Xbox Starts Testing ‘New’ Edge for Xbox

When you think of Edge, there is a good chance that you are referencing the ‘new’ version of the browser that is utilizing the Chromium engine iteration. The initial version of Edge that utilized Microsoft’s home-grown engine called Spartan has gone the way of the Zune except for one place, Xbox.

But that’s about to change as the Xbox team has started to push the new browser to Xbox consoles in the Alpha skip-ahead ring. As of the first release, it does not look like mouse support is enabled yet but this is a promising first step to replacing the aging browser on Xbox.

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The legacy Edge, as Microsoft now refers to it, was quite dated on the console and I can’t remember the last time it was updated in a significant way. By replacing the browser with what appears to be the same version as Windows 10, browsing the web on your Xbox console should be a lot easier once this update arrives for everyone.

While I do not have the browser on my Xbox yet, BradWardFight on Twitter was nice enough to record a video of the new browser for me; the browser is far from stable and crashed several times while recording. It is worth pointing out that he had to stream the console to his PC to record the video because the built-in recording tools would not capture the browser. I bring this up as this may have caused more potential crashes of the browser.

Even if we all don’t have it yet, it’s good to see that Microsoft is finally moving towards unifying Edge on every platform that runs the browser. The old browser on Xbox was quite bad and desperately needed an update, thankfully this update should be hitting your console in the near-ish future.

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Conversation 6 comments

  • benisaacs

    Premium Member
    07 March, 2021 - 11:54 am

    <p>It’ll be interesting to know if they’ve been able to bring the new Edge to Xbox in the same way they were able to do so on Windows 10X given the new Edge is a Win32 app</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      08 March, 2021 - 8:37 am

      I’m curious if more than a dozen people regularly browse the web from a video game console. I suspect this is more about getting the underlying engine on the platform, not the app.

      • brothernod

        Premium Member
        08 March, 2021 - 11:29 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#617060">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>Web browsing, no, but there are some platforms that don't have Microsoft Store apps but DO have WebApps where this can be handy, if not painful.</p><p><br></p><p>I've used Edge on Xbox for doing yoga with DownDog and also attempted similar with Peloton iirc. A lot of these phone first services don't respect gaming consoles and don't support much past streaming sticks.</p>

  • IanYates82

    Premium Member
    07 March, 2021 - 4:37 pm

    <p>Streaming the console to the pc…. So it was a regular xbox one, or does he also have the new streaming tool that runs on pc? </p><p><br></p><p>In any case, this could be a neat workaround for not being able to access the xbox store on your console whilst it's streaming. I guess that restriction is to do with meeting arduous app store policies and avoiding in-app purchases. Accessing the edge browser and hitting the store works around that. I didn't try the legacy edge browser when I did home console streaming – might give it a go out of curiosity to see if it's blocked or not. </p>

  • christianwilson

    Premium Member
    08 March, 2021 - 10:59 am

    <p>We are on the threshold of Stadia, Luna, etc. running on Xbox through Chromium Edge. That is wild. </p>

  • kjb434

    Premium Member
    08 March, 2021 - 9:56 pm

    <p>If it would be possible to have extensions and pin websites, I would use YouTube in the browser to remove ads.</p><p><br></p><p>Would even do the same for Twitch.</p>

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