This week's Edge Dev build is now available with general improvements

Microsoft is releasing this week's Edge build for Insiders enrolled in the Dev channel, bringing the build number up to 81.0.396.0.

This week's release is a fairly small one, with only a handful of added features that aren't all that big. However, it is worth noting that browser extensions can now be used inside Application Guard windows. Here's what's been added:

• Added a dialog to warn users when they’re visiting a website that uses out-of-date security settings.
• Added a setting to enable or disable automatic profile switching (when work or school links are opened are opened in a personal profile, the browser will offer to automatically move that link into a window for the work or school profile).
• Added support for extensions inside Application Guard windows.
• Added a dialog to warn users when they sign into a browser profile with a different account than they previously used to sign into the same profile

There's also a small list of fixes for Edge's reliability:

• Fixed an issue where navigating to certain websites sometimes crashes the browser.
• Fixed an issue where downloading certain items in IE mode causes a browser crash.
• Fixed an issue where the new tab page sometimes doesn’t load properly.
• Fixed a browser crash.

Things get a little more interesting in the list of changes to the browser's behavior, which is a long one. These include smaller title bars for websites installed as apps, which should give PWAs some more breathing room:

• Improved the download status indicator on the Task Bar to only be visible on the icon of a window the download was started from instead of being visible on the icon of every window.
• Reduced the height of the title bar for websites installed as apps.
• Fixed an issue where some users can’t sign into the browser or sync using a work or school account.
• Fixed an issue where the profile button has an incorrectly colored background.
• Fixed an issue where the context menu item to open a link in a particular profile doesn’t appear if only a single profile is currently in use.
• Fixed an issue where the address bar and dropdown appear white when the browser is in dark theme.
• Fixed an issue where the profile picture on the profile Settings page sometimes doesn’t load properly.
• Fixed an issue where dangerous websites blocked by SmartScreen aren’t blocked consistently.
• Fixed an issue where the options to choose which data types to import during the first run experience don’t work and all data types are subsequently imported.
• Fixed an issue where clicking a favorite on the Favorites management page in order to navigate to that site briefly brings up the editing textbox before the navigation starts.
• Fixed an issue where clearing browsing history while the History page is visible doesn’t update the History page until it’s refreshed.
• Fixed an issue where the translate icon sometimes doesn’t appear on Mac when it should.
• Fixed an issue where certain settings aren’t updated in Application Guard windows when the setting is changed in a regular window.
• Fixed an issue where right clicking on context menu items in a Collection doesn’t dismiss the context menu.
• Fixed an issue where clicking on a note in a Collection to edit the text places the cursor at the beginning of the note instead of the location where it was clicked.
• Fixed an issue where adding items to a Collection from certain websites results in some information being missing from the entry.
• Fixed an issue where PDFs that are supposed to be blocked from printing via management policy sometimes aren’t.
• Removed support for the NewTabPageCompanyLogo management policy since it isn’t functional.

As usual, this release still comes with some known issues, including one where the Edge window might be completely black. Here's the list:

• Users of certain security software packages will see all tabs fail to load with the error STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION. The only way to prevent this behavior is to uninstall that software.
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black. UI popups like menus are not affected and opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process fixes it. Note that some of these fixes don’t yet exist in the Stable channel, and the issue only appears to affect users with certain hardware.
• Some users are still not seeing Collections being enabled by default on Canary and Dev. For users who want to try Collections, enabling the flag at edge://flags/#edge-collections should still work to turn on the feature.
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it. In another, restarting the browser fixes it.
• At certain zoom levels, there is a noticeable line between the browser UI and the web contents.

The stable version of the Chromium-based Edge was finally released last week, and that's based on Chromium 79. The features and improvements being tested in the Dev channel are still a few weeks away from getting to the general public. Before that, they should be available in the Beta channel of the Insider program fairly soon.