Fix and Speed up Microsoft Edge’s Slow Download Speeds

After the issue with Startup Boost in Micorsoft Edge 97, the Edge browser is now troubling some users in regards to downloads. The downloads initiated taking too much time to display in flyout or dialog is very slow to load when you right-click and save a file or image. If you’re affected, check out the fix below.

Microsoft Edge slow download Speeds

When you download something, generally, Edge displays them in its flyout menu with its progress.

But after beginning the download, it is taking some dealy like 10 seconds or more for the download to process.

Similarly, when you right-click and save an image, the dialog doesn’t get displayed immediately, instead, it appears after some time.

“I’m not sure what is going on. This started yesterday. Everytime I need to download something, it takes forever to start the download. There is a lagging of 8-10 seconds between command execution. The download speed is itself fine. There is a delay also on “Save image as”. I re installed edge and reboot and no change. What’s going on?” one user reported on Reddit.

“Edge painfully slow to load save file and download dialog box. Hello having issues last few days with dialog box appearing super slow when saving images or any file. No issues in Firefox or Chrome cleared all my data, cookies, cache” another said in the community forum.

After all, seems this has to do with extensions.

How to Speed up downloads in Microsoft Edge

Malwarebytes extension interfering with downloads in Microsoft Edge

For this case, Malwarebytes is causing the issue. It may be interfering or scanning for file download before being taken over by the Edge download manager.

We’ve tested Edge 97 with Malwarebytes browser Guard extension installed and can confirm the same behavior in Edge, but not in Firefox and Chrome browsers, for a surprise.

So the developer may have to fix this Edge Specific issue.

So the fix is to disable the Malwarebytes extension in Edge until the security vendor addresses it, here is how that can be done.

1. Launch Edge browser
2. Visit edge://extensions page in the address bar
3. Find Malwarebytes Browser guard extension and disable or remove it.
   

If you’re not using Malwarebytes, it is worth disabling all extensions, particularly third-party antivirus.

Or, you may want to disable Antivirus real-time protection to see if that’s causing download dealy in Edge browser.

Final words:

Unless you’ve extensions interfering with downloads in Microsoft Edge which is the case here, you should be using a third-party download manager such as Free Download Manager or Internet Download Manager to accelerate downloads. Antivirus can also trigger this issue. So disable antivirus and see the isse persists before trying other download Manager apps.

Are you affected by this issue? Do you use Malwarebytes browser extensions? Let us know in the comments below

More about Microsoft Edge:

Edge 99 introduces Web Capture support for PDFs, fixes Default Search Providers issue

Microsoft Edge soon lets you put Vertical Tabs on the right side

How to use Edge’s web Capture to take screenshots on PDFs

Microsoft Edge 97 for Android rolling out with Password Monitor and more