Microsoft details new Edge features coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update

Microsoft has today outlined all the new features you can expect to see in Microsoft Edge with the new Windows 10 Creators Update coming in April this year. Microsoft Edge is one app on Windows 10 that could definitely use some attention, and it appears Microsoft is doing just that with the Creators Update.

Edge's new features are highlighted in a video released by Microsoft on its official YouTube page. The video gives a brief overview of new tab organization features, Microsoft Wallet integration, 3D support, extensions and more.

Ebooks are another big deal in the Creators Update for Microsoft Edge, as Edge will be the default app used to read books that are downloaded from the new Windows Store books area. Finally, the video touches on extensions, which are already available on the Anniversary Update but are improved with the Creators Update.

Microsoft has also made improvements under the hood that should improve Microsoft Edge's performance when browsing the web. A big complain with users so far is that Edge can be slow and often lag and crash, so with the Creators Update Microsoft is trying to solve these issues and make Edge a viable Google Chrome competitor.

What are you most looking forward to in Microsoft Edge with the Creators Update? Let us know in the comments!

Zac Bowden
Senior Editor

Zac Bowden is a Senior Editor at Windows Central. Bringing you exclusive coverage into the world of Windows on PCs, tablets, phones, and more. Also an avid collector of rare Microsoft prototype devices! Keep in touch on Twitter: @zacbowden.

