Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser has appeared online

The new Edge browser that Microsoft is developing and which the company is basing on Chromium has become available through a Chinese forum. Users can install extensions from the Chrome Web Store with the Edge version.

A link to a compressed file for the Chromium-based Edge browser appeared in the Chinese PCBeta forum. It is a 112.2MB file that installs version 75.0.107.0 of Edge after running the installation file. Since it is not a file released by Microsoft itself, caution is advised when installing.

On first use, the browser asks whether browser data should be synchronized with existing data, with the option to import data from other browsers. The rendering is almost identical to the existing Edge based on the EdgeHTML engine.

Some features of that browser are still missing in the new version, such as the ability to set tabs aside and annotate on open web pages. There is support for extensions. By default, the user can download it from the Microsoft Store, but there is also an option to accept extensions from other browsers. In addition, the user is warned that these have not been verified by Microsoft. There is also no option to open pages in Internet Explorer, which is no longer considered safe.

It is not known when Microsoft will release the browser itself, but the development of Edge based on Chromium seems advanced, so a public preview may not be long in coming.