Microsoft Edge has matured significantly and now includes built-in features that genuinely improve daily productivity for business users - many of which Chrome and Safari do not offer.
Microsoft Edge is no longer the browser people switch away from the moment they set up a new PC. Built on the same Chromium engine as Google Chrome, Edge supports all the same extensions while adding a set of business-focused features that are genuinely useful for daily office work.
If your business runs on Microsoft 365, Edge is worth a serious look. Here are seven features that make it stand out.
1. Collections
Collections is Edge’s built-in research and content organisation tool. You can add web pages, text snippets, and images to a named collection with a single click, then export the entire collection to Word or Excel with formatting intact. For anyone who regularly gathers information for reports, proposals, or client briefings, Collections replaces the patchwork of bookmarks, copied URLs, and open tabs most people rely on. Collections sync across devices, so research started on your desktop is available on your laptop without effort.
2. Vertical Tabs
Vertical tabs move the tab bar from the top of the browser to the left side, displaying page titles alongside favicons. For users who regularly work with many open tabs, this is a meaningful quality-of-life improvement. Instead of a row of indistinguishable icons, you see readable page titles at a glance. You can expand or collapse the tab panel as needed, and tabs can be grouped and labelled. It sounds minor until you try it - after a week, going back to horizontal tabs feels inefficient.
3. Microsoft Copilot Integration
Edge has Copilot built directly into the sidebar. Without leaving your current page, you can ask Copilot to summarise the page you are reading, extract key information from a document, draft a reply to an email, or answer questions about content on screen. For Microsoft 365 Business subscribers with a Copilot licence, this extends further into your documents, calendar, and email. Even without a Copilot licence, the basic sidebar assistant handles research and summarisation tasks usefully.
4. Immersive Reader
Immersive Reader strips away distracting navigation, ads, and sidebars from web pages and presents the content in a clean, readable format. You can adjust font size, text spacing, and background colour, and enable a read-aloud function with adjustable narration speed. It is useful for digesting lengthy articles or documentation, particularly for staff who find cluttered web layouts difficult to read. It works on most article-style pages and is accessible from the address bar with a single click.
5. Password Monitor
Edge’s built-in Password Monitor checks your saved passwords against known data breaches and alerts you if any of your credentials have been compromised. It runs in the background and does not require a separate subscription. While a dedicated password manager is still recommended for business use, Password Monitor adds a useful layer of awareness for accounts that may have been stored in the browser. If it flags a breach, you get a direct link to change the affected password immediately.
6. Sleeping Tabs
Sleeping Tabs automatically suspend background tabs that have not been used for a configurable period, freeing up RAM and CPU. The performance benefit on machines with many open tabs is noticeable - Edge uses significantly less memory than Chrome on equivalent workloads in Microsoft’s own benchmarks, and Sleeping Tabs is a key reason why. For staff running older hardware or working with memory-intensive applications alongside their browser, this can meaningfully reduce system slowdowns.
7. IE Mode
For businesses still reliant on legacy web applications built for Internet Explorer, Edge’s IE Mode renders those specific sites using the legacy Trident engine while keeping everything else in the modern Chromium environment. This allows businesses to maintain compatibility with older line-of-business applications without maintaining a separate IE installation or running a virtualised browser. You configure which sites trigger IE Mode through Group Policy or Edge’s settings panel, and the transition is seamless for end users.
Edge in a Microsoft 365 Environment
Edge integrates tightly with Microsoft 365 in ways other browsers do not. Single sign-on works automatically for Microsoft services, OneDrive files open in the correct desktop app rather than a web viewer, and SharePoint document libraries behave consistently. For businesses managing devices through Microsoft Intune, Edge policies can be enforced centrally - controlling which extensions are allowed, enforcing sign-in requirements, and preventing data leakage to non-business accounts.
If you want to standardise your team’s browser environment or need help configuring Edge policies through your Microsoft 365 tenancy, get in touch with CX IT Services. We help Melbourne businesses get more out of their Microsoft investment.
