18 ms·

To set new tab as blank in MS Edge you need to enroll device in MDM

167 points by dend 5y ago

rk06 5y ago
You might as well use this edge extension https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/blank-new-tab/lcfpkaoihifiidkocpgeobgjhhimmjip https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/blank-new-...
- xvilka 5y ago
  Or just don't use Edge at all. There are better browsers out there.
  - maven29 5y ago
    Virtualizing tabs, extremely customizable tab discarding, a battery efficiency mode and sidebar tab switcher are sufficient reason for me to ignore the occasional nagging to change the default search engine back to bing. Tools are much more than just sane defaults. A bit of configuration shouldn't be a deal breaker for something you spend a significant proportion of your waking hours on.
    - marcodiego 5y ago
      > A bit of configuration shouldn't be a deal breaker for something you spend a significant proportion of your waking hours on. That's how I started using linux.
      - rudian 5y ago
        The parent comment wrote “a bit of configuration” not “spend your waking hours configuring.”
        hulabalao 5y ago
        This is a dumb myth. You can configure once and leave it. I do that, I have a dotfiles repo with about 4 commits in it, my work machines have no dotfiles and not configuration.
        rStar 5y ago
        parent comment assumes technical user
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
perceptronas 5y ago
I wanted to comment that in 5 years it will become similar to Samsung TVs where its impossible to remove ads in the menu. However, I realized a less severe version of that is already in place on Edge and you need hacks to go around it
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I'm tired of this cat-and-mouse game. Now Microsoft knows about this workaround and in a couple of months it is gone. Then we'll try to find another way to do something that can be done easily in Firefox (but not in Chrome, where you need an extension just for that).
agileAlligator 5y ago
There is an extension to set the new tab page to whatever you want... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i...
kderbyma 5y ago
I may be alone, but it is hard to find a company which isn't up and coming that hasn't turned to nickle and diming and completely abusing their customers for small incremental survival. they are trying to extend their agreement. they sold a product and now have converted it into a service. it's such a horrible practice that needs to be called out for what it is. a failure to innovate and a parasitic attachment to the host....
connordoner 5y ago
But why?
- NotEvil 5y ago
  Because they can
  - connordoner 5y ago
    Seems to be Microsoft’s motto as late, especially when it comes to product changes… Sigh.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  The same reason MS is pushing for MS Authenticator on companies who already had perfectly valid and safe vpn solutions. If your company wants the convenience of our products you must enable us to syphon even more data from your employees.
- Stranger43 5y ago
  Because they need to push their services like bing, office365 or msn. Everything MS does around windows is designed to push/lock their customers into the office365/bing ecosystem. A blank page contains no Bing/office365 integration so of cause cannot be allowed to persist.
  - connordoner 5y ago
    I’m not sure this is 100% it, given that Office 365’s MDM (Intune) is the service that would enable this option. Definitely a big part, though.
    - Stranger43 5y ago
      But in order to use intune you need to lock your self into an MS centric remote management platform so, in a way the exception though group policies is an driver for forcing people into the o365 ecosystem.
theGeatZhopa 5y ago
We want our blank page back. We want our blank page back. I never understood what to do with that blank page, now missing it and thus using Firefox
yborg 5y ago
I found a Chrome extension called, appropriately enough, "Empty New Tab Page" that works fine on Edge that accomplishes this without registry editing. But yes, kind of flabbergasted when I discovered that Microsoft was strong-arming the new tab page. Apparently the lessons of 20 years ago have been forgotten in Redmond.
- luluganeta 5y ago
  While not as serious, Firefox only allows you to set the new tab page as 1. blank or 2. the Firefox home page. I wanted to use a startpage for every new tab and was surprised to find that it's not trivial at all, eventually gave up. I'm a long time Firefox user and MS critic, yet feel forced to remark that this dumbing down of browsers seems to be happening beyond Microsoft.
  - simion314 5y ago
    > this dumbing down of browsers seems to be happening beyond Microsoft. Add for Chromium the fact they don't give non Mac users the option to prompt a warning before exiting, because designers think that hiding an option for Windows/Linux is better for the users. Any idea what blog/book this designers (I include the GNOME ones) read that brainwashed them?
- jafitc 5y ago