73 Comments
  • Hope to get extensions on mobile too :)....
  • I second that
  • Hmm, might be too resource intensive for Mobile. Would be pretty awesome though.
  • That argument falls down when you see that some extensions actually greatly reduce the resource consumption of the pages visited.
  • I was expecting a ublock origin plug there. Very sly. Hahaha :P
  • Heh, I was trying not to 😏
  • Ha, true, hadn't thought of that! Or they'd at least balance it out.
  • That's not true. Ad blocking greatly increase RAM and CPU usage. Well, if you are not Opera at least.
  • I didn't actually come here to promote uBlock, but ad blockers actually lower RAM usage and network requests, trading it for a CPU usage increase. uBlock's CPU increase is so small that it's a vast net improvement on battery life and responsiveness overall when you have it enabled. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md#performance Initial internal tests by the Microsoft Edge team on the uBlock for Edge appear to match the official tests in the above link.
  • Is ublock still in the store?!
  • Yes, but it's not publicly listed yet. Still waiting for a few Edge quirks to be fixed that are stopping some features from working.
  • Thanks. I found it in my library. I had it before then restored a system image and also got a new Surface. I guess I skipped over it being tired
  • Firefox, among others, support extensions in their mobile browser on Android.
  • Monument browser already has a built in ad blocker for win mobile. Nice browser too, stability issues on some insider builds though.
  • Too bad that W10M still doesn't support changing app default like on PC. This limitation kept the competition on apps that prevents users to make them default, less incentive for developers to invest on the platform and inconvenient for users.
  • Well depends on extensions and how is it handled and designed.
  • At least with a hard set limit on memory usage.
  • I'd prefer mobile extensions over everything shown on this video, so yeah.
  • W10M barely runs on 1 GB devices and you want extension as well, haha.
  • I use edge daily as my only browser, works just fine for me.
  • Same here. Its very stable and fast for me. A coworker, however, just updated to W10 from the same image on the same hardware and Edge crashes constantly for him. He has no extensions or anything. I dont get it. I've even tried going to the same web pages he's hitting. I was always speptical about complaints about Edge because my experience across 3 different desktops and a Surface Pro 4 has been great.
  • Could video card drivers be outdated/not compatible?
  • Could be, but question is if how come when other browsers in the same machine just works fine? I have same issue with Edge (not absolutely unsuable, just unstable) on my other laptop, yet other web browsers including IE just works. If Edge don't work simply because GPU isn't compatible while other browsers don't, then Edge still at fault and needs to change the way it utilize the hardware and fix the underlying problem why this is still a problem.
  • That's the problem with Edge and why its still not a go-to browser for everybody. It's still unstable, unreliable and have performance issues sometimes. It seems how they built Edge is way too tailored to some machines. Even then its far for perfectly stable. If the same machine use other web browser where Edge have issue, then Edge is certainly have inherit flaws, not really the machine. Heck IE works pretty well and seems solid, if only it wasn't discontinued.
  • IE-11 is still there in W10 just click on the three dots upper right and it will appear.
  • I know that, sorry what I meant is that there will be no more major improvements for IE since they moved to Edge. It's discontinued product that just still exist in Windows 10 for a while for legacy support (maybe also because Edge isn't as reliable as IE especially when UWP runtime is broken ).
  • EBooks are good. These improvements shows a lot of what to expect on mobile.
  • Well it actually just shows that development is only happening in the Desktop market and UWP is not really as universal as everyone thinks
  • Wrong. Ebooks are also in Edge on the latest mobile build. I'm looking at on my spare phone. Fast ring build 15014. UWP works and we are getting more features faster because of it!
  • Great.
  • Right now I'm looking forward to a stable and fluid browser, nothing more and nothing less. When they achieve that we can talk about features all day.
  • Sadly Edge is somewhat of a wasted resource as it's stuck to users on W10 desktops only. It's not mobile/cloud first, is poor at both - no extensions on mobile and you can't use Edge your bookmarks, faves, passwords, reading list, tab list on other devices (ios, android). It also still can't be updated independant of Windows which is embarrassing (didn't MS learn from WM5 about this scenario?). MS needs to make Edge on IOS and Android or better yet integrate all Edge features/extensions into Cortana for windows, ios & android offering a true solution giving MS more users on mobile especially..
  • Stated perfectly. All these points matter to me as well and keeps me going back to the Opera browser because Edge feels like last gen browser with these limitations not being addressed.
  • What? Not true. Edge on mobile has synced Favorites, Reading List, and passwords. Edge has always had these. The latest fast ring mobile build also has Ebooks.
  • I just want to see my download speed ;)
  • Same! This has been requested for a long time and still kept missing. It's just sad that basics is something they struggle with, yet continue to push other big features that some didn't even asked for, not that I don't like those but why they can't at least make all basic things all present first.
  • I use Edge every day and I'm most excited about realibity and speed improvements.
  • Book reader is there but still no fullsceen mode (F11)? Really? I don't use inbuild PDF reader because of no fullscreen mode and MS wants me to read books.
  • I dont know for sure but I dont think the ebook improvements are coming to pdfs we open. So, it wont make me use edge for pdfs I guess... 
  • Yeah, especially for focused reading without all those unnecessary UI elements. Still the same "Immersive" UI from Metro IE is still missing, which is great for non-distracting browsing and specially for tablets that generally have limited screen-estate.
  • I was really excited for edge... but 2 years later I am back to using a combination of Chrome and IE for all of my day-to-day tasks.  Not fond of either, but they are both better than FF and Edge.
  • Try Vivaldi. I think you will like it.
  • Video speeds through everything.  Luckily I already know about these updates, otherwise I would have a hard time keeping track of what's happening.  Whatever marketing department put that video together needs to better explain what's going on. 
  • I've been reading my latest book using edge. It's better than I thought it would be, but could use some improvement. Right now it won't sync my position between mobile and tablet (I'm not using a store-bought book, which may be the problem). On my tablet there is the ask Cortana feature which is amazing. Mobile still doesn't have that ability, which is a letdown.
  • Hope after creator update we will able to do facebook call via  microsoft edge browser
  • Just make it fast and stable as top priority. In it's current state the thing lags and crashes way too often. Besides I envy those new features, they sound really cool 😎
