I am excited to share that we have shipped the first preview release of Microsoft Edge with extensions support to Windows Insiders.
Since the beginning of the Microsoft Edge project, our roadmap has always included extensions in order to support a vibrant community of developer innovation on top of the browser, enabling new and interesting scenarios for our customers. As we have also shared, one of our highest priorities is to ensure that Microsoft Edge is the safest, most reliable and fastest browser we could build, and our experience over the past 20 years has taught us that poorly written or even malicious add-ons were a huge source of security, reliability and performance issues for browsers.
With this in mind, we have built Microsoft Edge so customers can add extensions to the browser with the confidence that they will operate as expected.
To ensure the highest quality experience for customers, and as we have done with Windows 10 since the beginning, we will introduce extensions first to our Windows Insiders and then roll them out more broadly to all Windows 10 users. Initially our Insiders will download and then sideload extensions for testing purposes, but ultimately we will make extensions available to all of our customers via the Windows Store to ensure the quality of the end-to-end experience.
The Windows Insider build will include three preview extensions: Microsoft Translator, an extension that automatically translates pages in over 50 different languages, a Mouse Gestures extension, and an early preview version of the popular Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES). Later this year customers will find popular extensions from partners like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, Amazon, LastPass, Evernote and more.
We are very excited to get these initial Microsoft Edge extensions into Insiders’ hands, so please, download the build, try out the preview extensions and send us feedback!