  The first part is indeed annoying and part of Edge. (I agree doesn’t make sense) But the second step is part of Chromium. Chrome shows the same alert for extensions changing the new tab page for the first time. (Which to me makes sense)
- dend 5y ago
  This is part of the problem - I shouldn’t rely, as a user, on a third-party extension (which does who know what in my browser) to activate functionality that was already implemented and is intentionally kept away from users unless they enroll into MDM.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  There's more. When you add the "Empty New Tab Page", it's disabled by default and you need to enable it manually. Then, when you open a new tab the first time, it asks if the blank tab is a mistake and if you want to revert back. It reminds me of the early 00's when everyone was installing add-ons that hijacked the IE start page or redirect 404/DNS errors. That's the ONLY reason I can imagine that would make MS think this UX is acceptable.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I'd like to huff and puff about this, but Microsoft are catering to the corporate customer because that's where the money is. Windows is essentially free to the home user, so might as well monetize using alternate sources. I think this pisses me off much less than it otherwise would because I excised Microsoft from my dependence stack a few years back. I almost like these revelations because it's further justification of my decision; I was right.
- codeflo 5y ago
  > essentially free to the home user There’s a world of difference between “free” and “priced in”. And anyone who builds their own PCs would disagree with this anyway.
  - tester34 5y ago
    >builds I don't think people who build their PCs must pay for Windows, I weren't forced. But probably laptop market sucks.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  On the other hand, with a 2.5 trillion dollar market cap, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world. I can't imagine that these reputation destructive actions add much to the company's bottom line. More likely some middle manager is adding "value" to their little fiefdom inside the company at the expense of the reputation of the company as a whole.
  - pishpash 5y ago
    One blink and MSFT is on top of the world again?
- dend 5y ago
  Here’s the thing though - even if you are running a Pro or Enterprise SKU, you still are forced to not have this functionality unless you enroll the machine into MDM. Even if you paid you’re not getting the right experience.
amanzi 5y ago
The title here doesn't match the article title - to fully configure the Edge browser, you need to be joined to an Active Directory domain or enrolled with Intune MDM. For those of us with experience managing Windows environments, we know that for a long time, Microsoft have offered much more customisations for Windows and the apps to organisations. And in this case, to fully customise the Edge browser, you need to have your Windows computers joined to an AD domain, or enrolled in Intune which Microsoft is pushing as the future replacement for traditionally managed networks. It sucks that home users can no longer customise this setting. My advice - stop using Edge. Windows 11 and Edge are incredibly hostile towards its users. I use Windows 11 daily, and it's incredibly frustrating how a generally nice OS is ruined by stupidly hostile moves by Microsoft. For example, they've gone to the effort of including a widget sidebar, but you can't fully customise it - you're forced to include a news feed of crappy articles from Microsoft-chosen publishers. Very frustrating.
- prirun 5y ago
  My sister has to use Windows 10 for her business software. I never could get past all those flashing animated icons on the Start menu. Totally distracting when I'm trying to figure out how to get something to work. I'm already frustrated and they have little pictures spinning and bouncing all over the place. It's annoying as F.
  - thefunnyman 5y ago
    Luckily those tiles can be removed from the start bar in Windows 10 via the right click menu, but I agree it is an annoying default behavior.
- ultimoo 5y ago
  I don't have any Windows computers these days but if I may offer a workaround for the news feed -- I'd recommend looking to running your own ad blocking DNS with pi-hole. You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 and get the whole thing up and running in an hour.
  - 5y ago
notorandit 5y ago
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away you could set your homepage to about:blank...
escapedgoat 5y ago
Not on a windows machine, but would setting it to this work: data:text/html, <html contenteditable><head><title>Quick Note</title></head><body></body> Basically creates a blank page in chrome that allows typing. I use it a quick ephemeral notepad.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  You can't set the new "New Tab" page to a specific URL w/o enabling the MDM "enrollment" settings the author describes. As a "home page" that URL works fine to get a blank page in Edge, but opening a new tab gets you the "New Tab" page rather than the "home page".
rStar 5y ago
don’t use software that so obviously disrespects you, the user

