How to Debloat, Speedup and Remove Unwanted Features from Microsoft Edge

hi brentick here where Tech is Made Simple so according to feedback and some comments I've seen recently on the channel there are a lot of you who feel that Microsoft Edge for desktop is becoming unnecessarily bloated with features and I've touched on this in some previous videos and as we can see in the stable version of edge which is currently on version 114 there is a lot going on when it comes to the user interface of the browser things are looking very cluttered and Bloated when a lot of these default features are left enabled now in response to some questions questions and comments I'm just going to try and show you today how you can try and declutter and bring about a more minimal interface and user experience and browsing experience and to some degree or other try and speed up your browser and in case you didn't know most of these features can be turned off and toggled off just by changing a couple of settings in Microsoft Edge for desktop now the settings we are going to turn off today and change are currently available at the time of posting this video this might change in the future so just take note of that and we are going to change default settings we're not going to use experimental Flags or anything like that we're just going to focus on settings that are available to the everyday average user that are buried into and in the actual edge browser for desktop now it goes without saying before we start turning off settings if you are using any of these settings or options or features it goes without saying then you would leave the relevant setting turned on because obviously everybody's needs and preferences are different when it comes to their browser and their browsing experience now with that all out the way um just to start on the new tab page and if I do leave out one or two settings just let me know in the comments and because I'm going to go through this as quickly as possible as to not draw this video out and make it too long now starting on the new tab page first of all we head up to the page settings our gear icon and yeah we're going to turn off the layout we're going to just change it from whatever you have to focused quick links which are your shortcuts on your new tab page we're going to turn those off and then recent Bing searches which are found just under the search bar we're going to turn those off the greeting here in the top left we're going to turn that off and any new tab tips we're going to disable and then the news feed yeah at the bottom we're going to turn content completely off and we can see already on the new tab page things are looking a lot better now for the next stage we're going to head into the main menu and head to these settings and I'm gonna head to the left hand menu and I'm going to start from the bottom up first of all we're going to click on system and performance and a setting which I definitely feel you should disable permanently in the edge browser is this setting which I've posted on previously which says continue running background extensions and apps and Microsoft edges closed turn that off if it's turned and toggled on and I have posted a whole video on that and I'll leave a link down below to that video because turning this on will make your browser a lot snappier and save system resources and then something else I would suggest as you can see I have startup boost turned off as well I don't personally feel that startup boost makes any difference to actually boosting the startup of the browser so I suggest turning both of those settings off now for the next set we're going to head to the sidebar and although we can't actually disable the sidebar we can prevent it from being displayed in the browser so we just toggle that setting off and then Bing chat we're going to remove the Bing chat icon and the Discover button in the top right and we're just going to toggle that off then move into the appearance page I would suggest um if you have a theme enabled just use your system default and the default theme of the actual browser that's my suggestion and then as I posted earlier today on a controlled rollout there is a project Phoenix new look and feel that's been made available in the desktop browser which does bring more rounded tabs a rounded browser frame and so on and I'll also leave that video down below but if you want to bring back the old classic look then just toggle this feature off and just take note we'll have to restart the browser to apply the older look or the more classic look and you can see that the color has taken on a more um darker gray the rounded tabs have disappeared and the browser frame now is square once again but if you want to leave that on I don't think it actually interferes with the actual look of the browser but for this video I'm going to toggle that off then making our way down I'm going to turn off show tab actions menu so that shows your vertical tabs and your different actions for your menus I'm turning that off and another thing we're going to try is show tab preview on Hover that's going to take away the hover card preview when you hover of a tab and then workspaces is also a feature that rolled out recently to the stable version we're going to turn that off as well now if you have your favorite sport enabled then we're going to head to that and we're going to click never we can see now that we'll never show the favorite spot and the home button which I do use on a regular basis but for today's video I'm going to turn that off just to declutter the browser the forward button I like to have it always shown but for today's video we're going to click show automatically and that removes that forward button it only appears if you have to go forward to a web page and most of these features guys I have posted on previously individually so if you want more information regarding a individual setting then just do a search accordingly on the channel to give you more info and then the extensions button which is this button which obviously shows you extensions we're gonna never show and then what I would suggest um is if you aren't using any of these quick shortcut buttons in the toolbar just turn every single one of those off and obviously as I mentioned if you are using any of these features then just leave the relevant setting enabled quite a lot to go through and there we go and then um if you want to get access to these actual features that um are available for the shortcut buttons although you've turned them off in the toolbar there are most of these are actually available in the main menu so you can turn those off to declutter the browser without actually removing the feature and then for the next we're going to go to the Privacy search and services now these are basically under the hood um adjustments which will really just um declutter the actual notifications and little annoyances that may pop up from time to time in the actual browser and yeah we're going to head down on the Privacy search and services page to the services section and yeah we're going to turn off a couple of settings we're going to go and turn off uh show Collections and follow content creators in Microsoft Edge we'll obviously have to restart the browser because some of these will require a browser restart let's head back down to the bottom and then we're going to go turn off show suggestions to follow creators in Microsoft Edge and get notifications of related things you can explore with discover and I think that's more or less it for this page and now if we head back to our new tab page you can see now that things are looking a lot less cluttered and we have brought a much more minimal interface to the edge web browser and you'll also see with all of these this clutter and bloat disabled and turned off it will actually speed up your browser to some extent or the other and bring a much more snappier browser and a much faster browsing experience so that's more or less um how you can declutter and bring a more minimal interface to the edge browser for desktop and as mentioned if you have another setting or two that I may have missed just let me know in the comments and as mentioned those settings are available at the time of posting this video today on the 3rd of July 2023 and I think that looks a lot better if you are looking for a decluttered and less bloated Edge web browser for desktop so thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one

Channel: BrenTech

Views: 20,913

Keywords: Microsoft Edge, Boost Edge, Edge Performance

Id: J4k6o-6PToQ

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023