Two months back, in November 2023, Safari was in second place after Chrome. But its grip over desktop consumers took a deep plunge after that, giving more room for Edge to rise in the desktop market. Some of this growth is attributable to the multiple improvements in Edge and the integration of Copilot.

Microsoft Edge’s desktop share is 12.96% of the market, which is a growth of 1.06 percentage points compared to December. Apple’s Safari maintains the third position with an 8.83% share, experiencing a drop of 0.13. Firefox follows closely in fourth place at 7.57%, down by 0.05 points.

Opera rounds out the top five with a 3.23% share, witnessing the most substantial decline of 0.57.

Here’s a breakdown of StatCounter’s January 2024 desktop browser share report:

• Chrome has the largest market share, with 64.84% of users.
• Edge is the second most popular, with 12.96% of the market share.
• Safari has 8.83% of the market share.
• Firefox follows with 7.57%.
• Opera has a smaller share of 3.23%.
• Other browsers collectively make up 2.57% of the market share.

While Microsoft Edge is catching up on desktops, it’s not doing well in the overall market share, which includes mobiles and tablets. According to StatCounter’s all-platforms report, Edge is still stuck at the third spot with a 5.36 percent market share, while Safari hasn’t budged from the second spot with an 18.82 percent market share.

The mobile and tablet market share numbers aren’t impressive, but both show small yet steady growth. The main reason behind this is the massive dominance of Chrome, Safari, and Samsung Internet, which appeal to many Android and iPhone users.

Microsoft Edge is slowly getting better

Thanks to the new features, Microsoft Edge could gain more market share in the coming months.

For Example, Microsoft Edge 121, now available for the Stable channel, added support for AVIF and AV1 file formats to speed up page load time.

Similarly, new alerts about the latest browser updates have been moved to the Browser Essentials section. If you haven’t noticed, the “heart” icon on the Edge toolbar displays Performance and Safety cards.

There’s a new E-tree feature in the Wallet that aims to increase awareness about the environment. Microsoft joined hands with the Eden Reforestation Projects and will plant a tree on your behalf after you collect 10000 points in your wallet. All you need to do is complete daily tasks and achieve the 10000 points.

Here’s a list of all other improvements in Edge 121:

• Microsoft has enabled a new Website Typo Protection policies feature that will alert users when they mistype a popular domain to prevent them from visiting and entering their data on a malicious page.
• Administrators can also add organizational branding using the Entra IDs. They can tweak the logo and add profile names and colors to make the profiles more distinguishable. Apart from this, six new security updates have been introduced with this version.

Edge mobile’s extension support could improve its market share on Android

Additionally, Microsoft is planning to take on Google Chrome on Android with extension support.

As spotted by some users, Edge for Android is testing extension support. You can add popular extensions to block ads, modify page layouts, and customize it like the desktop version. Thus, it will join the small league of mobile browsers that offer extension support.

It’s worth noting the feature hasn’t shipped to the Stable channel, but when it does, it will surely lure some users away from Chrome which has neglected extensions on mobile until now.

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Copilot Pro is rolling out via the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, giving you access to ChatGPT-4 Turbo. However, Copilot Pro shows up only when you subscribe to the service via the Microsoft Store.

Copilot Pro is priced at $20 and is available in locations like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and other regions. The app itself is freely available at Google Play and Apple Store. Upon launching the updated Copilot app, you’ll notice the performance is significantly better.

Without the subscription, you’ll also notice new AI features and capabilities, such as access to GPTs like Designer, Vacation Planner, Cooking Assistant and Fitness Trainer.

The following GPTs are rolling out to Android and iOS in Copilot (free and pro version):

• Copilot: This is the default Copilot experience.
• Designer: This GPT uses DALL-E to create images from words.
• Vacation planner: A custom GPT that lets you plan your vacations, travels, and more.
• Cooking assistant: This GPT helps you become a better cook.
• Fitness trainer: Fitness programs and wellness tips.

While plugins are connected via API and have limitations or performance issues, these custom GPTs are based on the ChatGPT model with specific knowledge, additional skills, and third-party features.

