If you like catching up with the news when you open Microsoft Edge or switch to a new tab, this post will help you personalize the Microsoft Edge New tab page.
What are the components of the Microsoft Edge New Tab page?
To many users, Microsoft Edge’s new tab page feels way too cluttered, and it, to an extent, is. However, you can clean it by toggling off almost every page component. These are:
- Microsoft 365 Suite Icon: Starting from the top left, we have the icon (the dotted square one). You will see the Microsoft 365 apps you can access upon clicking it. This is the default and can’t be turned off natively.
- Search Bar: The Search Bar, with Bing search on default, can’t be toggled off. Also, only Bing search can be used with the Search Bar on the new tab page.
- Download App and Rewards Icon: The Download app icon (shaped like a smartphone) displays a QR code to download Edge on smartphones upon clicking, and the Rewards icon (shaped like a trophy) takes you to the Microsoft Rewards page. Both of these icons can’t be turned off.
- Notifications Icon: If the content is turned on (news and all), this icon will display the latest ones you may have missed upon clicking it. This is turned on and off with the Content.
- Quick Links: Quick Links is the option that is not turned on by default. You can have up to two rows of the recently visited websites as icons on the New Tab page for easy access.
- Content: This takes up the most space on the new tab page. The Content Part features News and anything that you may find relevant based on your cookies and usage. This is the part that users find most intrusive and also features ads occasionally. This can be toggled off completely.
Now that we understand each component of Microsoft Edge’s new tab page, let’s customize it.
How to add or disable components from Microsoft Edge New Tab page?
Apart from the content and the background, not many elements are customizable so that you can turn most space-taking and intrusive elements off. Here’s all that you can do:
- Customize and turn on/off content
- Turn Quick Links on/off
- Change, disable, or use custom background
- Enable or disable weather
Let’s dive in!
1] Customize and turn on/off content
The content area on the Microsoft Edge New Tab page is often laden with ads and news that you may not want to read, which clutters up the whole new tab area. You can customize this feature to tailor it to your preferences or remove it completely. Here’s how:
- Open a new tab in Edge.
- To disable or enable the content area on Microsoft Edge, click on the gear icon in the top right corner.
- Now, scroll down to find the content section in the settings.
- There are three options: Content Visible, Content Partially Visible, and Headings only. You can choose either of these.
- You can also have it removed entirely by toggling it off.
To personalize the kind of content you wish to see on the New tab page, follow these steps:
- Click on the Personalize button in the top right corner of the Content area.
- Once you click on it, a new Window will open, where you can select the interests and publishers you wish to follow. Do that, and you are good to go.
2] Turn Quick Links on/off
Quick Links are recently visited websites, smartly detected by Microsoft Edge, and updated frequently. Once enabled, you can have up to two rows of recently visited websites for easy access. Here’s how to toggle this feature on and off:
- Click on the Gear icon in the top right corner of the New Tab Page.
- Now, find the Quick Links option and click on the Drop Down Menu.
- You will see three options, i.e., Off, 1 Row, and 2 Rows. Select the one that you wish.
- Now, toggle on/off the Show promoted links option as your preference.
3] Change, disable, or use custom background
Microsoft Edge allows you to select from a wide range of static and dynamic backgrounds for free, on top of this you can also upload a custom image, or turn off the background. Here’s how to do it:
- Click the Gear icon in the top right corner of the New Tab Page.
- Now, scroll down to find the Background section.
- To enable or disable the Background, use the toggle.
- Click on the Edit Background option to select or upload a background.
- To upload a custom background, click the Upload Image option and select one from your PC.
- Or select a static or dynamic background of your choice.
4] Enable or disable Weather
The weather feature detects your current location and displays the local weather. Here’s how to enable or disable it:
- Click on the Gear icon in the top right corner of the new tab page.
- Now, scroll down to find the Weather option.
- Toggle it on/off to your preference.
I hope the post helps, and you were able to customize Microsoft Edge New tab.
How can the Microsoft Edge New Tab page be minimalistic and clean?
To make the Microsoft Edge New Tab page minimalistic and clean, you can either clear the background, use a minimalist one, turn off content, or do other things you wish. Or, use third-party extensions, which will allow you to customize it and keep it clean. Here are the ones we recommend:
1] Minim
Minim is the ultimate minimalistic new tab page extension for Edge and Chrome. The extension is not pressed on productivity but is very eye-pleasing. It has a frequently updated collection of wallpapers, which you can set to change on every new tab, and some beautiful eye-pleasing widgets. The extension has no paid version, and it works perfectly well. There is also a weather widget in the extension.
