Collections is Live in Edge Canary and Dev

Microsoft announced today that the Collections feature is now available in the latest builds of Edge Canary and Dev.

“Collections is now enabled by default for all Microsoft Edge Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels (build 80.0.338.0 or later),” the Microsoft Edge team posted. “Following our initial preview behind a feature flag two months ago, we have been adding in new features and functionality. For those who enabled the feature flag – thank you! We have been listening to your feedback and are excited to share the improvements we’ve made.”

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

For the unfamiliar, Collections helps you collect lists of related webpages.

“If you’re a shopper, it will help you collect and compare items. If you’re an event or trip organizer, Collections will help pull together all your trip or event information as well as ideas to make your event or trip a success. If you’re a teacher or student, it will help you organize your web research and create your lesson plans or reports. Whatever you are doing on the web, Collections can help.”

Since best-testing this feature behind a feature flag, Microsoft has made the following changes to Collections:

PC sync. Collections now sync across your PCs running the new Edge.

Open a collection in a new window. Now, you can access a new “Open all” option in the “Sharing and more” menu to open all of the tabs in a collection in a new window. This option is also available from the context menu you see when you right-click a collection.

Edit collection item titles. Now, you can rename the titles of items in collections, so they are easier for you to understand. To do so, right-click and choose “Edit” from the context menu that appears.

Dark theme support. Collections now supports the Windows 10 (and I assume macOS) Dark theme correctly.

Improved “Try Collections” flyout. And by improved, Microsoft means it will be quieter if you previously used this feature.

In addition to these additions, Microsoft says it is working on better support for sharing collections and a way to save a group of tabs to a collection.

To access Collections, select the Collections button that’s now found to the right of the Edge address bar. A more common scenario will be removing this button: You can do that by right-clicking it and choosing “Hide from toolbar” in the context menu that appears.

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 8 comments

  • Daekar

    09 December, 2019 - 3:24 pm

    <p>To those who use Collections, how do you use them? They seem to me to be very similar to favorites…?</p>

    • anoldamigauser

      Premium Member
      09 December, 2019 - 3:57 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#496896">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p>Collections lets you clip bits and pieces from different web pages by selecting and dragging to the collection area, rather than the whole page. It sort of reminds me of some of the Courier demo features, where various bits were selected and moved between applications. The end result is sort of a collection of notes and images regarding the topic you are researching.</p><p>It would be great if it could be exported to OneNote, but that is not available. It is not completely useless, but they have not done anything to make its workings discoverable or to explain why one would use it, so it will likely wither on the vine.</p>

  • willc

    09 December, 2019 - 3:33 pm

    <p>Completely useless features like this are why the "new" Edge will face the same fate as the old one. </p>

    • lwetzel

      Premium Member
      09 December, 2019 - 5:11 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#496898">In reply to willc:</a></em></blockquote><p>Sorry but, I find them useful when doing various research projects. Especially when you are working over a period of time and have interruptions and have to return to you work later. Not everything is useless to everyone. What I don't understand is why one has to loose a capability because others don't need or see the point in that capability. It is just as easy to ignore it as it is to use it. But no someone deems it useless so MS should just not have it available.</p><p><br></p><p>Amazing times.</p>

  • Atoqir

    09 December, 2019 - 7:48 pm

    <p>I don’t understand how syncing collections took more precedence over syncing history between devices. Mindblowing…</p><p><br></p><p>I also want more new tab page customization like they promised, a page I use all the time….</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      10 December, 2019 - 8:30 am

      Right. The focus here is just weird.

  • ruvger

    Premium Member
    10 December, 2019 - 3:29 am

    <p>Anyone else not able to remove this button? Right-clicking does nothing for me :(</p>

  • irfaanwahid

    10 December, 2019 - 4:09 am

    <p>I don't see my collections which was saved on my other Surface Pro device.</p><p><br></p><p>If sync is not yet in, then this feature as of now is useless, at least for me since I use multiple devices.</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC