Author Topic: Here’s what you need to bypass Microsoft’s block forcing you to use Edge browser  (Read 133 times)

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■ We reported earlier in the week that Microsoft was taking the browser wars a notch higher.

■ Now, an app called MSEdgeRedirect has emerged that allows you to open any link from Windows using any browser..

■ This comes after Microsoft's recent update to block protocol intercepting apps.



Earlier on in the week, we announced how Microsoft had sneaked in some updates in the Patch Tuesday that blocked microsoft-edge:// links from being opened.

The Redmond giant strictly wants certain links to be opened using only the Edge browser in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

If you click on a link in the Search taskbar, the weather widget, or other areas of the operating system, Windows will open that page in Edge even if another browser is set as your default.

Users were quick to express their dissatisfaction with the behavior given that everyone has their own preferred browser of choice.

Security-related issues

In a recent Windows update, apps that redirect links such as protocol links, like those found in a search in the taskbar, were blocked.

Now, when you click on a protocol link, the OS will not let any app intercept those types of links. According to Microsoft, this is a security measure but users always prefer to use the default browser instead of the recommended browser.

Here comes the new app

A new app called MSEdgeRedirect has emerged that is able to trick Windows into opening protocol links in Edge.

The app is different from EdgeDeflector and other apps that trick the operating system into thinking that you’re trying to open a link in the default browser when you’re not. MSEdgeRedirect uses command-line arguments to get around this problem.

On Github, the app description

Quote
“A Tool to Redirect News, Search, Widgets, Weather and More to Your Default Browser

This tool filters and passes the command line arguments of Microsoft Edge processes into your default browser instead of hooking into the microsoft-edge: handler, this should provide resiliency against future changes. Additionally, an Image File Execution Options mode is available to operate similarly to the Old EdgeDeflector

No Default App walkthrough or other steps, just set and forget.”

The app is currently on beta mode so a few bugs here and there and some performance issues are expected.

So far, the app works well but it is still crucial that users approach it with a lot of caution when dealing with unfamiliar developers.

source