One of the biggest perks of using a Chromium-based browser is that you would be getting near all the goodies that the Chrome browser offers. Right from using its rich collection of extensions to its feature set. There’s a lot of standard integration between Microsoft Edge’s Chromium build and the standalone offering from Google.
And one such integration is the addition of Chrome flags to the Edge browser. These flags are experimental features for the unaware, primarily intended for tech enthusiasts and developers to test the cutting-edge and beta features.
But these flags don’t have a permanent abode on your browser; instead, they keep changing. While some make it into the browser’s stable build and are treated as a permanent feature (such as the Sleeping Tabs flag), others are quietly removed.
Furthermore, they might be unstable and hence are hidden from regular users. However, there’s a small window opened that you could use to enable these flags. And in this guide, we shall help you with just that. Likewise, we will also list some of the best Microsoft Edge flags worthy of your attention.
How to Enable Microsoft Edge Flags?
We can easily enable any edge experiment from the flags page. All we need is to visit the flags, lookup for the one, and change the setting to Enabled.
Here are easy steps to enable the Microsoft Edge chromium flag:
- Launch the Microsoft Edge browser on the computer.
- Head to the edge://flags/ page.
- Use the search bar to find the desired flag of your choice.
- All flag options are set to Default; click on the drop-down and select Enabled.
- Hit the button at the bottom right corner.
Once the browser reopens, the flag will become active. However, change the flag’s state from Enabled to Default if you face any stability issues, and restart the browser. The said flag will be disabled.
Now that you know the steps to enable/disable these flags let’s check out some of the noteworthy ones that might significantly improve your overall browsing experience.
Tab Groups
This flag allows you to create different assortments of tabs and house all the similar ones under one group. Furthermore, you could assign each of these groups a unique color and add a label to make them easily distinguishable from others.
For example, you could create a group named Work and send all your work-related tabs to that group, create another one for Media, send the likes of YouTube and Netflix to this group, and so on.
So if you’re the kind of person who keeps many tabs open, you should consider trying it out. For that, there are four different flags that you need to enable. These are the Tab Groups, Tab Groups Auto-Create, Tab Groups Collapse, and Tab Groups Collapse Freezing.
Once enabled, right-click on the desired tab and select Add Tab to Group. This feature has already made its way over to Chrome’s stable build. Hence, it might only be a matter of time before it is removed as a flag and added as a permanent feature in Edge.
Force Dark Mode
If you customize Edge’s default theme from the Settings page and set it to Dark, then only the browser’s component would adopt this change. All the other websites would continue to use the white background.
However, with the help of the Force Dark Mode for Web Contents flag, you could instruct all the websites to switch over to the dark side. So even if a site doesn’t actively support the dark mode, it would try and invert the color to respect this setting.
But this is where things begin to go south. In some instances, enabling this flag might break the UI/UX element of the site, and hence you will have to consider disabling it altogether. Below is a perfect example of the same (the headings section of Google Docs).
Tab Hover Cards
Due to the inverse relationship between the number of opened tabs and their size, it becomes challenging to identify the type of content they hold, especially when you have opened a plentitude of tabs. Even if you hover your mouse over that tab, it will only list out the site’s name and the associated page’s title.
Well, this is where the Tab Hover Cards flag comes in handy. Upon enabling it in combination with the Tab Hover Card Images, you will see the image preview of each of the tabs.
Just bring the mouse cursor to the desired tab, and the browser will display its contents in a small image preview window. This way, you will get the perfect knowledge of a particular tab’s information without switching to it.
Media Controls
Many users prefer to keep the music playing in a background tab and, at the same time, interact with other tabs in the foreground. While that’s well and good, the real issue arises when you wish to pause/play or change tracks.
In those instances, you would have to switch to the tab playing the music manually, carry out the desired task, and then return to your original tab. Thanks to the Global Media Controls and Global Media Controls Picture-in-Picture flags, you could restate all these worries.
Both these flags create a Media Control shortcut through which you can easily play, pause or switch tracks without visiting that tab. Well, that’s not it. You could even create a Picture in Picture Mode for this control and drag and place it at the required position on your screen.
Share Site’s URL via QR Code
Due to a lack of a native common platform, sharing content between a PC and a smartphone becomes challenging, especially if both aren’t part of the Apple ecosystem. It seems this issue might have finally been addressed to an extent.