For example, if you use the DALL-E 3 Designer GPT, you’ll be able to create more engaging and creative images compared to the existing experience.

You can also use these GPTs on mobile without an account. But if you sign in with your Microsoft account, you can have longer conversations and save your chat history.

If you prefer plugins, you can click the three dots menu and select “plugins” to access the menu.

From there, you can turn on or off plugins and customize the experience. You can even turn off Bing search integration and still interact with the AI model.

When you purchase Copilot Pro for $20, you can also enable GPT-4 Turbo to get more reliable and accurate responses.

It is worth noting that Copilot Pro is also available via Microsoft Edge on Android and iOS, but some of you may need to turn on an experimental flag.

Microsoft tests personalization, read aloud, and edit button for Copilot

In addition to these fancy GPT upgrades, Microsoft is testing several improvements for Bing AI, including a “personalized chat” feature, allowing the AI to remember the details from previous conversations.

We’ve spotted advanced features like “read aloud”, edit button, and Excel integration, but it’s unclear when most of the features will begin rolling out to a broader audience group.

It’s a safe bet that Microsoft has plans to upgrade the AI experience on mobile devices.

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Copilot Pro is a $20 premium subscription-based version of Microsoft’s AI, powered by ChatGPT and the company’s in-house large language models. Copilot Pro doesn’t offer many ‘exclusive’ features, but there are a couple of advantages, such as access to GPT-4 Turbo during peak times and DALL-E 3 with 100 boosts per day with Designer.

If you’ve purchased the Copilot Pro subscription from Microsoft’s website, some of you can now access the premium version of the AI on iOS via Edge. The Copilot Pro integration is live in the stable version of Microsoft Edge, but unfortunately, the iOS version is missing out on some premium features.

For example, you won’t be able to access the Suno plugin in Copilot Pro for iOS. For those unaware, the Suno plugin allows you to use words to create original music, but it currently works on the web version only.

Microsoft is still optimizing the Copilot experience for mobile and more features will be gradually added. I’m told the AI music generation feature will be heading to Copilot for mobile devices in the coming days.

According to sources familiar with the development, you can expect a deeper integration between Phone Link and Copilot soon.

You can also try Copilot Pro on Android

If you can’t wait to try the feature on Android, Microsoft Edge for Android now includes a new experimental flag, “Copilot Pro”, that gives you early access.

To try the feature, head to Edge://flags, search “Copilot Pro”, enable the toggle, and relaunch the browser. However, remember that Copilot Pro works only when you purchase the subscription for $20.

Slowly but surely, Microsoft Copilot is receiving the updates that will deliver the AI productivity promise it set out to launch with.

We’ve already spotted “GPTs” in Copilot, one of the premium features of ChatGPT. Similarly, Microsoft is also testing read-aloud, powerful code interpreter, and even a feature to edit your prompts without starting the conversation again.

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The Copilot GPTs do not require a Microsoft account or Edge browser. In our tests, we could access the GPTs in Google Chrome without signing into a Microsoft account. For now, GPTs are limited in functionality, and you can only use the basic modules like a GPT for fitness, designing or cooking.

Copilot GPTs are more optimized for the topic of your choosing. For example, if you select Microsoft Designer GPT, you should be able to generate more creative images using DALL-E 3. That’s because the Designer GPT is more optimized for creativity using extra knowledge and can also maximize the potential of DALL-E 3.

OpenAI noted in its blog post that GPTs are more than just prompt engineers; they include additional instructions, extra knowledge, and any combination of skills.

In other words, GPTs are tailored to your needs, and Microsoft is bringing the powerful feature to everyone for free.

The tech giant is currently testing the following GPTs:

• Copilot: Bringing you a balance of A1 and the web
• Designer: Creating images from words.
• Vacation planner: Discover, plan, and book travel.
• Cooking assistant: Find, plan, and cook meals.
• Fitness trainer: Fitness programs and wellness tips.

The GPTs customize the existing Copilot experience, and Microsoft plans to introduce more GPTs in the coming weeks.

