Windows 10: Edge GPO Customization Questions: Favorites bar, etc.

Hey guys,

We're slowly but surely upgrading our employee workstations to Windows 10. Right now in our Windows domain, we have some group policy objects in place that force the favorites bar to display in Internet Explorer, and also update/add our company intranet sites to the favorites bar upon login.

With IE, it was easy enough - you can just create the .lnk files in the favorites folder, and they show up.

I was doing some experimentation with Edge's favorites bar and it's not that simple. Creating links in there does nothing by itself, it looks like there's also some XML file that has metadata and links back to that file.

What I'd like to do via GPOs is to have the favorites bar displayed by default, and to have a list of favorites added to the favorites bars based on Active Directory group membership.

I imported the .admx files for Edge, but there aren't any settings for these. Is it possible to do via registry/other tweaks? We can import .reg files via GPO just fine, if a workaround of that fashion is needed.

Also, any way to have it set Google as the default search engine so people don't have to go do it the first time they log on? Most of our users aren't that knowledgeable so they'd end up using Bing without meaning to and are used to using Google.

:)

 

Tabs

Hi and Welcome!

Are you using Microsoft Edge? Or Internet Explorer 11?

If you are using Microsoft Edge, then the order of the Favorites Bar needs to be customized within the Favorites menu found from the top left "three lined" icon. Select Favorites, then Favorites bar and change the order there.

 

Favorites Bar in Edge

I know all the instructions to turn on the Favorites Bar in Edge - Settings, etc., etc., but they don't work, at least on this Windows 10 computer. Does anyone know some other method of bringing up the Favorites bar in Edge?

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