16 Amazing Microsoft Edge Features You Didn't Know Existed!

Howdy folks, Brad here. The Microsoft Edge browser that most users just use to browse the web has other cool features built in that are quite useful that most people don't know about. So coming up, I'll show you amazing tips, tricks, and features that you can use with Microsoft Edge in Windows, macOS, and Linux. Let's get started. First, you'll want to make sure that Edge is up to date. While it should be updated automatically, there may be times you'll need to update it manually to ensure that you have the latest features. To update Edge, click on the three-dot menu icon here in the upper right, hover your cursor down to Help & Feedback, and select About Microsoft Edge. If it updated when you landed on this page, close out Edge and relaunch it to use the latest version. The split-screen feature lets you open two websites side-by-side in the same browser window. This comes in handy if you only have one monitor or when using a laptop. It's similar to Snap Assist in Windows, but in this case, you only have to open one window. To do this, click the split-screen icon to the right of the address bar. You'll have three choices. You could do a search or enter the web address into the box. Below that is Frequently Visited Sites, and the one I use most often on a laptop is Tabs You've Opened. Select the tab you want, and that's it. It'll be difficult to see on some sites, but the tab you're working in will be outlined in blue. To undo the split-screen, click on its icon again. Edge has a built-in VPN, which is short for Virtual Private Network. In a partnership with Cloudflare, this adds an extra layer of security when browsing the web, especially on public Wi-Fi. They call it the Edge Secure Network VPN. To activate it, click the three-dot menu icon in the upper right, and select Settings. In the left pane, select Privacy, Search, and Services. Then here on the right, click on Security. Scroll all the way down, and here at the bottom, for Use Microsoft Edge Secure Network, if turned off, click on the toggle to turn it on. Having this enabled routes your traffic through a remote network, hiding your public IP address, increasing protection, and minimizing online tracking. It only gives you five gigabytes of the free VPN per month, but if you're not using another VPN, it's better than nothing. After you enable it, you'll have three choices below. Select Sites for those you've included in your custom Use VPN site list, which you can add by clicking below. Optimized is what is recommended. It'll automatically protect your traffic when connected to public Wi-Fi. And the last one here, I don't recommend, is All Sites. This will eat up the five gigabytes of the free VPN real quickly. Their quick search feature comes in handy without having to open a new browser manually to do a search of any word or topic. This one's fairly straightforward. Just highlight a word or words on a webpage, and this mini-menu will come up automatically. You could ask Copilot, which is Microsoft's AI thing, copy the text to paste it wherever you want it, or have it do a search with Bing. You can also double-click on a word to have this menu come up. Selecting Ask Copilot opens a sidebar here on the right with the information, and you can have a chat with it if you want, if that's something you want to do. I don't. I don't like having to deal with unreliable information, so I'll close that out. Selecting Search with Bing will open a new tab with the search page for the word or words you selected. This will be generally more reliable information than using Copilot. The screenshot tool built into Edge is superior to other browsers. More on that later. There are three different ways to bring up the screenshot tool. You could click on its icon here in the upper right. You could right-click anywhere on the webpage and select it. And the third way is to use the keyboard shortcut, which is the Ctrl key plus Shift key plus S key. There are three capture types. Capture Area lets you left-click and drag an area to take a screenshot. Capture Screen Area will capture what is visible on your screen. And the last one here, which is my favorite, will capture the full page from top to bottom. I'll do that one now. When it's done, it will open a new window of your screenshot. Here's the full page of the screenshot I just did. Here's how this differs from most browser-based screenshot tools. It has a draw tool to mark up your image. You can choose the color and the thickness. And there's an erase tool to remove anything you've drawn. In the upper right corner, there's a share button to share it with others. You can also copy it to your clipboard to paste where you want. And you can choose where to save it on your computer. It's a little bit different when you capture an area by left-clicking, dragging that area, and letting go. You'll get the choices here to copy, save, mark up your capture. And selecting Visual Search will open a pane here on the right, using your capture as a search query to find similar images, products, and other information online. I'll mention this one briefly. The much-hated Copilot AI tool built into Windows can easily summarize web pages for you if you're short on time. To open it, select its icon here in the upper right corner. This will open a sidebar here on the right. Then select Create a Summary of this Page. And here's the entire summary. Just a reminder, AI tools like Copilot do make mistakes. The irony is, this could be an AI Slop summary of an article about AI Slop. In other words, if you have the time, it's best to read the articles from the sources they come from. If you're someone that opens multiple tabs at once, you'll probably find it difficult at times to see the tab you're looking for quickly as the tab sizes get smaller the more you add. If this describes you, then you'll love Vertical Tabs. To enable Vertical Tabs, click the Tab Actions menu in the upper left corner. Select Turn on Vertical Tabs. And here on the left side of your browser, you'll see that they're narrow by default without any clutter. All that's visible is the icons. Hovering your cursor over any of the icons will give you the full tab names. Doing it this way, the layout feels less cluttered and easier to navigate. To go back to Horizontal Tabs, click the Tab Actions menu and select Turn off Vertical Tabs. Here's one I showed recently in another video. If you use Windows 11 or Windows 10, you can use Edge to install progressive web apps on your computer. They're easy to install and can be used offline. To install a site as a progressive web app, click the Settings and More button here on the upper right. Hover down to More Tools, then To Apps, then Install for the site you want to make a PWA. In this example, Photopea is a good example of a browser-based app with functionalities that would work great as an app to be installed. So I'll select it now. In the pop-up, click Install. Then you'll get this window that shows up. You have the options