Hands on with Copilot GPTs

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Microsoft tests Copilot GPT Builder

If you’ve access to Copilot Pro, you can also build and customize these Copilot GPTs, which are similar to the GPT builder available in ChatGPT Plus. To build a Copilot GPT, you can answer some questions and go through the straightforward prompt engineering, knowledge upload, and other actions.

It’s worth noting that these GPTs are already present in ChatGPT Plus, but Microsoft is bringing them to the free version of Copilot.

Similarly, Microsoft told me it would continue to offer ChatGPT GPT-4 Turbo in Copilot for free, but only during “non-peak hours”. On the other hand, Copilot Pro subscribers will always have access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo.

There are several advantages of using the pro subscription. For example, if you want to use DALL-E 3 at its full potential, Copilot Pro could be a better option as it offers 100 daily boosts and faster performance.

Similarly, a Pro subscription may allow you to try experimental models before everyone else.

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In our tests, we observed that Bing Chat can now remember conversations and learn from your past chats to give better, more tailored answers. This is rolling out as part of the personalization feature.

For example, imagine you often ask Bin Chat about cooking recipes. With personalization, Copilot AI remembers this and becomes better at suggesting recipes or cooking tips in future conversations. The personalization feature in Copilot or Bing Chat aims to make your experience with the AI more familiar.

The AI remembers previous conversations and uses them as context in future discussions if they are related. If you’re learning French and you initiate a new topic asking about learning apps, Bing might suggest apps for learning French.

Bing Chat’s personalization feature is turned off by default, but you can enable it by heading to its settings (https://www.bing.com/account/general?#bing-chat-section).

As you can see in the above screenshot, Microsoft has also created a dedicated Chat setting in Bing, allowing you to turn on or off two features – Chat history and personalization.

Search on the Bing button comes to Bing Chat.

In addition to personalized conversations, another new feature, “Search on Bing”, appears when you hover over the messages in a conversation.

When you select the button, a new Bing search tab opens with the specified query. Our tests showed that the feature resembles Google Bard’s “Google It”. This new button allows you to explore more topics within Bing Search when Copilot cannot offer help with your queries.

Microsoft is experimenting with numerous changes. Last month, we spotted a new feature that allows Microsoft Bing to read the pages aloud. This feature is also rolling out to select users, and it may appear or disappear automatically.

Similarly, Microsoft also added a “screenshot” button to Edge and Windows Copilot. This lets you capture the screen and upload it to the Copilot. Once the screenshot is uploaded and recognized by AI, you can ask anything about it, and Bing will be able to offer help.

These features are A/B tested with select users, and it’s unclear when they’ll widely become available.

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Fans of Windows Phone have done it all when trying to revive the OS and the phones. People have tried everything from trying to install the OS on Android Devices to repurposing old Lumias to Windows PCs. It’s been 6 years since the death of the OS, but Windows Phone refuses to die completely.

While the OS has been booted on Android and Windows devices in the past, we think we have found something epic this time. Someone has managed to boot up Windows Phone on a MacBook. Yes, you read that right, a MacBook, built by Apple.

Apple hardware is notoriously infamous for being extremely difficult to tinker with, but YouTuber Nobel Tech has seemingly done it. He has managed to load Windows 10 Mobile on an old MacBook and has even uploaded a video showing it in action.

Windows Phone seems to work fine. The most interesting aspect of this experiment is that the MacBook’s battery was not just recognized by Windows Phone, but its level was accurately displayed.

This is particularly surprising considering that one wouldn’t normally expect Microsoft to include all default Windows drivers in the Windows Phone system.

Another impressive aspect noted is how well Windows 10 Mobile apps adapt to the larger screen size of the MacBook.

Apps such as Calculator, Settings, Word, Alarms, Clock, Calendar, and even the UWP File Explorer, have been observed to scale effectively, taking full advantage of the larger display. Microsoft had done a great job with UWP apps; it’s a real shame that it didn’t take off.

MacBooks don’t have touch, so you have to do with the mouse and keyboard.

Leaving the lamenting aside, the YouTuber has also put up a guide for adventurous souls to try it out. All you need is a spare SATA HDD and an Intel-powered MacBook.

