On Monday, Microsoft announced a significant advancement in the responsiveness and loading speed of its Edge web browser interface. The company, headquartered in Redmond, revealed that its ongoing efforts, which began in February 2025, have led to notable enhancements in the loading speed of initial content, a crucial element that greatly influences user satisfaction. Users can now enjoy a more seamless browsing experience with reduced wait times.
A Faster Browsing Experience on Microsoft Edge
Microsoft provided insights into the improvements made to Edge’s content loading speed through a recent blog post. The company achieved a global First Contentful Paint (FCP) time of less than 300 milliseconds. This metric is essential in assessing how swiftly the various user interface components of a web browser visually render. Microsoft pointed out that FCP times exceeding 300 to 400 milliseconds can negatively affect user satisfaction.
By establishing this important benchmark, the browser has improved its capability to present content to users more quickly.
Since launching its initiative to enhance various UI elements within the browser in February, Microsoft claims to have cut average load times by 40 percent, alongside enhanced responsiveness in features such as Settings, Read Aloud, Split Screen, Workspaces, and more.
This progress is attributed to a shift to WebUI 2.0, which employs a markup-first architecture designed to minimize the size of code bundles and JavaScript executed during the initial user interface setup.
For instance, prior to the transition to WebUI 2.0, loading the Settings page in Edge took 0.394 seconds; post-migration, this time has been slashed to just 0.034 seconds, which is nearly four times faster. Both measurements were taken on a Surface Laptop 7 equipped with a 12-core Snapdragon X CPU and 32GB of RAM, operating Microsoft Edge 137 on Windows 11.
Looking ahead, Microsoft has indicated that it is working on additional performance enhancements for more features, including Extensions and Print Preview, which are expected to be released in the upcoming months.
