Edge is Microsoft’s flagship browser, replacing Internet Explorer 11. Recent Edge versions are based on Chromium, meaning it’s using the same engine as Google Chrome but rebranded by Microsoft. As a web developer I have been using Edge on and off and generally like it. It feels at home on Windows 10 and is such a fresh departure from the whole Internet Explorer age. Way back we even build a website that would only render in grayscale on Internet Explorer 6 for fun and giggles, but I digress.

Home Page & Privacy

Earlier today I got annoyed with accepting cookies on the MS Edge default home page. It loads each time you start the browser or open a new tab and I caught myself thinking: “If you value my privacy so much… why the cookie banner? Why even load a page from Microsoft’s servers each time I open a new tab?” Edge is not the first browser I use in my life so quickly changing the homepage to a blank page should only take me a few seconds, right?

Changing the Home Page

It took some internet searching to understand you need to customize the start page and manually type “about:blank” in the text field. A bit embarrassing as a professional web developer, don’t you think? I can’t remember it was that hard in, I don’t know, Internet Explorer 6? I restarted the browser and it shows a clean, blank page!

I open a new tab and… the Microsoft search page is back. Fine, I probably missed a setting somewhere. More digging around the interwebs. Wait. As far as I can tell you need to install a 3^rd party extension, which you need to download from the Google Chrome store, to set a blank page on new tabs.

Really Microsoft?