Microsoft Edge browser will soon support Apple's M1 Macs natively

Apple’s new and efficient M1 chip may be a powerful force to reckon with, giving other chipset makers a run for their money - but developers still have to optimise their software to run on the new hardware. Microsoft’s Edge browser may soon be the latest browser to join that list.

While both Chrome and Firefox have already modified their builds to support Apple’s latest silicon, Edge is lagging behind in terms of native support for Apple’s latest processor. However, that is set to change with the arrival of an M1 optimised build in the Beta channel on Saturday, according to a report.

Software that isn’t optimised for the new processors can still be run using compatibility layers (which basically emulate the software written for another processor) but these applications usually suffer from issues related to performance and stability. With the wide variety of browsers available, users would likely switch to alternatives that were already optimised for the M1 chipset.

Also read: Microsoft Edge gets cross-device history and tab sync

The news will come as a relief to macOS users who also use Windows computers and rely on the browser to sync their bookmarks between devices. The browser also allows users to sync their passwords securely between Windows, macOS, and other platforms, so native support is always better than running an emulated build.

Another consideration is that of user safety, as running software that is not designed for a particular processor architecture (the M1 is an ARM based processor while other desktop processors are x86 or AMD64) could also pose a security risk with the ever increasing list of malicious websites and scripts that exist on the internet. Having a natively supported browser is a huge advantage in this regard.

Now that Microsoft has released the M1-supporting Edge browser into the company’s Beta channel, it is only a matter of time before it rolls out to macOS users as a stable build. It seems unlikely that it will make it in time for the stable release schedule of this month, but perhaps by the time Edge version 89 rolls out in February, the browser will run natively on Apple’s latest processor.