Microsoft is less than a month away from launching its Chromium Edge browser to the masses. Of course, the browser has been in preview since April and has reached feature maturity. However, some important additions are still in development, including ARM support.
The ability for Chromium Edge to support ARM is now reaching finality. Back in November, Microsoft introduced ARM support for the browser on the Canary channel. Now, the company has moved that support to the Dev channel.
If you're unfamiliar, the Chromium Edge preview has three channels: Canary for unstable builds, Dev for more feature releases, and Beta for stable previews. In other words, by reaching Dev, ARM support still has to pass through Beta and then the full stable release.
It is unlikely this support will be ready for the stable build of Chromium Edge at launch. Still, at least we now know the support is coming and should be available within months of the browser reaching end users.
As you may know, ARM is an important addition for the browser. Because all web browsers constantly generate code, ARM powered devices can result in slow browsing experiences. That's because x86 apps need to run through an emulator to work on ARM devices.
Growing Feature List
Native ARM support removes the need for an emulator and gives ARM devices a parity browsing experience. Microsoft's legacy Edge supports ARM, as does Mozilla's Firefox. Chromium Edge support will bring the new browser up to speed.
Microsoft has said Chromium Edge will not have support for Xbox One or HoloLens when it launches. Furthermore, the browser will also be lacking some application tools. We expect to see some of these features arrive in the Canary and Dev development channels at some point.
