Microsoft Edge now Preloads pages like Chrome, for faster browsing

Microsoft Edge browser-based on Chromium in Canary has added and enabled a new Setting “Preload pages for faster browsing and searching” under Privacy and services, here is what this mean.

When you visit a website, Google Chrome browser looks up for all links on that page and pre-loads the pages which you most likely to visit next, this is called DNS fetching. Chrome does this by default with Preload pages for faster browsing and searching enabled under Privacy in its Settings.

The setting says it “Uses cookies to remember your preferences, even if you don’t visit those pages”.

Google offers this description for the privacy Setting in Chrome:

Browsers use an IP address to load a webpage. When you visit a webpage, Chrome can look up the IP addresses of all the page’s links and load the ones you might navigate to next. If you turn this setting on, websites and any embedded content that are preloaded can set and read their own cookies as if you had visited them, even if you don’t.

You should expect other Chromium browsers to do the same. New Microsoft Edge for the first time since its launch has picked up this Setting and turned it on by default in the Canary version.

While Microsoft has disabled some most of Google services in its Edge browser, you should treat this as Edge thing now.

Generally, you see this setting disabled if you install some privacy or ab blocker extensions. For instance, UBO disables this, applies to Microsoft Edge also, where you’ll see a puzzle piece icon which on hover informs “this setting is managed by UBlock Origin.extension”.

If you have this turned on and want to disable for Privacy reason, you can, here is how in the new Edge browser.