Microsoft is making Edge faster… starting with this menu

Browser bloat has always been a problem, but now Microsoft is doing something about it, not by reducing features, but by speeding up the browser. The company is working to make Edge’s user interface more responsive, starting with the Browser Essentials menu.

This menu — which displays information about Edge performance — is now 42% faster, thanks to a migration from the WebUI 2.0 architecture. You can see how much faster the Browser Essentials menu loads in WebUI 2.0 compared to React and WebUI with Javascript in the video below. Microsoft claims that the menu is 76% faster on devices without an SSD or with less than 8GB of RAM.

Additionally, Microsoft is giving Edge’s favorites menu a speed boost in version 124, making it 40% faster. Edge’s history, downloads, and wallet features will also receive the WebUI 2.0 update.

Microsoft says it built WebUI 2.0 after discovering that many of Edge’s components used “very large” code packages. WebUI 2.0 changes things by reducing these packages and using a “more modular” architecture. “We now have a repository of web components tuned for performance on modern web engines,” says Microsoft.

As someone who prefers using Edge over other browsers, I appreciate the speed boost. But with the Copilot integration and the mountain of other tools Microsoft has packed into its sidebar, it may lose some features to make the experience as smooth as it used to be.