Microsoft lets you follow YouTube creators in Edge browser test

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has started testing some deeper YouTube integration in its Edge browser. The latest Canary developer builds of Edge include a new “followable web” feature that lets you easily follow your favorite content creators on YouTube.

Reddit user Leopeva64 spotted a new YouTube follow button that appears in the address bar of YouTube pages. Following creators will add them to a feed that’s part of the Collections feature in Edge. The feature is clearly in the early preview stages, and it doesn’t support all YouTube content creators just yet. The feed that’s created in Collections lets you see recent posts from creators that you follow.

Image: Reddit (Leopeva64)
The new web following feature in Edge.

This deeper integration with YouTube will likely extend to other parts of the web, too. Microsoft’s Edge followable web feature looks similar to Google’s experimental feature in Chrome that lets people follow blogs and creators to get the latest content when it’s published. This is essentially an extension of RSS inside Chrome, and it includes a follow button.

Microsoft is only trialing this new Edge feature with a limited number of Edge Canary testers, as part of what the company calls “controlled rollouts.” The software giant hasn’t officially detailed its plans for the followable web feature in Edge, but we’re expecting to hear more about this modern RSS feed in the coming weeks.