Microsoft's latest patent reveals the popular Detach from Edge feature might be revived

Detach from Edge was a popular capability that allowed Edge users to detach their Edge sidebar from the browser on the desktop, allowing quick access to Copilot and other applications in this area.

Microsoft initially released it in Edge’s Insider Channels, and although Detach from Edge has never seen the light of day on the Stable channel (according to my research), it was incredibly popular on Insider Channels.

Something happened meanwhile—possibly the release of Copilot as a sidebar on Windows 11—and the Detach from Edge capability was deprecated, leaving many users, including popular tech enthusiast @leopeva64, to come up with their own solutions—which don’t work anymore.

However, it seems that Microsoft is seriously considering bringing it back to Edge again. We found a recently published patent that describes a technology called a Detachable browser interface for context-aware web services, which sounds incredibly similar to Detach from Edge, as you can see in the featured image above.

It describes a system that lets you have a sidebar with helpful web services that you can detach from your browser and place on your desktop. And it works exactly like Detach from Edge: You can remove the sidebar from your web browser, and then dock it on your desktop, allowing you to use the sidebar’s web services with your browser and other apps simultaneously.

The Redmond-based tech giant chose to deprecate the feature back in 2023, and there was a solution, which worked for a while. However, while Edge still supports the useful Sidebar, you can’t detach it anymore.

Many users saw it as a downgrade, given the large number of tutorials on the Internet explaining how to enable it back, but the capability was quite useful to those working with many tabs. It seems Microsoft might have noticed it, and it might bring it back.

The patent mentions the integration of an AI-based chatbot, most likely Copilot. It will be context-aware and use information from Edge to enhance the experience of navigating the apps within the sidebar. It also mentions something related to workspaces, so this enhanced capability might be able to work with these workspaces while controlling certain settings for each workspace individually.

For instance, the desktop includes a workspace that serves as a primary area, or “wokspace” for a user to interact with applications, manage files and folders, and the like. For instance, the workspace may be the area of the desktop where applications windows may be displayed. The desktop further includes a taskbar that displays currently runnning and/or pinned application indicators, and a start button that provides access to various system featues, settings shortcuts to frequently used appkicatons, etc.

You can read the full paper here.