Microsoft has already made it difficult to change the browser and other default apps in the latest Windows 11, but it seems the company felt it wasn’t enough to push Edge. According to The Verge, the Redmond giant decided to go even further and took on third-party utilities like EdgeDeflector to bypass locks.
Microsoft previously coerced Windows 10 and Windows 11 users to use Edge and its Bing search engine in search results in the Start menu, and has now done the same with a new widget bar in Windows 11. EdgeDeflector allows you to bypass these restrictions and open search results in the menu Start in your default browser. The blocking of EdgeDeflector was first noticed last week after the release of the beta version of Windows 11 numbered 22494. Many people thought it was just a bug.
However, Microsoft has now confirmed that this is not a bug – the changes will take effect for all users in the upcoming Windows 11 update, which will be released in the coming weeks. Microsoft has decided to prevent application developers from intercepting microsoft-edge: // links and at the system level to restrict their use by the Edge browser.
“Windows openly supports applications and services on its platform, including various web browsers.
At the same time, Windows also offers a certain end-to-end user experience in both Windows 10 and Windows 11, and taskbar search is one of those scenarios for which the redirect [links] feature is not officially supported. When we learn of a misdirected redirection, we release a fix. “
From Microsoft’s statement
This “fix” is now part of an upcoming Windows 11 update that came out in the Beta and Release Preview channels late Friday night, and EdgeDeflector is unhappy with these changes.
“This is not at all what a company does that cares about its users. Microsoft does not manage Windows in the best way. They are primarily concerned with advertising, bundled software and service subscriptions, not the productivity of their users. “
Microsoft hasn’t explained why it suddenly started blocking EdgeDeflector and other applications, but the reason is obvious.
“500,000 EdgeDeflector users are nothing more than a nuisance to Microsoft. However, last month, the developers of Brave and Firefox either copied the functionality of EdgeDeflector or included its roadmap. “
Daniel Alexandersen,
EdgeDeflector developer
Firefox has 200 million users and expectedly caught the attention of Microsoft. In addition, earlier Firefox developers have resorted to a similar trick to bypass the restrictions on changing the default browser in Windows 10. Mozilla also criticized Microsoft.
“People deserve the right to choose. They should be able to simply and easily change their default settings, and their choice of default browser should be respected.
We worked on the code to launch Firefox under the microsoft-edge protocol for those users who have already chosen our default browser. But recent changes to Windows 11 are canceling these efforts. “
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