A hot spud: We all know that Microsoft isn't afraid to use aggressive tactics when it comes to pushing people onto its products. Redmond's stance was clearly illustrated when it recently started blocking a tool chosen EdgeDeflector in Windows 11 that redirects links away from the company's browser and to the user's preferred pick.

As most Windows users know, links in Microsoft apps such every bit Cortana and Windows Search are redirected to Edge, even after setting an culling web browser equally the system default. In Windows eleven, this extends to the Widgets pane, and Microsoft makes switching browsers more than hard in its latest Bone.

To circumvent this annoyance, Daniel Aleksandersen created EdgeDeflector, a free tool that intercepts microsoft-edge:// links and changes them dorsum to regular https:// that open up in your default browser.

Just information technology appears that Microsoft didn't appreciate Aleksandersen's efforts. The creator explains that Windows 11 build 22494, released on November iii, makes it impossible to prepare anything other than Edge every bit the protocol handler for the microsoft-edge:// protocol.

Aleksandersen said that working around the new limitation would introduce subversive changes to Windows, merely a unlike programmer, Robert Maehl, has stepped into the void with MSEdgeRedirect. He explains that the tool "filters and passes the command line arguments of Microsoft Edge processes into your default browser" instead of hijacking the microsoft-edge:// handler, which should terminate future Windows updates from borking it.

You tin can grab the MSEdgeRedirect app from GitHub. Information technology just needs to be running (in the organization tray) to piece of work as intended. Maehl also plans to replace Bing links with a user's preferred search engine in a future version of the tool.

h/t: xda-developers