Edge may soon save screenshots of every page you visit

Microsoft is testing a new feature in its Edge web browser for the desktop currently that saves screenshots of visited webpages to the browser’s history.

The feature, which is available in select Microsoft Edge Dev and Canary builds at the time only, is disabled by default, at least during testing.

Microsoft Edge users may visit edge://settings/privacy directly or select Menu > Settings > Privacy, search and services to check out if their version of Edge has the new “Save screenshots of site for History” option at the bottom of the page in the settings.

The feature is turned off by default. Microsoft provides the following description: “We’ll take screenshots of the sites you visit and save it so that you can quickly revisit the site you want from history.”.

At least some Edge users might want to know more about the feature before enabling it. Are the screenshots saved locally only or synced? What makes this feature better at revisiting a site from history than the regular option of having history entries without screenshots?

Users who enable the feature may hover over a site’s favicon in the Edge history sidebar to see the captured screenshot. The dedicated history page of the web browser, available under edge://history/all, does not support the feature yet.

Our colleagues over at Neowin suggested that the feature would introduce offline reading capabilities, similar to those provided by Mozilla’s Pocket, to Microsoft Edge. There is no offline reading functionality attached to the feature at the moment. Cutting the Internet connection and then trying to open a site with a saved screenshot in Edge returned the “you’re not connected” error page.

The term screenshots also suggests that a static image is saved by Edge and not the full webpage.

Closing Words

All in all, Edge’s Save screenshots of sites for History feature sounds not that useful right now. Microsoft may have plans to extend it, but right now, most users may want to keep it turned off, but especially if they are concerned about privacy.

Now You: what is your take on this feature?

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