, or just ignore the folks who are complaining that they can't change it. 

@Deleted Any chance the team could take a look at this policy behavior, or at least double down on it and change the documentation to say that it is only available as Mandatory? Thanks!

 

Andrew

I posted about the same issue a while back also... No responses there at all - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/enterprise/gpo-for-default-user-overrideable-newtab-url-is-pr...

 

Would love to see this allowing users to still change this behaviour when we set something as recommended.