When installing many extensions in our browser, we may find ourselves with a problem: the space they occupy in the address bar. Each extension usually creates its own icon in this bar so that we can have them at hand. But when the number of these starts to get large, these icons start to become a nuisance. Therefore, browsers began to look for a way to group all these icons and allow users to have their extensions organized. Chrome already launched its extensions panel a while ago, and now it is Edge‘s turn.
Edge is Microsoft‘s Chromium-based web browser, albeit different, in many ways, from Google Chrome. Although the company uses the well-known OpenSource engine to shape its browser, many aspects of it remain independent, and its development depends on Microsoft. We have already seen unique features in the browser that are not in Chrome, for example, the functions when opening PDF , the vertical tabs, the favorites and downloads panel and the privacy options. And now, Microsoft has just included a new panel to help users better use Edge: a panel to group all the extensions .
Edge’s new extensions panel: differences from Chrome
This new panel of browser extensions is one of the few things that maintains the common with Google Chrome, although, of course, Microsoft has also contributed its two cents to improve it.
This new panel is located to the right of the browser’s address bar, and is shaped like a puzzle piece. By clicking on it we will be able to see a sliding panel where all the extensions that we have installed in the browser will appear. Each of the extensions will have a button that will allow us to show or hide its icon on the toolbar, as well as access to all the options offered by said extension.
We will also find two more options at the bottom. On the one hand, we will be able to quickly go to the extension administration panel to see all of them and be able to deactivate or delete them, and a direct access to the Microsoft extensions store, from where we can search and download new extensions.
As we will see, this panel is practically identical to Google’s. The main differences that we will find between them are, on the one hand, the icons and aesthetic details of the panel, and the button to go to the extensions store. But in the rest, we are clearly facing an identical panel.
How to activate it
For now, this new panel of extensions is in the testing and development phase. Therefore, only users using the Dev or Canary versions of the browser will be able to activate and view this new panel. In addition, the panel is disabled by default, and to activate it it is necessary to make a change in the browser’s shortcut. In it, in the “Destination” section, we must replace it with the following:
"C:/Program Files/Microsoft/Edge Dev/Application/msedge.exe" --enable-features=msExtensionsHub
Once this address has been entered in the shortcut, when we open the browser from it the new extensions panel will be available. And we can activate or deactivate it to our liking from the option ” Show extensions button ” that we will find within Settings> Appearance .