2] Bonjour
If you are looking for greater customizability, then Bonjour is the right one for you. It gives you all the features of Minim and many more, with granular control. You can even add custom CSS and a search Bar.
I hope you find the post useful.
I really don’t like what they did here. The main reason why I open a new tab is to search for info on something I read on the original tab, so all I really want on a new tab is my favorite search engine.
That seems to be impossible with edge though.
Is there any way to get that function back?
Go into the settings option and then go to advanced settings, then, under the “show the home button” option, replace about:start or whatever is in the box to http://www.google.com, or your preffered search engine
No because they know you will use Google and not Bing. Drives me nuts they did not add this which would of taken active thinking so I assume I am right.
When you change your default browser to which ever you prefer and you click on the new tab button, even though it is the boring grey search engine it will use your default choice. i.e Google.
’tis true – and annoying! Thanks MS…
Yes but the google suggestions don’t auto-populate as you type… at least not for me. Why in the world wouldn’t MS let us specify our own page to open for new tabs or at least let me get google in the “TOP SITES” area? Only reason I can think of is they don’t want it there…
Not exactly the type of design I like. I would rather have the top sites manually customizable – where I can pin whatever links I wanted. Currently there is only option to PIN TO START, which do not have preview or website icon – but just a blue “e” icon… If Pin to Start shows website preview or logo, that will be a whole new ball game!
Microsoft trying to lever customers again into using their services. Haven’t they realised yet that the all stick and no carrot approach ultimately works against them? And the browser is now an app. I think it will be a flop. Well, I guess people will just have to keep using Chrome and other third party browsers, while Microsoft continue to lose customers.
A good reason not to use Edge then.
I agree with Yvonne. I provide tech support and I want all of my new tabs to open my preferred search engine, in this case Google. Edge doesn’t offer me this option with new tab, thereby making it impossible to do so. Instead, as a workaround, I would have to select blank tab and then put my search string in the search window to open a google search, since I have google set as my default search engine. Until Microsoft fixes this in Edge, I will continue to use IE 11 in Windows 10.
Hello WAL, if I understand, you want to have several tabs at the same time when you open Windows Edge. Well this is how you can do it:
1.- Open Windows Edge and go to Settings
2.- Select “A specific page or pages
3.- Click the down arrow and select Custom
4.- In the box “Enter a web address”, type the address you want to be in the home page
5.- Add as many addresses you want
6.- To delete any tab, just click “X”
Then you close Windows Edge and when you open it again you will see all the tabs you create.
I hope this can help you.
Greetings.
Marco
I would like to open New Tab Pages with a specific Home page. I hope Microsoft brings back that feature.
What Microsoft are doing here is fairly typical, when they introduce a new product. They engineer it in a way that is specifically designed to drive users to their ecosystem. They also then make it difficult or impossible for the same users to make changes to their products that would prevent this. It’s what pretty much all the major software companies are doing. I understand the commercial reasons why they would do this. However, there is a very thin line between making it easy for users to access their ecosystems and being anti-competitive and there are a long line of legal cases about the anti-competitiveness of these companies, especially Microsoft.
I posted recently on the MS Community site re this “improvement” in MS Edge:
I’ve been using successfully the workaround of putting the Google site on my Favorites Bar since two weeks ago after I realized that MS was quite happy to have “improved” now to have Only their Bing Search Engine as the only one-click option for opening a new tab. I sent an email to the Antitrust Division of the FTC since this appears to me to be an unfair trade practice to benefit MS’s Bing at the expense of Google and other search engines (as well as MS’s customers/suckers.) I only got a form letter from Antitrust in return, but, if they get enough emails, they may get on MS’s case since MS cannot just ignore them as they routinely do for others.
In response a rabid MS supporter announced that it was a “weird bug” to which I replied:
You may be correct that this is an MS “weird bug” which coincidentally works out positive for MS’s expensive efforts to increase the usage of Bing, or it may be a chintzy plan by MS. I don’t know for sure and have no way of finding out, which is why I would hope FTC Antitrust would look into it. If it’s just another of the long list of MS’s “weird bugs” that they just can’t be bothered to correct, then it’s sad, but not Antitrust. If not a bug, then FTC is supposed to pursue it.
