Microsoft is working on a new feature for the Edge web browser to give users a “minimal state experience.” This will minimize the toolbar experience. The software giant is currently testing the features with select users in the Edge Canary channel.
As described by Microsoft, the “minimal toolbar experience” will include a change where the profile icon will be moved to the title bar. Microsoft didn’t mention other changes coming, but it’s likely that this change will also affect the Favorites bar. This can disable or hide the Favorites bar unless the “Minimum Toolbar Experience” is disabled.
As things stand now, Microsoft Edge allows you to enable/disable fullscreen mode, but this is unlike what legacy Edge offered. Entering full-screen mode in the old Edge would mean you were only shown the web page and nothing else, while in Chromium Edge, it’s just a big window that takes up all of your display space.
However, it seems that the “minimal toolbar experience” doesn’t promise to hide everything but the webpage. Instead, it’s reportedly intended to create a less cluttered toolbar and perhaps provide more screen space. Currently, it is available behind a flag called The minimal toolbar experience of Microsoft Edge.
Looking for the flag in Edge Canary, we didn’t see anything that suggests Microsoft is testing the functionality with select users. However, Leopeva64-2 was one of the users lucky enough to get his hands on it (via Reddit).
If you’re not seeing the flag despite running the latest Edge Canary update, you can customize the toolbar from the browser’s settings page. You can, among other things, disable the favorites bar in the toolbar.
Microsoft did well last month by getting more people to use Edge. Microsoft Edge’s market share slipped from 11%—11.09% (+0.11 points) in January, Statcounter reports. With Microsoft adding useful features to the browser at a steady pace, expect Edge to gain more market share in the coming months.
