Microsoft ‘intends’ for its Chromium-based Edge browser to support existing Google Chrome extensions

Ben Schoon | Dec 10 2018 - 4:13 pm PT

Just last week, Microsoft revealed that it would be shifting its Edge browser built into Windows 10 to run on Chromium. Now, it’s been confirmed that, with this new version, Microsoft Edge will support Google Chrome extensions. At least, that’s the idea anyway.

As spotted by Thurrott, Microsoft’s Kyle Alden mentioned on Reddit that it’s intended for this new Edge browser to offer support for Google Chrome extensions. Importantly, this new version of Edge will support existing Chrome extensions rather than forcing new ones to be built. Many assumed that extensions would be available, but that currently available ones wouldn’t, so this is fantastic news for established developers.

Chrome has a huge library of extensions already available, and that’s great for users whenever this new browser launches. Of course, there’s still no clear timeline for when that will happen.

In related news, Alden also confirmed that Windows will support both Chromium and EdgeHTML side-by-side to ensure that web-based apps (UWP, PWA) will continue to work properly. Just like Chrome, the new Chromium-based Edge will also support installing PWAs directly from the browser.

Existing UWP apps (including PWAs in the Store) will continue to use EdgeHTML/Chakra without interruption. We don’t plan to shim under those with a different engine. We do expect to offer a new WebView that apps can choose to use based on the new rendering engine.

We expect to provide support for PWAs to be installed directly from the browser (much like with Chrome) in addition to the current Store approach. We’re not ready to go into all the details yet but PWAs behaving like native apps is still an important principle for us so we’ll be looking into the right system integrations to get that right.

It’s our intention to support existing Chrome extensions.