Microsoft has been pushing its Edge web browser quite a lot in Windows 10. The company recommends users to install Edge on its official websites, and asks users to use Edge instead of a different browser when they try changing their default browser on the OS. There are a number of other places where Microsoft promotes Edge, and it’s generally quite annoying.

Redmond is taking things a step further, though.

In the latest build of Windows 10 October 2018 Update, the OS prompts users to try Edge when they try to install a browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. When you download the installer for these browsers and try to install them, the Edge prompt will pop up, suggesting that “Edge is the faster, safer browser designed for Windows.” You could then choose to open Edge, or install your preferred browser anyway, reports Windows Central.

There’s even a setting to turn annoying prompts like this off, and Microsoft is calling them “app recommendations.” By going into Apps & Features in the Apps pages within the Settings app, you can turn these prompts off. And that’s really the problem here.

Instead of disabling the app recommendations by default, Microsoft seems to be enabling them by default. That is not only annoying, but it’s very obtrusive. You see, if a user makes the effort to manually download the installer for a browser with Edge, they obviously want to use that browser instead of Edge. So Microsoft trying to force users to use Edge here really doesn’t do anything — it’s just another irritating dialog you have to ignore in order to not use Edge, basically.

Tagged with Microsoft Edge, Windows 10 October 2018 Update