Yesterday, Microsoft officially made the canary builds of Chromium-based Microsoft Edge available for macOS 10.2 and above. This announcement follows the release of canary and developer previews of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10 users last month.
📢Attention Mac users.📢 We now have a Canary build of Microsoft Edge available on Mac OS!! Download today at the link below and let us know what you think!https://t.co/zE8OeoXdqQ pic.twitter.com/deyFtCEaYE
— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) May 21, 2019
Edge for Mac already surfaced online, earlier this month. A Twitter user, who goes by the name WalkingCat, shared download links for the developer and canary builds even before the official release.
Microsoft Edge for Mac Dev 76.0.151.0 https://t.co/67AIKD9MZK
— WalkingCat (@h0x0d) May 7, 2019
Updates in Microsoft Edge for macOS
The macOS preview build comes with essentially the same features as the Windows one but is tweaked according to macOS conventions. These updates include changes in the fonts, menus, keyboard shortcuts, title casing, and other areas. This macOS version has rounded corners for tabs, which Microsoft plans to bring to Windows as well.
Microsoft has also taken advantage of the macOS hardware features to provide user experiences exclusive to macOS. The macOS exclusive features include website shortcuts, tab switching, and video controls via the Touch Bar. Users will be able to access these features through the familiar navigation with Mac trackpad gestures.
Source: Microsoft
With this release, Microsoft aims to provide web developers with a consistent platform across different operating systems. This version comes with support for Progressive Web Apps that you can debug using the browser developer tools. Microsoft in the announcement wrote, “For the first time, web developers can now test sites and web apps in Microsoft Edge on macOS and be confident that those experiences will work the same in the next version of Microsoft Edge across all platforms.”
Microsoft Edge Insider Channels
Similar to Windows 10, the macOS preview builds will be made available through three preview channels: Dev, Beta, and Canary, that are collectively called Microsoft Edge Insider Channels.
Source: Microsoft
Canary builds are the ones that will receive updates every night. Developer builds are much more stable than the Canary builds and will be updated weekly. Beta builds are the most stable ones when compared to the three and will receive updates every 6 weeks.
Right now only the Canary Channel is open, from which you can download the canary builds of Microsoft Edge. Microsoft says that the Dev channel builds will be available “very soon” to run alongside the canary version.
You can share your feedback with Microsoft via the “Send feedback” smiley. To know more in detail, visit Microsoft’s Blog.
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