Microsoft Keeps Nagging Millions Of Windows Users To Switch To Edge Now

You're almost assuredly familiar with the hassle, because you probably use Windows, and you probably use another browser besides Microsoft's Edge on Windows. That's just going by statistics. Most Windows users use something besides Edge, and a huge majority of those users are on Google's Chrome.

Microsoft wants to change this, though. The company is quick to tout supposed security and safety benefits to using Edge, even though every browser has phishing protection and malware resistance these days. The company will do seemingly anything to get users on its browser, and that includes adding irritating pop-ups endlessly nagging the Windows faithful.

WindowsLatest just discovered evidence in the latest Canary builds of Microsoft Edge that the company has absolutely no intentions of ending this behavior. The site noted references to pop-up dialogs titled "msNurturingDefaultBrowserBannerUX2OneBtn," "msEdgeDefaultBrowserTrigger," and "msEdgeNotDefaultBrowserTrigger," none of which are currently used but all of which sound like nags for users who elect to set a different app as their default browser in Windows 11.

As that site points out, every browser vendor wants you to use theirs as your default, because your default browser is assuredly going to be the one you use the most. Still, only Microsoft has the gall to nag you about your choice of default browser directly from the operating system instead of simply within the browser itself.

By the by, if these pop-ups irritate you, you can deal with them once and for all with a variety of third-party applications. I am a particular fan of the sketchy-looking but actually quite solid Winaero Tweaker, a free tool that offers extensive knobs and switches for you to customize your Windows operating system. You can do things like disable web search from start, disable the new Windows 11 context menus, and terminate annoying advertisements all right from the intuitive GUI.