Microsoft’s Edge Browser Finally Brings Tab Syncing to Everyone

Microsoft’s Edge Browser Finally Brings Tab Syncing to Everyone

Last October, Microsoft rolled out tab syncing across devices for users in its insider Edge Dev and Canary channels. Tab syncing is not a new thing in browser land; Google Chrome and Apple Safari both offer it. Just load up your browser with tabs and then log into another device and open up the same browser with the same tabs. Now that feature is finally available to anyone who uses Edge, and might make it a compelling reason to switch to Microsoft’s browser.

Edge’s version of tab syncing works nearly identically to Chrome: sign in to your profile, turn on sync, and bam, you’re done. You can also browse as a guest and add multiple profiles, which is especially useful if you use different email addresses on the same computer, but don’t want the same tabs, or even bookmarks, to show up on different accounts. Each account also opens in a new browser window, just like Chrome.

The new feature also syncs your browsing history across devices — any device, whether that’s Windows, macOS, iOS or Android. Again, that’s just like Chrome, but for anyone who has been getting more worried about their privacy using Chrome, these two big features justify an easy switch to Edge.

Screenshot: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo
Screenshot: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

Sure, Edge doesn’t have the added benefit of Chrome Actions, which let you use the address bar like a command prompt so you don’t have to dig through your browser settings to change something. But Edge is faster on both macOS and Windows than Chrome, according to some of our recent tests, and there are plenty of other features in development. Microsoft in beta channels has released numerous updates to privacy, productivity, and performance. Some of the stand-out features include: alerts if a user’s password is found in an online leak; putting inactive tabs to sleep to free up system resources; and auto-filling the date of birth field and vertical tabs. These along with all the other updates are scheduled to roll out to the stable version of Edge the week of Jan. 21.

Edge has also been improving on the privacy front. It wasn’t an ideal browser to use before, because it sent an identifier back to Microsoft’s servers. That should no longer be the case.


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