Because, of course! Why wouldn’t it? The concept is now familiar to us all. Yes, Microsoft is forcing users to make use of its Edge browser instead of alternate choices in Windows.
The latest example of this occurred just a few hours before when build 25120 was rolled out in the Dev channel.
As you may recall, this version of the preview is part of the Sun Valley 3 plan that Redmond has lined up for launch in 2023. For this reason, the company is trying out new and experimental features that it hopes to gather feedback on from the user base.
And the only new feature in this version of the preview is the addition of the new desktop search bar that the company introduced.
It pins a search bar to the center of the desktop.
Like so:
The idea is to offer users an easier way to search and browse the web, similar to how other competing mobile operating systems handle things. The only problem is the usual one: This component does not respect your default web browser preferences.
The issue was highlighted by Rafael Rivera:
https://twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1527155014522720256
As can be seen from the screenshot above, Windows uses Edge even though the default web browser is set to Google Chrome in this installation. The desktop search UI forcefully opens Edge, with no way to change the choice.
Obviously, this kind of practice is not new from Microsoft and perhaps makes sense at this early stage while it is testing this feature.
Although Redmond has made it slightly easier to switch the default web browser in Windows 11, after a fair amount of outcry, the operating system still does not respect your browser preferences in most of its components.
