Microsoft finally caves and will let some users actually use their preferred browser in Windows 11

When you’re browsing on Windows 11 and click on a link in another part of your computer, say a different app or a news reader, regardless of your selected default browser your link will be opened in Microsoft Edge. That can be incredibly annoying when you’re trying to navigate your computer and have to keep manually copying and pasting links into your preferred browser, but that may be about to change.

This this is good news for people tired of Microsoft’s pushy habit of trying to force users to use Edge over other preferred web browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox.

If you set your default browser to anything aside from Microsoft Edge you should be able to discard Edge and move on, with your choices being respected.

Bye bye Edge

There are some tools like EdgeDeflector and MSEdgeRedirect that allow users to bypass this and use their chosen browsers. The clear intention was to push Microsoft Edge despite users wanting to use a more popular web browser, but it seems like Microsoft has admitted defeat and has released a new build that will curb this.

According to Ghacks, Build 23531 was released to the Dev Channel recently and will change the forced opening of Microsoft Edge on Windows 11 when you click on website links within the Start menu or Search bar. Ghacks notes that Microsoft added, “In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links”.

Users not in the EEA will have to wait it out to see if Microsoft will extend this ‘courtesy’ to them as well. At the moment, however, it seems like Microsoft is only dropping its pushy behavior because of pressure from lawmakers, not because it’s the right thing to do.