The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser was better than the original version of Edge in many ways, including support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. But the end of the road is near: Microsoft announced that Edge will end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 8 will end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 in mid-January 2023 , soon after these operating systems no longer receive regular security updates. Support for Windows 7 and 8 will also end for Microsoft Edge Webview2, which can use the Edge rendering engine to embed web pages in non-Edge apps.
The End of Support date for Edge coincides with the end of support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 security updates on January 10 and the end of support for Google Chrome for Windows 7 and 8 in version 110. Because the underlying Chromium engine in both Chrome and Edge is open source, Microsoft could have continued support for Edge on older versions of Windows if it wanted to, but the company is using both end-of-support dates to justify a complete break for Edge.
If you thought that Windows 7 had already stopped receiving security updates, you were not mistaken. Most people stopped receiving general security updates for Windows 7 back in 2020, about a decade after it was originally released. But because Windows 7 was so popular among businesses, Microsoft took the unusual step of offering three additional years of additional paid support for updates to the operating system. These updates are ending too; a similar program is not offered for the much less popular Windows 8, which has just turned 10 years old.
Edge will continue to work on Windows 11 and later versions of Windows 10, as well as supported versions of macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.