to Pin to Taskbar, Pin to Start, Create a Desktop Shortcut, which I'll activate here, and Auto Start on Device Login. Only choose this one if you need it immediately when your computer starts up. Otherwise, don't check it. Then click on Allow. You'll see down here on my taskbar, it's now pinned. I would just click on it to open it. If you find webpages to be overly cluttered with ads, graphics, and other crap, check out the Immersive Reader feature in Edge. It makes webpages more readable and cleaner looking without the extra clutter. To use it while on the page for an article, click the More Actions button just to the right of the address bar and select Immersive Reader. Selecting Read Aloud will read the article to you. Here's a quick sample. In Voice Options, you're on the right. You can adjust the speed and choose a voice. To the right of Read Aloud is Text Preferences. This will let you adjust the size of the text, enable wider spacing, change the font, column style, and theme. And Reading Preferences has a feature to help you focus, and you can have the article translated to another language. I still see naive comments from people stating that Edge sucks because it does not have extension support. Well, that's not true. In fact, there's two different ways to get extensions for Edge. The first is to click the Extensions icon here at the top. Then select Get Extensions for Microsoft Edge. These extensions are specifically made for Edge, so if you have a favorite, get it from here. One I recommend is Dark Reader. It's great for those of you with light sensitivity to give the sites you visit a dark theme. To install it, click on Get. If you didn't find the extension you were looking for, the other place to get extensions is the Chrome Web Store. Because Edge is Chromium-based, these extensions from here will work in Edge as well. And when you find the extension you're looking for that you want to install, it works the same. You just click on Get, and it will install it in Microsoft Edge. The Media Control Center is often overlooked. It easily lets you control videos, music, and other media playing across your tabs with a few other benefits. To use it, click the Music Note looking icon here in the upper right. If you're not playing any media, you won't see it here. This will show you all the media playing on your network. Selecting Cast to a Device will let you cast the media in Edge to any cast-enabled device on your network. Doing this will also let you skip, pause, fast-forward, etc. It also lets you spy on other people in your home to find out what they're watching. For example, I have it on a program in my office. It says it's YouTube, but it's actually YouTube TV. And another family member is watching something else on another TV. Looks like they're watching Court TV Live. Hopefully they're not looking for ideas to kill me. You see where it says Stop Casting? Well, neither of these are truly casting. They're just being watched on cast-enabled devices. But I guess you could see how easy it would be for me to mess with somebody using this. Use your imagination. In the years since Edge was released, the developers have done a lot of work to make it run more efficiently. In testing the past couple of years, it's been shown that pages and features do load a lot quicker, and several benchmarks have shown this to be true. I'll now show you quickly how to enable some of these features. Select the Settings and More icon in the upper right and click on Settings. In the left pane, select System and Performance. Select Performance. Enable Efficiency Mode. Enable if you're a PC gamer. Improve your PC gaming experience with Efficiency Mode. Enable Save Resources with Sleeping Tabs. Enable Fade Sleeping Tabs. Enable Performance Detector. And for this last one, enable Resource Controls. Only enable this one if you play games on your PC. Adjust the Max on the slider for Control how much RAM Edge can use. And make sure While PC Gaming is selected. Enabling these can help to save power, which can help lower your electricity bill, and can help to extend the battery life on laptops. When you shop online, the Microsoft Edge Shopping Tool is quite handy. It lets you compare prices with other retailers, and will let you know if any coupons or discounts are available. To use this on the product page of any site, click the Shopping icon to the right of the address bar. This will open a side panel. For example, on this product, it lets me know that there's a 2% cashback offer. According to the price history, it says here the price is typical. And below that, it shows the pricing at other retailers for this product. Creating workspaces can help to better organize your online activities with individual workspaces with your unique tabs and favorites. For example, I shop quite often for new PCs and PC parts to upgrade or replace parts at older computers. So to create a workspace, click the Tab Actions menu in the upper left corner. Select Create New. And if you didn't have any tabs open, you would click Create a Workspace. But if you want to create a workspace with the tabs you already have open, select Save Tabs to a Workspace. Give it a name. I'll call this one PC Parts and Fix. Assign a color if you want. Then click on Done. After completing the workspace, you'll see it listed here in the upper left corner. Click on it. You can invite people to the workspace. You can edit it. And if you don't need it anymore, delete it. If you have websites that you go to often, you can easily pin them to your taskbar to avoid having to manually open those sites in the future. Simply right-click on the tab you want to pin and select Pin Tab. In the future, when you open Edge, those tabs you have pinned will automatically open. The Startup Boost feature in Edge makes the startup speed faster when you open it. It does this by keeping the browser running in the background with minimal processes. To enable it, go to Settings and More and select Settings. In the left pane, select System and Performance. Go into System. Click the toggle to enable Startup Boost. It's the one right below. It's a personal preference. I keep this one disabled because I don't want background extensions and apps running when Edge is closed. We'll stay in Settings for this next one. And I've switched the theme for Edge to a light theme. Edge includes a dark theme that, for most people, is easier on the eyes. To enable it, select Appearance in the left pane. I have it on light right now for overall appearance. If your system setting for your computer is already set to dark, selecting System will give Edge a dark theme. If not, you can just select Dark. Thanks for watching. If this video was useful for you, give it a thumbs up and share it with others. If you use a cool feature with Microsoft Edge not mentioned, let us know about it in the comments. And if you're new to this channel, subscribe and make sure to hit the bell icon so you don't miss out on our latest tutorials and other tech-related stuff here on Brett in Tech.