Enable or disable Microsoft Edge from showing Web Content

Microsoft developed Edge as a cross-platform web browser, first releasing it for Windows 10 and Xbox One in 2015, then for Android and iOS in 2017, for macOS in 2019, and previewing it for Linux in October 2020. In this article, we shall discuss how to Enable or disable Microsoft Edge from showing Web Content via GPO. Please refer to the following guides for related articles. Pre-requisites for setting up a Single and Multi App Kiosk, and how to disable the sleep mode in Windows 10 to never turn off the display, what is Registry Editor and how to access the registry hives and how to search through Windows Registry.

Group Policy is a feature of Windows that facilitates a wide variety of advanced settings that network administrators can use to control the working environment of users and computer accounts in Active Directory.

Also, see Install Microsoft Edge Browser on Ubuntu Linux, and how to configure a new tab page URL in Microsoft Edge. Here is a gide on “Edge GPO settings: All Group Policies available to configure Microsoft Edge Settings“. See How to Change the Default Web Browser on Windows 11.

How to enable or disable Microsoft Edge

To configure Edge to not display web content, this can be achieved via group policy as shown below.
- Launch Group Policy
- Navigate through the following paths as shown below

"Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Microsoft Edge"

Double click and Disable the “Allow web content on a New Tab”. Please see “How to configure static page in Microsoft Edge browser via Local Group Policy on Windows“, and “Install Group Policy Templates for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browsers on Windows“.

Note: This can also be achieved via the registry settings by navigating to the following path.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\MicrosoftEdge\ServiceUI

To Allow web content on a new tab page. You can either AllowWebContentOnNewTabPage DWORD by performing the following below. Also, see “Prevent Microsoft Edge from sending your Search data to Microsoft“.

- delete = Enable
- 0 = Disable

I hope you found this blog post on how to enable or disable Microsoft Edge from showing Web Content helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.