Microsoft Chromium Edge Browser Released For Windows, MacOS

Microsoft has made available the latest version of its Edge browser that is now based on the open source Chromium project.

Over the past year Microsoft has been hard at work switching its Edge browser from EdgeHTML to being Chromium-based.

The new version of Edge is available for Windows and MacOS, as well as Android and iOS, and can be downloaded here.

Chromium Edge

Edge is available for Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and finally Windows 7, which is a surprise considering Microsoft stopped supporting that OS this week.

According to the Verge, Microsoft plans to automatically update Windows 10 users with this new version of Edge over the coming months, to fully replace the existing built-in browser.

Microsoft has said in the past that it had adopted the Chromium open source project for the new Microsoft Edge to create better web compatibility for its customers, but also less fragmentation of the web for developers.

Edge Chromium also boasts some features that Chrome users will be familiar with, the Verge reported.

This includes favourites, settings, addresses / contact info, and passwords, and there is also support for Chrome extensions.

Edge does differ from Chrome, most notably with its Collections feature, which allows the user to collate images and content from the web, and tracking prevention.

It should be noted that Edge also includes Internet Explorer mode, which is mostly designed for enterprises and businesses, and it allows the browser to load legacy IE (Internet Explorer) sites within Edge automatically.

Quiz: How well do you know Microsoft?