Outlook and Teams in Microsoft 365 will now open in Edge by default

Links in Outlook and Teams will now open in Edge by default instead of users’ preferred browser. Microsoft announced it would do this a few weeks ago, but is now implementing the change for Microsoft 365 customers.

Microsoft confirms the change in a support document. “If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, links from the Outlook app will now open in Microsoft Edge by default, with the email from which it came appearing in the Edge sidebar,” the company wrote. This is intended to give users ‘faster access to messages and the ability to respond to them from their associated, authenticated profiles’. In addition to links in Outlook, links from messages from Teams also open automatically in Edge.

The apps therefore ignore the default settings that users have already specified, such as when they have set Chrome or Firefox as the default browser. However, users can disable this again if they want. The first time the link opens in Edge, but users can then designate another browser as the default. This can also be done from the Outlook settings, but not from the Windows settings itself, where users normally have to indicate what their default browser will be.

Microsoft said in February already that it wanted to make that change. The company introduced that as a benefit that also allowed users to have context directly in Edge by displaying the email or Teams message itself. However, Microsoft did not say that this would immediately become the standard option.

The new policy only applies to private users for the time being. In the future, managed environments within Microsoft 365 Professional will also be included. Microsoft has admins have already been informed about this. Administrators have 30 days to set their policy for opening links.

Microsoft has received a lot of criticism in recent years for the way it tries to force Edge on users. In Windows 10, adjustments were regularly made where the default browser was reset to Edge after an update and the operating system gives many warnings when users want to update their browser. Earlier this week it was announced that Edge is no longer the second most popular browser for the first time in a long time and is losing market share to Safari.