New Microsoft Edge Dev channel build (85.0.531.1) adds website preloading

Build 85.0.531.1 rolled out to Edge Insiders in the Dev Channel earlier today. This build mainly contains fixes and refinements but does add a new setting that allows the browser to predownload websites so that they load faster when visited.

Here’s the release notes:

Added features:

• Added a setting to enable preloading of certain webpages for faster searches and browsing.

Improved reliability:

• Fixed an issue on Mac where new installations of Edge sometimes crash on launch.
• Fixed an issue where closing the browser too soon after importing data from another browser sometimes causes a crash.
• Fixed an issue where pasting content when Information Protection is enabled sometimes crashes the tab.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to restart Edge on Mac to apply an update gives an error message instead of updating the browser.

Changed behavior:

• Fixed an issue where tabs sometimes appear at their minimum width, even when there’s space for them to be larger.
• Fixed an issue where scrolling down a page sometimes causes it to jump back up to the top.
• Fixed an issue where unpinning and re-pinning Edge to the Taskbar sometimes creates a shortcut to the wrong profile.
• Fixed an issue where the … menu button sometimes disappears at small window sizes.
• Fixed an issue on Mac where Shy UI sometimes disappears while being interacted with.
• Fixed an issue where the highlighted word sometimes doesn’t match what’s being dictated when reading PDFs aloud.
• Fixed an issue where printing a PDF sometimes doesn’t center the content on the printed page, leading to cut-off content.
• Fixed an issue where the default printer is sometimes forgotten or reset.
• Fixed an issue where the Immersive Reader toolbar sometimes disappears when the window isn’t wide enough.
• Fixed an issue where translating content in Immersive Reader sometimes leaves grammar markings from the previous language on the page.
• Fixed an issue where Youtube videos embedded on webpages aren’t shown in Immersive Reader when they should be.
• Fixed an issue where clicking the “Complete sign in” button sometimes doesn’t enable sync until the browser is restarted.
• Fixed an issue where Application Guard windows sometimes don’t get proxy settings applied properly.

Known issues:

• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load.  This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
• Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before.  Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available.  However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.  We hope that this will be improved now that version 81 is released to Stable.
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black.  Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it.  Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window.
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other.  Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices.  This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it.  In another, restarting the browser fixes it.

Edge Insiders are basically volunteer testers that opt-in to try out new Microsoft Edge features before they’re added to the public version. Are you an Insider? Let us know what you think of this latest build in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Microsoft content.