Interestingly, Microsoft disabled the traditional Windows blue screen on Windows Phone. To see the BSOD error code, modify the BCD and the Windows Phone OS’s registry. Finally, access the BCD file in the EFIESP partition (boot folder) and run several bcdedit commands as an Administrator to enable mobile graphics and disable boot progress and text.

So there you have it, folks, Windows Phone running on a MacBook. Will you give it a try? If yes, we are interested in hearing the results in the comments!

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Microsoft Copilot app is available via Apple’s App Store, and the tech giant clarified that the AI app is optimized for iPad. In our tests, we also noticed that Copilot app offers better experience than the dedicated ChatGPT app for iPad.

While Bing integrates search, rewards, and chat functionalities, Copilot streamlines its focus on an advanced chat interface, incorporating features like the innovative DALL-E 3. Unlike Bing, which combines search and AI, Copilot emerges as a ChatGPT-like app tailored to iOS devices.

Copilot maintains its versatility as a multi-functional assistant on Android, supporting GPT Vision, GPT-4, and DALL-E. The addition of ChatGPT-4 Turbo, available to select users, enhances its ability to provide information on recent events, especially with the search plugin disabled.

Copilot is ChatGPT-4 for iOS, but it’s absolutely free. You can write emails, stories, or even summarize tough texts. It’s great with languages too, helping you translate, proofread, and more. And it’s all free, which Microsoft says won’t change.

It also plugin support, even third-party plugins at no extra cost. This can be super handy for planning trips or sprucing up your resume. Plus, there’s the Image Creator that turns your words into pictures right on your phone.

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Microsoft Edge’s advanced Copilot for Android and iOS is available to everyone in the stable channel. Still, you may need to turn on a couple of experimental flags to try all the new features. Some of you may already have access to Copilot features without turning on flags, as Microsoft appears to be A/B testing AI.

By default, Microsoft Edge’s Copilot on iOS and Android can summarise PDFs, generate text-based answers, and DALL-E 3-powered AI images. When you open a PDF in Edge and click the Copilot icon, AI automatically generates a summary. This works on Android and as well iOS.

As you can see in the above screenshot, Edge Copilot can turn your long PDF documents into short summaries or “key points”. You can also interact with different sections of the PDF, and Microsoft sources tell me the PDF AI integration in Edge will improve contextual queries with GPT-4 Turbo.

PDF AI also works on iOS. However, if you use an iPad and do not see Copilot in the menu, you can head to Edge://flags and enable an experimental flag called “Pad support Copilot” to use the AI on a large screen.

If Copilot still doesn’t support PDF on iOS, you may also need to enable the flags shown in the screenshot below.

Edge Copilot can summarize your videos on iOS or Android

Edge on iOS and Android can summarize YouTube videos, but the feature works only when a transcript is available.

That’s because Edge’s video Copilot summarizes the texts, not the frames of the video.

Edge Copilot’s video summary is limited to pre-processed videos or YouTube content with subtitles. In other words, you won’t be able to summarize all videos, but Microsoft said it should work for most YouTube content.

“In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles – we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn’t preprocess it yet – then it won’t work,” Microsoft stated in response to a user on X.

Copilot plugins now work on iOS and Android

Microsoft is also adding Copilot plugins to Android and iOS. This means you can finally turn off Bing’s search engine capabilities in AI and use it as a standalone chatbot like ChatGPT.

With search turned off, Copilot is just as good as OpenAI’s ChatGPT with faster responses, but it would give you outdated information depending on the query.

Again, this feature won’t be available for everyone, but if you’re lucky enough, you’ll even find third-party plugins in the Edge menu.

As you can see in the above screenshot, a third-party plugin called “Shop” generates the best deals for electronic products. Similarly, another third-party plugin, “Instacart”, is good at finding recipes for your lunch or dinner.

Microsoft is also testing other plugins for Copilot and it has plans to bring ChatGPT’s GPTs to Bing soon.

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In a post to Mastodon, a Microsoft Edge developer confirmed that version 121 of the browser will support decoding AVIF content natively. AVIF is one of the next-generation image formats, and organizations like the Alliance for Open Media actively advocate for the image format.

