The latest “Canary” update to Microsoft Edge brings Chrome’s “Side Panel” feature to the browser, which is now enabled by default. This feature may have been carried over through the latest Chromium upstream changes and may be removed in the next update, so it’s a window to hopefully watch their development process trade-offs for new features.
Side Panel is a feature developed by Google for the Chrome browser for quick access to bookmarks and reading lists. Initially, it only supported bookmarks, and later reading lists were also added to the panel. You can notice this change in the Chrome 99 update released on March 23. Recently, Google started testing “side search” in the Chrome browser, which also uses a side panel to display search results.
Notably, Chrome will allow a side panel to be displayed, either showing search results or bookmarks and reading lists. Like other Chromium features, Microsoft Edge is getting a side panel in the Canary channel for the first time. The feature is called directly from the toolbar in Edge 101 and uses the same icon as Chrome.
You can open the side panel in Edge by clicking the icon on the toolbar. Edge displays Reading List and Favorites in the side panel. As you can see in the Chrome browser, the use of this feature is very simple and straightforward.
Microsoft has previously made it clear that it will not be bringing Reading List to the new Edge. The side panel available in Edge might fill the void in this feature. On the other hand, Microsoft Edge developer William Devereux has confirmed that the side panel feature in Edge is a bug, so it may disappear sooner or later.
This isn’t the first time this has happened with an upstream change in Chromium, in the past Edge had a menu button for Chrome extensions, but it disappeared the next day. You should expect these things when building with a highly unstable Canary, every feature being tested or appearing in the Canary branch may not make it into the public version of Edge.