Edge hasn’t always had the best reputation, and Microsoft is to blame. We’ve all seen the Internet Explorer memes. It was slow and it had to go. However, with Edge, Microsoft still wasn’t doing a good job. With their proprietary engine, Edge was almost as bad as Internet Explorer. However, being optimised for Windows machines, it was better at memory management than most other browsers.
Why I switched to Edge in the first place
Edge after the Chromium transition was a whole different thing, though. That’s when I decided to try it for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised, but I was still not ready to switch. What finally got me to switch was when they added vertical tabs to Edge.
I started doing a lot of research for my thesis around this time, and vertical tabs and tab grouping made a huge difference. Now, there are other browsers with vertical tab support, like Vivaldi and Arc, which are also based on Chromium. Then, there are Firefox forks like Floorp and Zen. Safari also has an implementation of vertical tabs, but none of them work as well as Edge does. Let me tell you why.
Firefox forks are usually fun because they are customisable, but in my experience, they’re generally not stable enough to drive daily. Safari doesn’t have the extensions I use, and given that The Browser Company practically abandoned Arc, Edge was an easy choice for me.
I should note that this is the first time I voluntarily installed Edge on a machine and set it up as my default browser. All my previous computers were Windows, and they came with Edge. I would always switch to something else as my default browser while keeping Edge as more of a secondary browser.
After installing it, I enabled the vertical tabs, removed the title bar, workspaces, Microsoft Shopping, MSN on new tabs, the right sidebar, and everything Bing and Copilot-related. I’m not really that invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, so there was no point in keeping them.
Edge on macOS: What stands out?
After using it as my default browser on macOS for two weeks, these are my thoughts:
- Memory Management: Edge is known for its memory management on Windows, but it works even better on macOS. I took a three-day trip to a place with no internet, and I had about 50 tabs open on my MacBook beforehand. Despite a forced shutdown due to another app malfunction and the battery dying once, Edge held onto all my tabs for more than 72 hours, keeping them cached without reloading.
- Extension Support: Edge is Chromium-based, so it has full Chrome extension support. While Chrome has discontinued its older extensions platform along with hundreds of useful extensions, all of them still have support on Edge. This is particularly important for me, as I use uBlock Origin as my ad blocker, and neither Chrome nor Safari supports it. But Edge still does.
- Fluid Animations: This one may sound minor, but it greatly affects the overall user experience. macOS has smoother system-wide animations compared to Windows, which also applies to Edge. While auto-expanding and retracting the vertical tabs, macOS’s fluid animations are much nicer.
- Clean UI: Once you declutter it, Edge’s interface is clean. Its tab grouping solution is one of the best I have seen. Even with the title bar turned off, the top bar holds a full URL bar, navigation controls, pinned extensions, and more. Edge’s split-screen solution is also very clean-looking and adds to its functionality.
Edge is efficient, functional, and fluid. If Microsoft marketed this browser properly, instead of adding three different layers of barriers before someone could install and use a different browser, maybe more people would actually use it. And all the Microsoft ecosystem stuff like Bing, Copilot, MSN, and Office integrations can be a bit too much if you don’t have the patience to disable them individually.
While I’m saying that, I can also understand why most Apple users prefer Safari. It has better integrations with devices in the Apple ecosystem. But if you’re not too locked into the Apple ecosystem and want to give another browser a shot, Edge may be worth considering.