MSEdgeRedirect's Europe Mode sets your Windows region to Europe
In the coming months, Windows users from many European countries will be allowed to remove Microsoft Edge, Bing Search and other features of the operating system natively.
Microsoft announced the change in November 2023 as a response to the European Digital Markets Act. While that is great for users from these European countries, it does leave Windows users from other regions behind.
While there are workarounds, namely changing the region of the system to one of the supported European countries, it does require some system edits.
The latest version of the open source tool MSEdgeRedirect changes that. It includes a new mode, Europe Mode, which makes the changes for you.
Here is how you use it.
First thing you need to do is head over to the project's GitHub repository and download the latest version of MSEdgeRedirect. Download the executable file. Please note that Microsoft Edge may state that this file is not safe, which is not true, at least not for anything but the browser itself.
Double-click on the downloaded file. Windows may throw a SmartScreen warning, which is also nothing to worry about in this case. You should see the following screen after accepting the application's terms.
Switch to Europe Mode and select Next. This displays the Configure European Country settings.
The application displays the active values on the left side. Use the "EEA Country" menu to select the desired European Country. Note that this won't affect other settings, including keyboard layout or language of the operating system.
Once you have selected the country, activate the "set all to selected EEA country" button. This changes all settings accordingly.
All that is left to do now is to restart the system. Once you have done that, you may uninstall Microsoft Edge from Settings > Apps > Installed Apps just like any other app you may encounter.
The developer of MSEdgeRedirect lists the following supported features once Europe Mode is active:
- Edge is uninstallable
- User can disable web search
- Narrator scripting extensions are enabled
- File Explorer Search is third party extensible
- Third party search providers show in search
- Third party search highlight content in search zero input
- Third parties can customize the Taskbar Gleam
Note that you may make the change even if you live in Europe. This allows you to get the functionality early.
Tip: make sure you install another browser prior to removing Edge from the system.
Closing Words
Windows users who want to remove Microsoft Edge and other features from their operating system can do so now, even if they don't live in one of the supported European countries.
Now You: would you remove Edge if it was supported natively?
Is there any way to revert the changes this program has made?
{It didn’t work for me and now Settings won”t open.}
I just looked at the GitHub page and checked the list of “issues”. Someone else posted about Settings no longer working. The issue has been marked as a “bug”. I didn’t see anything about reverting changes, though.
One of those risks associated with early adopters it seems. (This feature was just released December 22nd.)
I’ll wait before trying this software. And, when I do, I’ll make a full drive image so I can recover if a problem shows up….
I would prefer to run a non-chromium based browser as my backup browser. More than 2 browsers to maintain is generally not worth the maintenance effort to me.
This is the digital equivalent to curing colon cancer. The world is now a better place.
Is it for Windows 11 only, or it can work on Windows 10? Also, is Windows has to be up-to-date for this program to work? I blocked Windows 10 updates a few months ago.
Is that downtown Toronto in the picture?
I’m just about 45 minutes north of there in Richmond Hill, Ontario
Probably–the CN Tower is in the background.
The fact that consumers have to jump through hoops like this is unacceptable. Where are the competition and markets authorities in the rest of the world?
So in other words, Europe is the only place to have a properly functioning government who are enforcing laws for the benefit of consumers, rather than just lining their pockets.
And, despite being penalised for anti-competitive behaviour in the past, without enforced legislation, serial monopolists like Microsoft will continue to abuse their monopoly positions and partake in anti-competitive behaviour with no regard for their users who already have to pay a licence fee to use Windows.
Would I remove edge and all make the changes that this MSEredirct does? YES.
Not sure I want to use a third party, to do this.
I will look through the code and see if it shows the core OS changes it makes. Maybe I will spin up a VM and run this tool and look at what changes are made to the OS, so I can make the changes on other systems without it.
Yeah that’s exactly what I’m thinking, rather do it manually and know how to undo it then have to try and figure out how to undo it later if (when) Microsoft makes preventative changes.
they should do with smartphone either. I dont want pre installed safari on my iphone or chrome on my android
Nobody hasn’t done that because you can just disable chrome in android and safari in ios and get rid of them without messing with the os. in windows you couldn’t even disable somehow edge.
Yes, I concur. Every OS should include this as a choice. The EU should break up Apple now.