Abbydale Systems LLC

When you open a new tab in the latest version of the Microsoft Edge Browser it will open a page that is full of, what Microsoft determine to be interesting content and plenty of adverts. This is both time consuming, as the content gets loaded, and intrusive because of the commercials.

So, what can you do about it?

Well, you could always tweak the settings and turn off quick links and stuff but if you want to always land on (say for example google.com) when you open a new Edge tab then you can achieve this by installing a browser add-in.

The first thing to do is locate a reputable add-in.

Custom New Tab - Microsoft Edge Addons (available here at https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/custom-new-tab/onagfgjlokaciajhjmajljcfanonbmia) is a good, solid choice and it is free.

When you follow the above URL you should see a tab with the following on it:

Edge Extension

Click on the "Get" button and you should see a pop-up box that looks like this:

Add extension pop-up

Click on the "Add extension" button. You will see another pop-up screen that is basically a warning screen, but you can just go ahead and close it. The pop-up looks like:

Warning message

This is a default action to prevent potentially dangerous add-ins from being sneakily added to Edge and providing a potential security loophole in the browser.

Click on the three little dots on the top right of the browser screen to open up the settings menu:

Extension Options

In the drop down that is displayed, click on "Extensions". You should get another pop-up screen for managing extensions. It will look like this:

Manage Extensions

Click on the "Manage extensions" text and you will see a tab open which looks like:

Extension Manager

Click on the slide "switch" (as indicated by the arrow above). Slide should change to blue. You can now close this tab.

Now click in the browser to open a new tab. You will see the following screen:

Custom Tab

This is where you can type whatever URL you want as the landing page when you open a new tab. i.e. www.google.com, www.duckduckgo.com etc.

Click on "Save" then you can close the tab.

Next time you click for a new tab you will be taken to the URL you entered.

Demonstration of how to add the Edge extension

Demonstration of how to remove the Edge extension

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Last modified : Monday 22nd of May 2023