How to hide the new permanent sidebar button in Microsoft Edge

A recent Microsoft Edge update changes the browser’s sidebar functionality to the worse. Up until now, Edge users could disable the Copilot button that triggers the sidebar entirely. Now, when Edge users disable Copilot’s icon and thus the sidebar icon in the Edge toolbar, they get another button.

This one, a generic sidebar button, cannot be removed anymore. There is no option in the preferences to hide the button. Whether that is a case of “introduce a feature and add an option to customize it later on” remains to be seen.

Edge users may also notice that the Copilot button activates the AI chat interface now on hover. This behavior cannot be turned off either.

The official release notes do not reveal these changes.

Note that there is a workaround which requires making a change to the Windows Registry.

Update: Microsoft added a new preference in Edge 122 that allows you to disable the sidebar button. Load edge://settings/sidebar to get there and toggle “show sidebar button” to off to remove it from the toolbar of the browser.

The new Edge sidebar button

If you disable Copilot in Microsoft Edge, you get the new Edge sidebar button instead. The fastest way to disable Copilot in Edge is to load edge://settings/sidebar in the browser’s address bar to load the Customize Sidebar preferences.

Select Copilot on the page to display the preferences for the AI. There you find the “Show Copilot” option to turn it on or off.

Good news is that the generic sidebar button does not open on hover. Bad news is, that there is no switch in the preferences to disable it.

How to hide the new Edge sidebar button

If you do not use Copilot nor the sidebar in Microsoft Edge, then you may follow the steps below to turn off the generic sidebar button in Edge after you have disabled Copilot.

First, to disable Startup Boost:

1. Open Microsoft Edge.
2. Select Menu > Settings > System and Performance.
3. Turn off Startup Boost.
4. Close Microsoft Edge.

Then, add a new value to the Registry to turn off the sidebar icon:

1. Open the Start Menu on the Windows system.
2. Type regedit.exe and select the Registry Editor result.
3. Confirm the UAC prompt by selecting “yes”.
4. Use the hierarchical structure on the left side to go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
   • If a key does not exist along the way, create it with a right-click on the previous key and the selection of New > Key from the context menu.
5. Right-click on Edge and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
6. Name it HubsSidebarEnabled.
7. Close the Registry Editor.
8. Restart the system.

Note: you can also kill the explorer.exe process and restart it in the Task Manager.

There is no sidebar icon anymore in Microsoft Edge on the next start of the web browser.