Microsoft does allow its users to customize the new Edge browser’s New Tab Page where you can disable content such as news feed, top sites and Bing image via custom setting, but, like Classic Edge, you can’t set its NTP to blank. Moreover, whenever you open a new tab, Edge Chromium connects to MSN to deliver the content on NTP. You can make Edge load New Tab fast and quick without all this bloat by adding an entry to Hosts file in Windows, here is how that can be done.
Before getting into details, it’s worth noting that Edge Chrome’s New Tab Page can be completely modified to display only a search box with Microsoft branding. For this you need to follow the below instructions:
- Open new tab in Edge browser, click on the gear icon and select Custom,
- Uncheck Show Quick links and Image of the day, and click on down arrow under Content and choose “Content off”.
Done, this is the most you can do to make New Tab Page look minimal, there could be extensions available in Microsoft Edge Addons site to change new tab, but without installing any extension, by utilizing Hosts file, you can prevent Edge from connecting to MSN to display content on NTP as a result Edge displays NTP fallback version to you which is Edge logo wallpaper with search box at center, here are the steps to achieve that.
1. Use Windows Search or take help of utility such as Everything Search to find the Hosts file in Windows, it will be located here: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
2. Open it with Notepad or Notepad++
3. Add the following entry and save the changes.
0.0.0.0 ntp.msn.com
4. Launch the Edge browser and open the new tab. If you don’t see the new Edge logo wallpaper, clear Edge browser data.By hard reloading the new tab also you can see the change immediately. [Source: Reddit]