Microsoft today pushed the new Edge to the Release Preview ring of the Windows Insider program, starting the first test of its automatic rollout of the new web browser.
“Heads-up Windows Insiders, we have begun rolling out the new Microsoft Edge to the Release Preview ring,” the official Windows Insiders Twitter account tweeted last night.
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This is a big milestone. Microsoft released the first non-preview version of the new Edge back in mid-January, but only as a standalone download for the curious. The real plan here, of course, is to automatically replace the legacy version of Edge on existing Windows 10 installs with the new version, and while Microsoft previously said that it would do so via a Windows Update, the exact schedule wasn’t clear.
Now it appears that the new Edge will be made available to existing customers before or perhaps at the same time as Microsoft delivers Windows 10 version 2004. That’s a bit earlier than I had expected, but no matter: Sometime in the coming weeks, users on Windows 10 version 1803 or newer will see the legacy Edge replaced by the new Edge.