You can use Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center to easily configure Microsoft Edge browser Home Page, Startup Page and New Tab Page. In my previous blog post, I had shown how you can set Microsoft Edge browser as your default browser on Windows 10 or Windows 11 devices using Microsoft Intune. In this blog post, we will configure homepage, startup page and New Tab Page in Microsoft Edge using Intune Device Configuration Profile.
Create Device Configuration Profile
You can create a Device Configuration Profile for this policy and then assign it to the users or devices. To configure a device configuration Profile, please follow below steps:
- Login on Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center.
- Click on Devices -> Configuration Profiles.
- Click on + Create Profile.
- Select Platform as Windows 10 and later.
- Select Profile type as Templates.
- Select Template Name as Administrative Templates.
Basics Tab
Provide a Name and Description of the Policy.
Name: Microsoft Edge HomePage, StartupPage and NewTab Page
Desciption: This policy will set Microsoft Edge HomePage, StartupPage and NewTab Page
Configuration Tab
From the Configuration settings, Click on Microsoft Edge folder –> Startup, home page and new tab page folder. Click on it to open the folder which contains Microsoft Edge browser settings we want to configure.
We will enable and configure below four settings in the policy:
- Action to take on startup
- Configure the new tab page URL
- Set the new tab page as the home page
- Sites to open when the browser starts
Action to take on startup
Enable this policy and Set it to Open a List of URLs. Whenever Microsoft Edge will open, a list of URLs / Websites specified under the setting Sites to open when the browser starts will automatically open. You can also specify just one URL / website as well.
Configure the new tab page URL
Set it to Enabled and Provide New tab page URL. You can set this to any site you want. When you click on New Tab in Microsoft Edge, website set here will automatically open.
Set the new tab page as the home page
Set this to Enabled. This will set new tab page as home page. Whenever you click on Home Button on Microsoft Edge it will use new tab page. This will not open new tab, its just that home page will be using new tab setting. We will see what happens when we click on the home page in the End User Experience section of this blog post.
Sites to open when the browser starts
Set this to Enabled and specify the Sites to open when browser starts. You can specify just one site or you can also specify multiple sites in the list by filling in the text boxes with website’s URLs. As you can see I have specified just one website https://cloudinfra.net which I expect to start whenever I will launch Microsoft Edge Browser.
In total, there are four settings configured which should complete what we need for this task.
- We have setup our Home Page as new Tab Page.
- We have setup New Tab URL (which will be same as Home Page URL as Home page is set to New Tab Page). If you want to configure a separate website for Home Page then you can Disable Set the new tab page as the home page and Enable Configure the home page URL setting. But for now, we are keeping redirection of Home Page to New Tab Page URL.
- We have setup “Action to take on startup” -> We are configuring Microsoft Edge to open a list or URLs.
- We have setup “Sites to open when the browser starts” –> Configure the list of Sites which you want to open whenever Microsoft Edge is launched.
Assignments Tab
Assign Microsoft Edge HomePage, StartupPage and NewTab Page Device Configuration Profile to All Devices or All Users or an Azure AD security group containing specific users or devices.
Review + Create Tab
Review the policy and then click on create.
End User Experience
After you have created this policy and assigned it to the target devices. This will take some time to take affect. You can also force initiate Intune Policy refresh or restart your PC once to speed up the Intune Policy refresh / sync Process.
Verify Edge Policies
Let’s check if the Policy settings configured are now showing in Microsoft Edge Browser. As you can see in the below screenshot. HomepageIsNewTabPage, NewTabPageLocation, RestoreOnStartup, RestoreOnStartup is configured to the values we have configured via Intune Device configuration profile.
Open Microsoft Edge browser and type edge://policy in the address bar to see all the policies applied.
Launch Test Microsoft Edge Browser
After Policy refresh on the device has been completed, I have launched Microsoft Edge Browser on the target device and Website https://cloudinfra.net is opened as it was configured in setting “Sites to open when the browser starts“
Home Page Test and New Tab Test Microsoft Edge Browser
Both Home Page and New Tab opens https://bbc.co.uk website as configured in “Configure the new tab page URL“.
Event Viewer
You can also check via Event viewer if Microsoft Edge browser settings have been pushed to this machine. Please follow below steps to check:
- Go to Start -> Search for Event Viewer and click on it to Launch Event Viewer MMC.
- Expand Application and Services logs -> Microsoft -> Windows.
- Find DeviceManagement-Enterprise-Diagnostics-Provider folder.
- Click on Admin and go through the Event logs to search for the events related to this setting.
From Registry Editor
Follow below steps to Verify if Default Association setting has been applied successfully.
- Go to Start -> Type Regedit and click on Registry Editor.
- Find the Registry Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\Providers\7CCD9C30-BFE5-4CE3-97C8-FC5E16474D01\default\Device\microsoft_edge~Policy~microsoft_edge~Startup
- On the Right hand Side, you can check all the Registry Entry configured which are related to Microsoft Edge:
Conclusion
In this blog post, we have seen how to configure HomePage, Startup Page and New Tab Page in Microsoft Edge. You can also try different settings which are available from Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center. In a large organization where intranet portal is also being utilized, setting startup page is so useful and saves a lot of time as users would not have to ask for the site URL / address and it will simply launch with the browser. When you are assigning this policy, you can first create an Azure AD security group and add one or two users in that group and add this group to assign this policy to only users which are in the Azure AD group. This way you can first test the policy before rolling out to the whole organization.