167 points by dend 5y ago

rk06 5y ago

You might as well use this edge extension https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/blank-new-tab/lcfpkaoihifiidkocpgeobgjhhimmjip https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/blank-new-...

xvilka 5y ago
Or just don't use Edge at all. There are better browsers out there.
- maven29 5y ago
  Virtualizing tabs, extremely customizable tab discarding, a battery efficiency mode and sidebar tab switcher are sufficient reason for me to ignore the occasional nagging to change the default search engine back to bing. Tools are much more than just sane defaults. A bit of configuration shouldn't be a deal breaker for something you spend a significant proportion of your waking hours on.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    > A bit of configuration shouldn't be a deal breaker for something you spend a significant proportion of your waking hours on. That's how I started using linux.
    - rudian 5y ago
      The parent comment wrote “a bit of configuration” not “spend your waking hours configuring.”
      - hulabalao 5y ago
        This is a dumb myth. You can configure once and leave it. I do that, I have a dotfiles repo with about 4 commits in it, my work machines have no dotfiles and not configuration.
      - rStar 5y ago
        parent comment assumes technical user

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

perceptronas 5y ago

I wanted to comment that in 5 years it will become similar to Samsung TVs where its impossible to remove ads in the menu. However, I realized a less severe version of that is already in place on Edge and you need hacks to go around it

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I'm tired of this cat-and-mouse game. Now Microsoft knows about this workaround and in a couple of months it is gone. Then we'll try to find another way to do something that can be done easily in Firefox (but not in Chrome, where you need an extension just for that).

agileAlligator 5y ago

There is an extension to set the new tab page to whatever you want... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i...

kderbyma 5y ago

I may be alone, but it is hard to find a company which isn't up and coming that hasn't turned to nickle and diming and completely abusing their customers for small incremental survival. they are trying to extend their agreement. they sold a product and now have converted it into a service. it's such a horrible practice that needs to be called out for what it is. a failure to innovate and a parasitic attachment to the host....

connordoner 5y ago

But why?

NotEvil 5y ago
Because they can
- connordoner 5y ago
  Seems to be Microsoft’s motto as late, especially when it comes to product changes… Sigh.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
The same reason MS is pushing for MS Authenticator on companies who already had perfectly valid and safe vpn solutions. If your company wants the convenience of our products you must enable us to syphon even more data from your employees.
Stranger43 5y ago
Because they need to push their services like bing, office365 or msn. Everything MS does around windows is designed to push/lock their customers into the office365/bing ecosystem. A blank page contains no Bing/office365 integration so of cause cannot be allowed to persist.
- connordoner 5y ago
  I’m not sure this is 100% it, given that Office 365’s MDM (Intune) is the service that would enable this option. Definitely a big part, though.
  - Stranger43 5y ago
    But in order to use intune you need to lock your self into an MS centric remote management platform so, in a way the exception though group policies is an driver for forcing people into the o365 ecosystem.

theGeatZhopa 5y ago

We want our blank page back. We want our blank page back. I never understood what to do with that blank page, now missing it and thus using Firefox

yborg 5y ago

I found a Chrome extension called, appropriately enough, "Empty New Tab Page" that works fine on Edge that accomplishes this without registry editing. But yes, kind of flabbergasted when I discovered that Microsoft was strong-arming the new tab page. Apparently the lessons of 20 years ago have been forgotten in Redmond.