Using the Enable Sharing Page via the QR Code flag, you could easily create a QR Code for the preferred site. Once that is done, bring up your smartphone, scan this code, and you will be taken to that site. Furthermore, you could download a copy of this generated code and send it via any medium.
However, the fact that some smartphones don’t come with a native QR code scanner might prevent some users from trying it out. This is because they would have to download a third-party scanner app and permit it to access their device’s camera, which might cause privacy concerns.
Parallel Downloading
It’s no hidden secret that the download manager apps tend to fetch files at a faster speed than compared to the standalone browser. This is because these apps break down a larger file into smaller chunks and download each file simultaneously. Once done, they combine all these bits into a single package and then present you with the file.
However, with browsers, things work a little bit differently. They always download the entire file in one go, regardless of file type or size. The result is that they end up consuming more time downloading the same file than compared with a download manager.
But, with the help of the Parallel Downloading flag, you could instruct the browser to adapt the downloading technique of the download manager. Doing so will make Edge break down a large file into smaller data packets and then download them parallelly.
However, the increase in speed will only be noticeable if you are downloading a heavy file. If a file weighs only around a few MBs, there will be no increment.
Quieter Notification
Websites send notification prompts asking for various permissions. Be it for the camera, location, or to send daily alerts, these prompts have a significant drawback- they tend to disrupt the typical workflow.
In this regard, you could consider disabling these notifications altogether. Or there is a less aggressive approach to opting for condensed and quieter notifications. This is possible via the Quieter notification permission prompts flags.
Once enabled, go to Settings > Cookies and Site Permissions > Turn on the Quiet Notification Request toggle. From now on, these prompts wouldn’t be displayed as a dialog box but will only occupy a minor portion of the address bar.
However, there might be a few instances when a website could bypass this flag setting and show the prompt in its original form. While the probability is lower, you might face this situation once or twice.
Change Omnibox Autocomplete Suggestions
By default, the Edge browser’s address bar displays a fixed number of autocomplete suggestions. But if you find them on the lower side, you can increase their limit to 12 suggestions for each query.
Likewise, the minimalistic users could instead opt for a lower number of suggestions and choose a lower value, down to 3.
So if you wish to tweak this setting, head over to the flags page, search for the Omnibox UI Max Autocomplete Matches flag, and select any value from 3 to 12. Then restart the browser, and the said changes will be applied.
Smooth Scrolling
As is evident by its name, it implements a smooth scrolling experience, something along the lines that the Internet Explorer and the Legacy build of Edge had to offer. This was among the very few features missing from the Chromium build, which seems to have been finally addressed, albeit via the Smooth Scrolling flag.
It would be best if you also considered enabling the Compositor Threaded Scrollbar Scrolling flag for a smoother browsing experience.
While it works across all the sites, irrespective of the page type or content, you wouldn’t see any drastic improvement. However, you might appreciate this flag for old sites or those with many Javascript elements on their page.
Heavy Ad Intervention
Page loading speed and improvement to the UI/UX are among the most critical aspects of a site. So in this regard, the developer might opt for some technical tweaks (such as caching, using CDN, or minimizing Java scripts), but you might still end up with slow loading speeds.
In some instances, it could be attributed to the ads displayed on the page. Some interactive ads violate the Better Ads Standard and consume more than permissible system resources. This, in turn, not only slow down the concerned site but could adversely affect the entire browser.
The best bet, in this case, is to enable both the Heavy Ad Intervention and Heavy ad privacy Mitigation flags, which in turn shall unload all the ads that lead to excessive wastage of system resources.
So while it may sound a little bit technical on the one hand, it turns out to be a handy experimental addition to this browser. But remember that the ad might initially be rendered for a few seconds before its resources are unloaded, so some seconds of buffer time might still be there.
Bottom Line: Best Microsoft Edge Flags
So this was all from this guide regarding some of the best Microsoft Edge flags. We have covered ten flags, each belonging to a different domain. As per my preference, I have kept the first five flags, the Quieter Notification flags enabled, and have no plans to change their current state. The Best Microsoft Edge Experiment Flags.
The Parallel downloading wasn’t much help in my case as I don’t usually download heavy files. Regarding the Omnibox Suggestion, the default value has been set to 6 in my instances and is more than sufficient for everyday usage.
We would love to hear opinions about which flag or flags occupies the top spot on your priority list. Drop in your views in the comments section below.