Windows 11 is blocking Microsoft Edge browser workarounds

Microsoft is making it even harder to avert the Border browser in Windows 11

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft really wants yous to use Edge, and is plain resorting to somewhat underhand tactics to effort and go you to switch/stay.

Daniel Aleksandersen has written that his EdgeDeflector app has stopped working betwixt Windows 11 preview builds 22483 and 22494, later on Microsoft quietly removed the ability to redirect microsoft-edge:// links to http:// that can exist easily opened by any browser.

That means that it's no longer possible for users to work around Microsoft'south irritating insistence that Edge is used when clicking on a News and Involvement item, a weather widget link or search results from the start card in Windows 11. Even if y'all have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser, Microsoft will override this and use Edge to open up these pages instead. And every time it does, information technology'll take the opportunity to inquire if you want to make Edge the default browser.

"You tin no longer set anything but Microsoft Border as the protocol handler for the microsoft-edge:// protocol," writes Aleksandersen. "Or rather, you can cull betwixt Microsoft Border, Microsoft Border (Insider Beta), and Microsoft Border (Insider Dev). No third-party apps are allowed to handle the protocol."

This, he continues, can't be worked around via registry changes, OEM partner customizations, modifications to the Edge parcel, meddling with OpenWith.exe or "whatever other hacking workarounds." Obviously, Microsoft really has airtight every loophole imaginable.

Fifty-fifty if you lot completely remove all traces of Microsoft Edge from your figurer, Windows 11 won't relent. It'll merely throw up an error message instead of offering the pick of using any other browser.

For Aleksandersen, the timing appears suspicious, equally both Brave and Firefox had indicated they'd be introducing like functionality. While the half-million EdgeDeflector users could be comfortably ignored, hundreds of millions of Firefoxers probably could not be, he speculates.

While Aleksandersen concedes that there are still ways he could make EdgeDeflector meet its original remit, he doesn't intend to work on it whatsoever further.

"In that location are however ways I can work effectually the limitation, just every method left in my toolbox will require making subversive changes to Windows," he explained. "Changes that can cause issues for the user downwards the line, and issues that I frankly don't desire to back up. They'd also require a heck of a lot more than work than EdgeDeflector's ≈100 lines of code."

Instead, he recommends that everyone annoyed at the development should switch to Linux and/or complains to their antitrust regulator. "Your spider web browser is probably the most important — if not the only — app you regularly use," he concluded. "Microsoft has made it clear that its priorities for Windows don't marshal with its users'."

If you lot're new to Windows 11, hither's how to modify the default browser in Windows 11 and so you lot tin get a head start on moving abroad from Border. Also, after much outcry, Microsoft has pulled back some, making it easier to ditch Edge.

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the spider web and in the occasional mag too. When not weighing upward the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably discover him tackling his always-growing games backlog. Or, more probable, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.