luluganeta 5y ago
While not as serious, Firefox only allows you to set the new tab page as 1. blank or 2. the Firefox home page. I wanted to use a startpage for every new tab and was surprised to find that it's not trivial at all, eventually gave up. I'm a long time Firefox user and MS critic, yet feel forced to remark that this dumbing down of browsers seems to be happening beyond Microsoft.
- simion314 5y ago
  > this dumbing down of browsers seems to be happening beyond Microsoft. Add for Chromium the fact they don't give non Mac users the option to prompt a warning before exiting, because designers think that hiding an option for Windows/Linux is better for the users. Any idea what blog/book this designers (I include the GNOME ones) read that brainwashed them?
jafitc 5y ago
The first part is indeed annoying and part of Edge. (I agree doesn’t make sense) But the second step is part of Chromium. Chrome shows the same alert for extensions changing the new tab page for the first time. (Which to me makes sense)
dend 5y ago
This is part of the problem - I shouldn’t rely, as a user, on a third-party extension (which does who know what in my browser) to activate functionality that was already implemented and is intentionally kept away from users unless they enroll into MDM.
tomnipotent 5y ago
There's more. When you add the "Empty New Tab Page", it's disabled by default and you need to enable it manually. Then, when you open a new tab the first time, it asks if the blank tab is a mistake and if you want to revert back. It reminds me of the early 00's when everyone was installing add-ons that hijacked the IE start page or redirect 404/DNS errors. That's the ONLY reason I can imagine that would make MS think this UX is acceptable.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

I'd like to huff and puff about this, but Microsoft are catering to the corporate customer because that's where the money is. Windows is essentially free to the home user, so might as well monetize using alternate sources. I think this pisses me off much less than it otherwise would because I excised Microsoft from my dependence stack a few years back. I almost like these revelations because it's further justification of my decision; I was right.

codeflo 5y ago
> essentially free to the home user There’s a world of difference between “free” and “priced in”. And anyone who builds their own PCs would disagree with this anyway.
- tester34 5y ago
  >builds I don't think people who build their PCs must pay for Windows, I weren't forced. But probably laptop market sucks.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
On the other hand, with a 2.5 trillion dollar market cap, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world. I can't imagine that these reputation destructive actions add much to the company's bottom line. More likely some middle manager is adding "value" to their little fiefdom inside the company at the expense of the reputation of the company as a whole.
- pishpash 5y ago
  One blink and MSFT is on top of the world again?
dend 5y ago
Here’s the thing though - even if you are running a Pro or Enterprise SKU, you still are forced to not have this functionality unless you enroll the machine into MDM. Even if you paid you’re not getting the right experience.

amanzi 5y ago

The title here doesn't match the article title - to fully configure the Edge browser, you need to be joined to an Active Directory domain or enrolled with Intune MDM. For those of us with experience managing Windows environments, we know that for a long time, Microsoft have offered much more customisations for Windows and the apps to organisations. And in this case, to fully customise the Edge browser, you need to have your Windows computers joined to an AD domain, or enrolled in Intune which Microsoft is pushing as the future replacement for traditionally managed networks. It sucks that home users can no longer customise this setting. My advice - stop using Edge. Windows 11 and Edge are incredibly hostile towards its users. I use Windows 11 daily, and it's incredibly frustrating how a generally nice OS is ruined by stupidly hostile moves by Microsoft. For example, they've gone to the effort of including a widget sidebar, but you can't fully customise it - you're forced to include a news feed of crappy articles from Microsoft-chosen publishers. Very frustrating.

prirun 5y ago
My sister has to use Windows 10 for her business software. I never could get past all those flashing animated icons on the Start menu. Totally distracting when I'm trying to figure out how to get something to work. I'm already frustrated and they have little pictures spinning and bouncing all over the place. It's annoying as F.
- thefunnyman 5y ago
  Luckily those tiles can be removed from the start bar in Windows 10 via the right click menu, but I agree it is an annoying default behavior.
ultimoo 5y ago
I don't have any Windows computers these days but if I may offer a workaround for the news feed -- I'd recommend looking to running your own ad blocking DNS with pi-hole. You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 and get the whole thing up and running in an hour.
- 5y ago

notorandit 5y ago

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away you could set your homepage to about:blank...

escapedgoat 5y ago

Not on a windows machine, but would setting it to this work: data:text/html, <html contenteditable><head><title>Quick Note</title></head><body></body> Basically creates a blank page in chrome that allows typing. I use it a quick ephemeral notepad.

EvanAnderson 5y ago
You can't set the new "New Tab" page to a specific URL w/o enabling the MDM "enrollment" settings the author describes. As a "home page" that URL works fine to get a blank page in Edge, but opening a new tab gets you the "New Tab" page rather than the "home page".

rStar 5y ago

don’t use software that so obviously disrespects you, the user