It's no secret that Microsoft wants as many people as possible to use its Edge browser. Apart from adding new features to the browser, the company regularly tries "innovative" ways to encourage customers to use Edge, such as offering a fake guide to uninstall the browser, which actually asks users to do the opposite. Now, the firm has decided to walk a better path, and has announced that Edge is a lot faster than before.

Living on the Microsoft Edge

In a blog post, Microsoft revealed that starting with Edge 132, the browser is notably faster in lots of user-facing areas. Performance has been boosted in 14 areas, which include Downloads, Drop, History, the new tab in inPrivate browsing, Favorites, and Browser Essentials, among many others. On average, users will experience a 40% performance improvement compared to previous versions of Edge.

The Redmond tech firm says that these massive enhancements are primarily due to a migration to WebUI 2.0. This "markup-first architecture" cuts down the size of code bundles, along with reducing the amount of JavaScript code needed to run to initialize various interfaces. You can watch an example of this in the video below where the Downloads UI is 54% faster on a Surface Laptop 4 with Intel Core i7 and 32GB of RAM, thanks to a migration from React to WebUI 2.0:

The good news is that Microsoft isn't done yet. Over the next few months, the company has committed to bringing similar improvements to other areas of the browser, including settings, print preview, read aloud, and more. The performance enhancements discussed above began with Edge version 132, which was released in the week of January 6, 2025. The current stable release is version 133, which means that if you're an active user of the browser, you're probably already enjoying the recent performance benefits.