Chrome has support for AVIF since version 85, and Microsoft is finally bringing it to Edge after a long delay. AVIF is significantly smaller than JPEG or WebP, and it’s widely believed to reduce overall data consumption. With native AVIF support, Edge could reduce bandwidth consumption and load pages that use AVIF faster.

As you can see in the above screenshot, Microsoft Edge Canary already supports AVIF and can open the images correctly.

You can soon save video frames

Thanks to the work done by Chromium developers, Microsoft Edge can now save video frames.

This feature is enabled by default in Edge Canary and can be accessed by right-clicking on any video. On YouTube, you may need to right-click twice to see the above context menu, which has two options – Save video frame as.. and Copy video frame.

The “Save video frame as..” lets you save the selected video frame in your preferred file format and location. On the other hand, copy the video frame option simply copies the frame to the clipboard, and then you can save it manually.

Super drag and drop

Microsoft is adding a new “Super drag and drop” feature to Edge, simplifying how users interact with links and text.

Gone are the days of dragging links to the tab bar while holding down the mouse button to open them in a new tab.

With ‘Super Drag and Drop,’ all you need to do is drag the link to the side. This will open the link in the browser in a new tab.

Microsoft is still testing the feature, and you can enable it by heading to `edge://flags` and searching for ‘Super Drag Drop.’

You can customize drag and drop behaviour from Edge’s settings > super Drag and Drop. From there, you can choose whether the new tab opens in the foreground or background.

When the background is selected, links open in a new tab, but you remain on the current tab. On the other hand, the foreground option switches your focus from the current tab to the new tab opened through a drag-and-drop gesture.

In addition to these improvements, Microsoft Edge is getting support for Mica on Windows 11.

According to browser expert Leopeva64, Microsoft is also planning to ship Chromium improvements, such as previewing links.

These features are expected to arrive in 2024.

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Available via Play Store, Microsoft Copilot is just a new name for Bing Chat, but there are some noteworthy changes between the two apps. Bing offers search, rewards and chat functionalities. On the other hand, Copilot focuses primarily on its chat interface and features like DALL-E 3.

While Bing is a full-fledged search plus AI app, Microsoft Copilot is more like an alternative to the ChatGPT app. Copilot for Android has a dedicated settings page that lets you change theme and permission settings. More features will likely be added in the near future, such as history, plugins and support for Code Interpreter.

The rest of the features remain the same. Copilot continues to serve as a multi-functional assistant for Android with support for GPT Vision, GPT-4 and DALL-E. Microsoft is also rolling out ChatGPT-4 Turbo to some users, and whether you have access or not can be verified by asking the AI about a recent event with the search plugin turned off.

In its Play Store listing, Microsoft highlighted that Copilot is packed with features that cater to a wide range of needs, from professional to personal.

Interestingly, the app is about 83 MB, suggesting that Microsoft is also bundling Chromium instead of relying on Google’s WebView.

Copilot is your ChatGPT app for Android, but it’s free

With Microsoft Copilot, you can do pretty much anything, such as drafting emails, crafting engaging stories or scripts, and even easily summarising complex texts. The app also excels in language-related tasks, offering multilingual content translation, proofreading, and more.

The best part? It’s completely free, and Microsoft has confirmed it plans to keep its AI free for consumers.

Additionally, Copilot offers plugin support, including third-party plugins for free.

Plugins support may help you with tasks like planning trips. If you do not have access to plugins, Copilot can still create personalized travel plans, and it’s equally good at writing and updating job resumes.

Another standout feature is the Image Creator, which uses OpenAI’s capabilities to generate high-quality visuals from simple text prompts and save them directly to your phone’s gallery.

Microsoft noted that Copilot works on Android 11 or newer only.

The iOS version of Copilot is coming

Copilot’s dedicated app for iOS isn’t available at the moment. However, this could change soon.

According to my sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans, an iOS version of the Copilot app is nearly ready and should arrive soon.

Currently, if you want to use Copilot on iOS, you may have to use the Bing app, which has some bugs, or access copilot.microsoft.com through Safari.

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