Looks as if Microsoft is rolling out a new “Image or video of the day” option to Edge‘s New Tab Page to let users view Bing’s video of the day on the New Tab Page background when the option was selected. The video runs endlessly in a loop unless you click the pause option.
Start page or New Tab Page is an important feature of the Web browser. Browser these days, configured to display New Tab with every launch.
Any web browser, be it be Chrome or Firefox or Micorsoft Edge or Vivaldi, displays a set of links for quick navigation to commonly visited sites as well as fills NTP with news headlines and allows to customize the background.
Micorsoft Edge comes with a plethora of options to customize its New Tab Page. In addition to news, Edge displays a new spotlight lock screen image daily.
Edge allows setting a custom image as NTP background with the manual upload. It also lets you apply a custom theme to the new tab.
Microsoft Edge’s Video of the day
The latest stable version of Micorsoft Edge has added a new option to the New Tab Page layout settings in the Custom menu for Background to display either image or video on the New Tab daily.
When a user selects that option, Edge may show a video of the day and offers an option to pause the video.
When you pause the video, on the next launch, the video will continue to play rather than in paused mode.
Requirement: Windows OS needs to have animations or animation effects tuned on for Edge to autoplay videos on New Tab Page. On Windows 11, head to Settings >Accessibility > Visual effects and ensure the Animation effects setting is enabled.
Since this is an option and not enabled by default, users should not worry about Edge consuming resources. But the feature definitely raises concerns about impacting system performance or memory ad CPU.
How to show Videos on New Tab Page background in Microsoft Edge
- Launch Microsoft Edge
- Open New Tab Page
- Click on the Page Settings icon, in the Page Layout, select Custom
- Under Background, choose “Image or video of the day”
Done, reload the new Tab page, and wait for Edge to show a new video every day on New Tab Page. The option is available in all channels including Edge 97 stable, but it had worked for us in Beta.
Final words:
Chrome also comes with the ability to refresh new tab page wallpaper (not video), but Opera itself lets you set the animated background on the start page. So, Microsoft Edge’s video of the day is not new or unique.
When video on the new tab continues to play in the background, the feature may hamper memory when you’ve many other applications running on your system. It’s wise not to choose “image or video of the day” if your system has performance issues.
What’s your take on Microsoft adding the ability to show video background on Edge New Tab Page? Let us know in the comments below.
More on Microsoft Edge:
Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge Scrollbars to get Fluent design
Microsoft Edge for Android bringing Surf game to New Tab Page w/ share option
Microsoft Edge integrates Visual Search for Images, here is how to disable it
Edge 99 introduces Web Capture support for PDFs, fixes Default Search Providers issue