  • Performance and stability is #1 in my book. It seems okay if you only use one tab and it's never open more than 30 mins at a time. Any type of real world usage and it all falls apart though. Have day half a dozen tabs open for even a trivial amount of time and CPU / memory use goes through the roof. Lag and crashes galore. Ironically this problem seems to have gotten even worse in the latest insider builds. Paid a pretty penny for my surface book i7 and for the most part it performs really well for meet a my needs. Using edge though? Performance feels more in line with a POS netbook from 10 years ago. Edge also seems to drag down the performance of the entire system with it. When Edge lags, EVERYTHING else lags too, from key presses to mouse movement. Never seem to have this problem with Chrome or Vivaldi (my current browser of choice). I really try to make Edge my everyday browser but every time I try I just end up incredibly frustrated.
  • Exactly! I have SP4 i7 + 16 GB RAM, and I had to switch to using apps for Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and VK, because on Edge it is impossible to use them.
  • I'd like to see an ability to restore tabs or windows based on closed time/date, not opened time/date. I know it's probably not on Microsoft, but I'd like to see the XMarks extension come to Edge (same company that owns LastPass now, since LastPass acquired XMarks). With that, it would solve the complaints of users who want Edge on all browsers -- no need if passwords and bookmarks sync across browsers. XMarks has said they will release an Edge extension, but it's been a while and nothing yet. I'd like proper support for nested folders in the Favorite bar. Right now, you can have folders and nested folders, but if you try to open a subfolder in the Favorites Bar, it bumps you to the right side Hub menu set of Favorites. Annoying. Favorites Bar also needs drag and drop support and everything else that's in the Favorites Hub. A Favorites manager and the ability to right-click to rename or view properties, etc. In short, Favorites Bar should be as functional as Favorites Bar was in IE or the Bookmark bar is in FF, Opera, or Chrome. Major improvements needed to printing in Edge, including printing background colors and images, preserving changes to print settings following a print (now it loses them after printing even if you never leave the page!), and access to full option set for the printer like we would normally get in a print dialog. There are many sites that don't seem to work quite right in Edge, but do in every other browser, even IE. As a percentage, it's small, but enough to be an issue. In particular, sites that include a print function by generating a PDF don't work right. Try printing a label from usps.com -- can't do it in Edge (work-around is to save it as a PDF then open the PDF in another program). For me, on every computer I've tried, Edge is incompatible with Windows Central for posting -- if you hit Enter in the text box, the cursor bounces back to the top of the text entry field, instead of going down to the next line like you'd expect. Does this work for anyone (surprised more people don't complain -- maybe I'm the only one so long-winded to do multiple paragraphs)? Edge is good. With LastPass support, it has become my default browser. But there's still a lot of room for improvement in Edge. I think Opera is still the gold standard in terms of user friendliness (except that it insists on opening a new tab, even using Windows commands that should open a new window) and Firefox reigns supreme in terms of configurability.
  • Can you rename URLS of bookmarks yet or open bookmarks in subfolders? 
  • I really want the ebook tech to also be applied to pdfs in the Creators Update. 
  • One of the advantages of UWP is synchronization. This features will come to the other devices in the ecosystem. Not just overnight and definitely in different variant.
  • Microsoft only sells touch screen computers. A browser is one of the most used app on a tablet. Number of tablet mode improvements: 0 Strange strategy.
  • Doesn't the tab previews thing count as a feature designed for use on a tablet? I mean, you can't hover over the tab when using edge in a tablet to view the tab preview like you would if you had a mouse. I thought dropdown tab previews were to overcome this problem.
  • I'm enjoying the mobile/desktop parity on Edge Microsoft envisaged. /s
  • These new features always look great in the rendered videos. I really hope the performance for basic tasks becomes more competitive.
    Right now, I've elected to use Opera Neon for general browsing, leaving the others (including Edge) for more serious, secure access browsing.
  • No full screen mode? Disappointing.
  • You have to be kidding me........ No F11 full screen yet?!?!?   
  • How to get that dynamic mouse pointer?
  • Delete autofill form data
  • All these new features are welcome but I've yet to see a compelling reason to switch from Chrome which I've used for a few years now
  • so nothing new really to get me using Edge even if i used Windows 10  
  • Let's hope that after this update, I no longer have to kill Edge on Task Manager every single time on my Surface Pro 4.
  • The only feature I want is for it to work
  • I sure hope it speeds up the Browser. Edge is the slowest on the planet. On my Surface Book, it's basically unusable. Great features, but it's definitely not ready for primetime. I have to resort to Chrome and Firefox, which are both fast.
  • Would like the ability to drag a link to an open tab like I can on Firefox and IE.
  • Sounds good and all, but PLEASE fix YouTube as it simply doesn't work in normal edge, only inPrivate mode which is really annoying. Along with the constant crashes...but hopefully as we'll get closer those will get fixed.
  • Hopefully being actually usable and not constantly freezing is one of those features.
  • Won't switch until you can use extensions in incognito mode mode as well. Not having an ad blocker when inPrivate mode is a dealbreaker for me.
  • Now edge seems more a tool than a visualizer for web page. I think is a great feature the tabs organizer for people like me that during day need to do a lot of research.
  • All great comments from everyone 🙂 let's hope we get a useable favorites manager. The new Group Policy to sync Edge and IE favorites helps with this somewhat but we still need a full featured Edge based tool.
  • Besides the crashes they need to deal with, they also have to fix fav syncing problems between desktop and mobile. What I would also like is favorites editing capability via outlook account web page
  • Considering how MS now advertises Edge when I open Chrome, you would think it worked great. I tried using it at work and thought it was fast but the more I used it the worse it seemed. I especially hate any sites with a bunch of ads where Edge jumps around the page each time one finishes loading or refreshes. It doesn't remember login info on certain sites where Chrome works fine. I was having some horrible performance issues and had to go delete a folder within the appdata folder. It was OVER 8GB...WTH? Why is Edge storing so much data? I've gone much longer on IE without clearing history and it never got close to that, not to mention clearing history on Edge did not affect this particular, at least not that I could see. After deleting the folder it ran much better but still just could not compare to Chrome. Also, not impressed with the Favorites manager. On Chrome I can readjust links from the Favorites Bar, not so with Edge. And to top it off, if I arranged some folders, after a few it would stop showing the move on the Favorites bar. Ugh, just too much that is not working to worry about new features. I thought it was just me so I'm sorta glad to see others have similar issues. Fix for performance/stability first, features later.