As Chrome continues to lead the pack for browser market share, Microsoft has been hard at work trying to make Edge a viable contender. We already feel that Microsoft Edge has the best tab management on a desktop, but Microsoft seems to want to take its browser even further. Now, a new feature has been spotted on the Edge Canary branch that allows users to upload, edit, and share images using Designer without ever leaving Edge.

Microsoft is adding a full image editor to Edge

This new development was spotted by Leopeva64 on X. In recent days, Leopeva64 has been on the prowl, keeping a close eye on the Edge Canary test branch for any juicy developments coming down the pipeline. A few days ago, they noticed that Microsoft seemed to be fleshing out an image editor within Edge using the Designer branding and its AI tools, but it wasn't in a working state at the time.

Because Edge Canary updates nightly, Leopeva64 kept tabs on the feature after every update to check for progress. Sure enough, Microsoft has finally finished up the login process for using Designer, which gave Leopeva64 full access to the suite.

What they found was, essentially, a full image editor bundled into Edge. You can upload images from your desktop, tweak them, annotate them, modify them using AI tools, and then upload them to various cloud storage services.

It seems that Microsoft is hitting two birds with one stone with this Designer implementation. By adding an image editor directly into Edge, users won't have to keep saving files to the desktop and opening them in an editor if they want to tweak something. At the same time, this convenience offers Microsoft a key moment where it can advertise its AI features and encourage people to subscribe to its premium plans.

Ever since its disastrous launch, Microsoft has been working hard at making Edge the best Chrome alternative out there. We'll have to see if this feature will encourage people to make the swap, or if it'll take even more features to change people's minds - if they ever will.