TRIM THE EDGE

Edge has morphed somewhat since it emerged as “Chrome without the gubbins” several years ago. Microsoft has gradually added feature after feature to the browser, many of which fall into the “thanks, but no thanks” category as far as we’re concerned.

By default, there’s now an entire right-hand sidebar devoted to some of these add-ons, including Shopping, Microsoft 365 and E-tree, the latter of which gives you virtual rewards for virtually watering a virtual tree. Do try to contain your excitement.

That’s not to mention Microsoft’s latest AI obsession, where it’s trying to crowbar GPT-4-powered AI into everything you look at online. Some of those AI tools are very useful, such as the option to summarise long web pages into a few bullet points, but AI’s not everyone’s cup of tea and these browser add-ons do have an annoying habit of getting in the way of your day-to-day browsing.

There are a few tidy-ups you can perform to make Edge more like that no-fuss browser that emerged all those years ago. First, you can get rid of

ABOVE You can get rid of the sidebar of shame in the settings. that sidebar of shame. There’s a little cog in the bottom right-hand corner of the Edge browser window. Click that and deselect the option that says Always show sidebar.

When you do that, you’ll notice that the Bing speech bubble still lurks in the top-right of the screen, preparing to amaze you with its AI wizardry. If you want that gone, stay in the same settings menu as above (or search for “sidebar” in the browser settings if you’ve already closed it) and under “App and notification settings” select Discover. Turn off Show Discover and you should have a much cleaner browser window to do with what you will.