Apple MacBook Air with M1 chip (2020)
You don’t have to use Chrome if you want a Chromium-powered browser optimized for Apple’s M1-based Macs. Windows Centralreports that Microsoft has released a beta version of Edge with native support for Apple Silicon. If you live in Microsoft’s ecosystem or just prefer its take on web surfing, you should see better performance and avoid quirks that might pop up using Rosetta 2 translation.
Jan 14, 2021 The new Microsoft Edge browser is based on the Chromium open-source project. Chromium is the foundation of Chrome, so the new Edge browser slightly follows Google Chrome. However, it has similar features to Chrome, like supports Chrome browser extensions, has the same rendering engine as Chro. Microsoft has released a new version of its Edge browser that finally adds supports Apple Silicon-powered MacBook devices. The company first started testing the M1-optimized browser back in. Microsoft Edge now natively supports Apple's new M1 chips. If you go to Microsoft's page for Edge and select 'Download for macOS,' you will see options to get the browser for a Mac with an Intel. Late yesterday Microsoft announced the release of the first major Edge Dev build for the year 2021. Coming in at version 89.0.752.1, this release is bringing support for Apple's M1 Macs, as well. Microsoft Edge is now available with support for Apple's M1 chips. M1 support means that the browser can run natively on Apple's new hardware. Microsoft Edge with M1 support has gradually worked.
Canary and Dev versions arrived in December and early January respectively, although those were very rough compared to this new software.
The usual caveats apply. The beta still isn’t a polished release, so you might run into bugs. You might want to hold off if you depend on Edge for work. It should still be viable for everyday use, though. This also suggests that a stable release is coming relatively soon —even if you’re cautious, you’ll have yet another M1 browser choice if Safari, Chrome or Firefox doesn’t suit your tastes.
Starting today, you can download your Microsoft Edge Insider channel of choice with native macOS ARM64 support! Head to our Insider website to download Canary, Dev, or Beta to see how it runs, and let us know what you think. 💪 https://t.co/GkOtE8JaCihttps://t.co/4XGdzcE31d
— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) January 15, 2021Today, Microsoft is releasing Edge Dev build 89.0.731.0. As always, there are some minor new features, but there are some key things to note this week. For one thing, Microsoft is finally going to be supporting Apple's new ARM processors next week in the Canary channel.
But there's bad news for Apple users as well. Outside of the Canary channel, this is the last build of the year. That means no more Dev, Beta, or Stable updates until 2021, so if you're waiting for that Mac on ARM support, even the Dev channel won't get it until at least January.
As for what's new, there's not much. Here's the list:
- Added an indicator to show when a tab has been muted because the underlying system audio has been muted.
- Added an option to Settings to disable downloading Edge updates over metered connections. Note that this is currently only available on Windows 10.
- Added a Setting to disable the F12 entry point to the Dev Tools.
- Added support for forcing popup windows into new tabs instead in Kiosk mode.
- Enabled support for the management policies from Chromium to Enable Basic Auth Over HTTP, and that Target Blank Implies No Opener.
And of course, there are fixes and known issues. Here's what got fixed for improved reliability:
- Fixed an issue where Edge can’t open.
- Fixed an issue where Edge doesn’t shut down properly or install updates if certain extensions are installed.
- Fixed an issue where searching from the new tab page sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed a crash when downloading files.
- Fixed a crash on Mac when checking for updates.
- Fixed an issue on Mac where closing a popup menu sometimes crashes the browser.
- Fixed an issue where playing Dolby Vision media on Netflix sometimes crashes with error D7361-1253.
- Fixed an issue where opening a page in Immersive Reader sometimes fails.
- Fixed an issue where the Pinning Wizard doesn’t open.
Here's what's fixed for changed behavior:
- Added a delay to the Shy UI between when the mouse leaves it and when it disappears.
- Fixed an issue where items can’t be added to Collections when using Immersive Reader.
- Fixed an issue where closing a tab sometimes causes a gap between the rest of the tabs and the new tab button.
- Fixed an issue on Mac where Edge sometimes takes over the screen when an update notification is shown.
- Fixed an issue where the option to always translate a page sometimes doesn’t work.
- Fixed an issue where selecting a password in the autofill flyout sometimes puts the wrong password in the field when multiple passwords are available.
- Fixed an issue where the Coupons prompt appears in the Address Bar, but no comparisons are shown in the flyout.
- Fixed an issue where text notes on PDFs sometimes can’t be dragged to another position.
- Fixed an issue where the profile picture in Settings is sometimes broken.
- Fixed an issue where opening the Favorites or history menu when their buttons are hidden from the toolbar sometimes causes the buttons to stay on the toolbar.
- Fixed an issue where Edge’s update status in Settings sometimes isn’t shown on Linux.
- Deprecated the management policy to Allow Popups During Page Unload.
- Obsoleted the management policies to Send Site Info To Improve Services and Enable Metrics Reporting as they have been replaced by the policies for Diagnostic Data and to Allow Telemetry, as well as to Force the Legacy Default Referrer Policy.
Finally, here's what's broken:
Microsoft Edge M1 Mac
- Certain extensions such as the Microsoft Editor extension don’t work on Linux. As soon as they’re installed, they crash and are disabled. We’re currently investigating.
- Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on Youtube. As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed. See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/known-issue-adblock-causing-errors-on-youtube/m-p/14... for more details.
- Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error. The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it.
- Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load. This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
- Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before. This issue should be reduced now that automatic deduplication has been introduced into Insider channels. However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the manual deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for the automatic deduplication to make it to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.
- Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
Microsoft Edge M1 Mac Update
As always, you can grab today's build by going to Settings -> About Microsoft Edge. If you don't feel like updating manually, you can wait for it to happen in the background.