Edge 1.18 is now available in beta phase

Microsoft is indeed on a roll with its updates. From the potential addition of artificial intelligence to Microsoft Paint to the almost complete overhaul of Skype, the company is striving to modernize all its applications. While it’s also retiring some of them, it’s now time to update Microsoft Edge, at least in part.

The beta version of Microsoft Edge 1.18 has arrived and brings some quite interesting innovations for both professional and casual users. According to the Microsoft development blog, the most exciting feature in this beta is intelligent search.

This feature retains the name “search on page,” but despite its slight resemblance to traditional search that can be found in any search engine, it has some peculiarities. When searching for a word or phrase on any page, Microsoft Edge will open a suggestions panel displaying synonyms and related searches to make the search less cumbersome, also serving as assistance in case the user has misspelled the word they intend to find. In this way, simply selecting the desired word will trigger a quick and precise search. However, it’s worth noting that Microsoft will retain the information from these searches and use it to further enhance this artificial intelligence-powered feature.

Microsoft has also taken the opportunity to update its policies

With the new features, Microsoft has also chosen to modify its policies, both for SmartScreen and Microsoft Edge update policies. According to the first one, it allows administrators to create a dictionary of domains exempt from SmartScreen warnings, while the second one enables administrators to control the download of updates.

These are just some of the most notable changes that Microsoft Edge has undergone in its beta for version 1.18, but there are several more quite interesting ones if you’re interested in giving this browser’s innovations a try.