If you haven’t used Bing (opens in new tab) lately, an upcoming update to Microsoft Edge (opens in new tab) will bring the software giant’s search engine front and center in a brand new Sidebar menu.
According to Windows Latest (opens in new tab), Edge’s new Sidebar menu has begun rolling out to users in the browser’s Canary channel and in addition to Bing, it also allows you to use a calculator, read emails in Outlook (opens in new tab), check out MSN browser games (opens in new tab) and more without leaving the current page you’re on.
While you can send emails, use a calculator, convert a variety of units and even test your internet speed (opens in new tab) in Edge’s Sidebar menu, it’s worth noting that you can not play games in it as they will open in a new tab. This is also the case with Microsoft Office (opens in new tab) apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Vivaldi (opens in new tab) users will be instantly familiar with Edge’s new Sidebar menu as it functions in a similar way to the browser’s web panel. Both are quite useful when you need to do a quick task but don’t want to open a new tab or a separate window.
New Sidebar menu
Besides all of the other new features in Edge’s Sidebar menu, Microsoft has also added another option that allows you to add your favorite sites so that you can perform contextual actions without interrupting your workflow.
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As the Sidebar is not yet generally available, many sites aren’t optimized to work in its smaller screen space. This will likely change though once more Edge users begin using this feature.
For those that aren’t interested in using Edge’s Sidebar, you can disable it by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+/. Likewise, you can use this same keyboard shortcut to enable the Sidebar.
If you want to try out Edge’s Sidebar for yourself, you’ll need to be running Edge Canary (opens in new tab) and from here, you can find a new ‘Sidebar’ option in the browser’s menu that allows you to launch it.
Via Window's Latest (opens in new tab)
