Safari shows website thumbnails, though it reveals the favicons when you open a new blank tab. In contrast, Chrome shows buttons for controls like search and navigation by default. The Touch Bar on Edge for MacOS currently shows a list you can swipe of favicons denoting your open website tabs. 'You will continue to see the look and feel of the browser evolve in future releases as we continue to experiment, iterate and listen to customer feedback.' One piece of that will be support for the Touch Bar - the slim touch-screen display that replaces the function key row on higher-end MacBook Pro laptops.įor example, it'll provide 'useful and contextual actions through the Touch Bar like website shortcuts, tab switching and video controls, as well as enabling familiar navigation with trackpad gestures,' Microsoft said in a blog post. On MacOS, that means Microsoft is trying to balance its own styling with what's native for Apple's Mac line. Now it's got a much broader set of computing systems to deal with. But it also makes it harder for Microsoft to differentiate Edge from Chrome.īack when Microsoft was only building its old Internet Explorer browser for Windows, it optimized its browser for Windows-specific features for things like hardware graphics acceleration and font display.

That move makes it easier for Microsoft to create versions of Edge for iPhones, Android phones and MacOS, not just for Windows. The company has begun shifting Edge to Google's Chromium, dropping its own core software in favor of the open-source underpinnings of the Chrome browser.

Microsoft released a test version of its Edge browser for MacOS on Monday, 16 years after competition from Apple's own Safari led it to stop developing Internet Explorer for the Mac.Įdge for MacOS is available on the Microsoft Edge Insider site, but so far only in the very rough Canary version that changes rapidly and isn't as deeply tested as the gradually more mature developer, beta and stable versions that it'll become.

Microsoft edge for mac os