Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for IT Pros

In December 2018, Microsoft announced our intention to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop, to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers. You can get more information at the Microsoft Edge Insiders site.

Microsoft Edge is the default browser for all Windows 10 devices. It's built to be highly compatible with the modern web. For some enterprise web apps and a small set of sites that were built to work with older technologies like ActiveX, you can use Enterprise Mode to automatically send users to Internet Explorer 11.

For more information on how Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge work together to support your legacy web apps, while still defaulting to the higher security and modern experiences enabled by Microsoft Edge, see Legacy apps in the enterprise.

Enterprise Mode helps you run many legacy web applications with better backward compatibility. You can configure both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer to use the same Enterprise Mode Site List, switching seamlessly between browsers to support both modern and legacy web apps.

You can use Group Policy or Microsoft Intune to manage settings related to Microsoft Edge, such as security settings, folder redirection, and preferences. See Group Policy and Mobile Device Management (MDM) settings for Microsoft Edge for a list of policies currently available for Microsoft Edge and configuration information. Note that the preview release of Chromium-based Microsoft Edge might not include management policies or other enterprise functionality; our focus during the preview is modern browser fundamentals.

Adobe Flash is currently supported as a built-in feature of Microsoft Edge on PCs running Windows 10. In July 2017, Adobe announced that Flash support will end after 2020. With this change to Adobe support, we've started to phase Flash out of Microsoft Edge by adding the Configure the Adobe Flash Click-to-Run setting group policy - this lets you control which websites can run Adobe Flash content.

To learn more about Microsoft's plan for phasing Flash out of Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, see The End of an Era — Next Steps for Adobe Flash (blog article).

No, Microsoft Edge doesn't support ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) like Silverlight or Java. If you're running web apps that use ActiveX controls, x-ua-compatible headers, or legacy document modes, you need to keep running them in Internet Explorer 11. Internet Explorer 11 offers additional security, manageability, performance, backward compatibility, and standards support.

In Windows 10, we're delivering Windows as a service, updated on a cadence driven by quality and the availability of new features. Microsoft Edge security updates are released every two to four weeks, while bigger feature updates are included in the Windows 10 releases on a semi-annual cadence.

Microsoft Edge is an evergreen browser - we'll continue to evolve both the web platform and the user interface with regular updates. To send feedback on user experience, or on broken or malicious sites, use the Send Feedback option under the ellipses icon (...) in the Microsoft Edge toolbar.

We're committed to keeping Internet Explorer a supported, reliable, and safe browser. Internet Explorer is still a component of Windows and follows the support lifecycle of the OS on which it's installed. For details, see Lifecycle FAQ - Internet Explorer. While we continue to support and update Internet Explorer, the latest features and platform updates will only be available in Microsoft Edge.

In the upper-right corner of Microsoft Edge, select the ellipses icon (...), and then select Settings. Look in the About Microsoft Edge section to find your version.

Microsoft EdgeHTML is the web rendering engine that powers the current Microsoft Edge web browser and Windows 10 web app platform (as opposed to Microsoft Edge, based on Chromium).