Microsoft has started rolling out a major update to its Microsoft Edge browser to improve productivity and help you organize. Recently, Microsoft has added split-screen, blocked autoplay video and media, and Workspace, which you shouldn’t miss. It comes with unique and innovative features that stand out among other browsers, along with a lot more with the recent updates.
The company puts a lot of effort into making its browser powerful and the first choice for users, focusing on organization, productivity, creativity, and security. Nowadays, everything is indeed moving towards web-based, so it’s important to have a great way of interacting with them. Microsoft Edge offers a great visual experience with the latest updates, and to empower every person, many things have been delivered in the recent updates so you can tweak and enable the things you need the most. To try these features, ensure you have updated to the latest version of Microsoft Edge.
Now, people have a lot of resources to ditch Google Chrome for Microsoft Edge, but we want to note that the default home screen of Microsoft Edge should be cleaner and out of the box. At least it shouldn’t have Microsoft News at its fingertips. However, you can customize it to suit you best, but it would be more appealing to users on its first boot because most users use the default. The new update brings the new Dall-E-powered AI image generator, the ability to drop and edit web page images, and the new efficient mode.
Image Creator
As Microsoft has started integrating AI services across its services using OpenAI capabilities, it has introduced the Native DALL-E Model into its browser. The company recently launched Bing Image Creator, which lets users create an image based on a prompt. DALL-E uses a 12 billion parameter version of GPT-3, and the second iteration of DALL-E is being trained to create images based on natural language prompts to deliver more realistic, accurate, and 4x greater resolution.
The new integrated AI image generator is available globally. Users can access it from the Edge Sidebar to explore their creativity and generate images based on their imaginations. To use it, open the Image Creator from the Edge Sidebar, submit your prompt, and it will deliver four images to choose from. After selecting the image you like, you can download it for personal and professional projects.
If you don’t find this on your Edge Sidebar, simply enable the Sidebar (edge://settings/sidebar) from the Edge Settings, and then add or enable the Image Creator by toggling on the “+” icon on the Edge Sidebar. Microsoft also elaborates on AI responsibility and the terms of using the Image Creator to prevent users from using harmful or inappropriate images with several implementations of filters.
Drop
Microsoft has also introduced another nifty feature for Microsoft Edge users called Drop, which allows users to share and access files by dragging and dropping them into the Edge sidebar, continuing across all their devices in one place. These files are saved on your OneDrive account and work across all Edge platforms, including Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.
If you can’t find this feature, head to Edge Settings and enable Drop from the Microsoft Sidebar. It comes in handy when you quickly need a file on another device, like sending music, documents, images, or notes to yourself so you can access it instantly or continue working on it on another device.
This platform is more synced and better, as Google has also released Nearby Share for the same functionality, but this happens over Bluetooth. With Drop, you can share files via Wi-Fi, which will be saved online.
Edit the image.
Now, users can edit and save web images on any website without using any additional tools. This feature can be used if you find something interesting and want to save and edit the image simultaneously. It is an addition to the tools or apps that have been added. However, this feature can be enabled in Edge settings.
After enabling this, you can use it by right-clicking on the image. Simply hover over the image and right-click on the image you want to edit and save. After that, use the editing dialogue box to edit, and then you can save the image to your PC or copy it to the clipboard. Previously, many users used third-party extensions like “Save image as,” but now it’s native to Windows Edge. You can edit images by cropping, resizing, adding text, adjusting lighting and colors, and adding filters.
New efficiency mode
The company is extending its efficient mode capabilities by introducing the new efficiency mode to Microsoft Edge. There are now two options: balanced savings and savings based on preference. You can enable it from Edge Settings by navigating to Browser Settings > System > Choose Efficiency mode, and it can be found on the toolbar of the Edge Browser.
It helps you reduce memory usage by optimizing browser performance, which helps save battery. It has been enhanced to meet users’ needs. This even saves battery when your device is plugged in to save resources for better performance and stability while using the browser. A similar feature is also being developed on Google Chrome, and Microsoft has also integrated Efficiency Mode into Windows 11 to efficiently use your machine resources for better performance.
The Edge browser has useful features like Collections, which allows you to organize web content like links, images, and notes that sync across devices. Vertical tabs move your tabs to the left side of the screen; tab groups allow you to group all your tabs into specific tabs and pin particular tabs, which means you can pin the tabs you want. Microsoft is more organized than ever and is also focusing on personal-level productivity with multitasking functionality. It matches the design language of Windows, and it looks good.