[German]In April 2021, Microsoft will remove the old Edge browser from Windows 10 so that only the Chromium-based browser can be used. Microsoft has just announced this.
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Old browser will be out of support
In Windows 10, Microsoft currently affords itself the luxury of having three browsers integrated at once, but this has come about historically.
- First, there is Internet Explorer 11, which is slowly being put on the back burner (see the following notes).
- Then there is the old (so-called legacy) Edge browser, which Microsoft wants out of Windows 10.
- And there is the 2020 Chromium Edge browser, which is newly based on the Google Chromium browser and is to be used in the operating system in the future.
Back in August 2020, Microsoft had announced that the old Edge browser on Windows 10 will no longer be supported with security updates starting in 2021. I had reported about it in the blog post https://borncity.com/win/2020/08/18/supportende-fr-internet-explorer-11-in-microsoft-365-und-alter-edge-in-windows-10-ab-2021/. Microsoft had announced the following:
- Starting November 30, 2020, the Microsoft Teams web application will no longer support IE 11.
- From August 17, 2021, Microsoft's remaining 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11.
This means that after the above dates, customers will no longer be able to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services in IE 11.
End of support for old Edge in March 2021
At the same time, Microsoft announced that support for the Microsoft Edge legacy desktop application will end on March 9, 2021. After March 9, 2021, the Microsoft Edge legacy desktop app will no longer receive new security updates.
Legacy Edge will be removed starting April 2021
It was already noted in the comments on my blog, but I had also seen it on Twitter the days: The days of the legacy Edge browser are counted on Windows 10.
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In the tech community post New Microsoft Edge to replace Microsoft Edge Legacy with April's Windows 10 Update Tuesday release, Microsoft specifically announces that the old (legacy) Edge browser will be removed from Windows 10 on April 13, 2021 – as part of Patch Day.
According to Microsoft, the whole thing applies to the following Windows 10 versions:
- Windows 10, version 1803, all editions (April 2018)
- Note: This version will not be included in the optional Windows 10 March Preview release.
- Windows 10, version 1809, all editions (October 2018)
- Windows 10, version 1903, all editions (May 2019)
- Note: This version is out of support for desktop
- Windows 10, version 1909, all editions (October 2019)
- Windows 10, version 2004, all editions (May 2020)
- Windows 10, version 20H2, all editions (October 2020)
- Because Windows 10, 20H2 already uses the new Microsoft Edge as its default browser, it will not be reinstalled; only Microsoft Edge Legacy will be removed.
However, nothing will change for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. The Techcommunity article still contains a FAQ that provides answers to various questions. From April 2021, the above Windows 10 versions will only include the new Edge browser.
By the way, the colleagues from deskmodder.de point out here, that users with older hardware that cannot update to new Windows 10 versions will then be on the road with a browser that no longer gets support. One user received the message "This computer will soon stop receiving Microsoft Edge updates because its hardware is no longer supported." received. The user is using a system with an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ CPU. This clearly shows how clumsy it is to anchor a browser in the operating system.