Maybe the FTC will inspire MS to make this right, maybe not, but an email to them doesn’t to take much time, and the more received increases the chance of action. JS10013
Agee entirely. It is extremely frustrating and another reason not to use IE. Chrome doesn’t force users to Chrome so why should Microsoft force users to Bing and MSN. And Microsoft wonders why it continues to lose market share to other providers…
I think you misunderstand. What we want is:
1.- open browser
2.- browser opens at the search engine of choice
3.- open new tab
4.- tab opens at the same search engine of choice
5.- open new tab
6.- tab opens at the same search engine of choice
7.- rinse and repeat.
Every tab you open, opens with your preferred address. we should not have to type a list of addresses to open, since we don’t KNOW which address we will need this time. That is what the search engine is for.
What a crock. If a user can’t specify what page opens when they click “new tab”, then there’s almost no point.
“In fact, the configuration section on Edge is more simplified than Chrome and Firefox, and far more than Internet Explorer.”
“more simplified” isn’t what we were looking for — at least not me. “Better” is what I was looking for, including having the option to set a URL for my new tab pages, like *every other browser* can do.
Once again, 20 years later, they are counting on the user being satisfied with the defaults or ignorant that choices are available. There are nice things about Edge but this ‘feature’ just makes me not use it at all. Well done MS!
Um, no. All that does is changes what the URL for when you click the Home button. That does not change the New Tab window to go to whatever site you want.
I agree. I want the new tab to be my home page. Microsoft is deliberately trying to monopolize where you go on the internet.
Holy hat, folks, esp. those who are complaining about how to customize the Edge homepage and tabs. Please FTLOG explore the Settings for Edge. There, you can customize your homepage URL. You can customize your search engine (use Google, Yahoo! or whatever instead of Bing if you like) and note that no matter what view you choose for a new tab, a search bar (using your default search engine) automatically appears at the top.
Also, by right clicking on an open tab, you can also Pin it to always appear alongside your homepage whenever you start Edge.
Now if we can only get the Edge team to give us the option of automatically switching to a newly created tab instead of doing it manually, we’d be all set!
It’s not impossible. In fact it’s pretty easy. Go to Advanced Settings. Scroll down to Search in the Address Bar and choose your favorite search engine as the default. Voila, anytime you type in the address bar, including on the new Tab, you will now search using your favorite search engine as the default. Google away, Yvonne.
Ok, how do I put a new search engine in there? the one I want to use is not listed.
I see only three options, Bing, Twitter, and Zoeken.
I really like to use Ask, have used is for almost as long as it exists.
Google I never use, the few times I tried it, it didn’t give me the results I was looking for.
That is simply not true, no matter what I do I cant get my prefered search engine in the list that you mention. Only search engines MS wants you to use will show up.
Visit your preferred search engine. If it supports OpenSearch, you will see it added as an option in Edge. Select it and set it as your default search engine. See: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/set-google-default-search-edge
Go to Change Search Engine and click the Learn More hotlink. Your preferred search engine must use OpenSearch technology.
Don’t know if it uses OpenSearch technology, what I do know is that when I follow the learn more link it shows different options then I get when looking in advanced settings – change search engine.
Incorrect u can choose what sites you want to see in the content above. If you want to remove the suggested site click the X button in the corner of the site. Then after click the plus button to add what site you want to see. Your welcome
u can choose what sites you want to see in the content above. If you want to remove the suggested site click the X button in the corner of the site. Then after click the plus button to add what site you want to see. Your welcome
For security purposes I follow the recommended practice of removing cookies after each session. After waiting for over a year, Microsoft still has not fixed the problem of Edge resetting the new tab setting to “Top sites and suggested content” if cookies are removed at the end of the session. Incredibly poor design.
2018 AND EDGE STILL WONT LET YOU OPEN NEW TABS TO YOUR OWN PAGE OR HOME PAGE. I DONT WANT TOP SITES OR TOP SITES AND SUGESTED I WANT MY BLANCK GOOGLE HOME PAGE WITH ITS SHORTCUTS TO GOOGLES APPS LOL. aND EVEN NOW IN 2018 MICROSFT ARE ASKING USERS WHY THEY ARENT USING EDGE.
tRY LETING PEOPLE CHOSE WHAT PAGES THEY WANT TO GO TOO LIKE NEW TABS DEFAULT. lIKE EVERY OTHER BROWSER LETS YOU AND SECOND, STOP PUSHING EDGE AND BING ON EVERYONE, THE MORE YOU PUSH THE MORE PEOPLE RUN.
2018 IS THE FIRST YEASR I DONT USE ANY MICROSFT BROWSER ON MY PC AND I WONT RECOMEND ANY TO OTHER PEOPLE EITHER.