Microsoft Edge gets a Thumbnail View for PDF documents

Microsoft is actively developing the Edge browser for Windows 11 and has been adding support for new features. A recent change that has come to light is the addition of thumbnails to PDF files.

The latest Canary build of Microsoft Edge now lets you see thumbnails of each page right in the browser window. It makes it easier to navigate through a document, especially if you have a lot of pages and want to quickly jump to a specific one.

In the latest Microsoft Edge build, the browser got new features such as the sidebar search and web capture among others. 

Is Microsoft Edge PDF viewer better than Adobe?

Microsoft Edge PDF Viewer is still not as full-featured as Adobe Reader, but it is definitely a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Hopefully, this will only be one of many updates coming in the future.

With Edge’s sleeping tabs that improve your RAM usage, you will definitely experience faster load times when viewing PDF files. You can also try clearing cache and trash files for the OS to run effectively.

New Thumbnail feature

The best feature you will see in the new PDF Viewer is the new thumbnail view, which allows you to scroll through a document using just thumbnails instead of a list. 

Microsoft is taking another step towards challenging Google Chrome by adding a thumbnail view for PDF files that will enable users to access and scroll through a file faster. 

In addition to all of these new features, Microsoft Edge also offers a full Acrylic and Mica effect. We’ve already seen Acrylic and Mica Effects before, but now they’re bolstered by a new Thumbnail View option which is similar to Google Chrome’s PDF viewer interface.

Gradual rollout

In the official Microsoft roadmap for the Edge browser, the company introduced a free-form editing PDF using web capture.

These features will be available soon and are currently on a rollout basis. Additionally, Microsoft is also working on bringing along Acrylic and Mica effects to Microsoft Edge in Windows 11. The former will impact menus that appear inside Microsoft Edge while the latter will affect title bars.

If your Edge browser is slow, you can simply learn how to fix high CPU usage and get a performance boost.

Do you think the new thumbnail feature will give Chrome a run for its money? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.