Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge

If you think making it harder to change the default browser away from Edge in Windows 11 was the only sleazy tactic Microsoft is employing to shove Edge down Windows users' throats - think again. The company is using a microsoft-edge: URL scheme everywhere in Windows to bypass the default browser setting altogether, but luckily, competing browsers have caught on.

The Brave web browser added support for the microsoft-edge: URL scheme with version 1.30.86, released last week. So, you no longer need to install EdgeDeflector if you're using Brave as your default browser. It'll pop up as an option when you click on a microsoft-edge: link.

This makes Brave the first web browser to implement support for Microsoft's anti-competitive URL scheme. However, it's not the only browser doing so. Mozilla developer Masatoshi Kimura has also written patches to implement the protocol into Firefox. It has yet to pass review and get merged into Firefox, but the ball is rolling. Firefox's implementation is part of its overall Windows 11 shell integration work.

From everything I've read and been told, Edge is a good, solid browser in and of itself - it's just so incredibly sad Microsoft has to stoop this low to force people to use it.