Microsoft Edge now supports Google's WebM

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Microsoft Edge is set to support Google’s WebM technologies in the upcoming Anniversary Update. This comes as no surprise since support for WebM was first announced back in September of 2015.

For those who have been living under a rock, WebM along with the Opus and VP9 codecs are used to deliver videos on the web in a lightweight format. With these codecs, videos are no longer as huge and demanding as they once were, which is why Google has implemented WebM in YouTube.

This is one of the many reasons some folks have been calling for Microsoft to support WebM in the past and thankfully, this is happening.

“VP9 is an efficient open source video codec developed as part of the WebM Project by Google. The VP9 and WebM project team recently joined the Alliance for Open Media effort where their work on VP9 is expected to be a significant contribution to the next generation of open-source, royalty-free video codecs,” according to a Microsoft blog post.

What’s interesting here is the fact that WebM is already part of Microsoft Edge, but only in the Redstone builds, with users requiring Windows 10 build 14316 and the latest version of Edge for it to work. Bear in mind the feature is hidden, but activating it is not impossible. To do so, type about:flags in Edge’s address bar, click “Enter”, then search for Media Source Extensions.

We’ve found that WebM has been activated by default, so chances are it is already up and running for anyone with a computer powered by the Windows 10 Insider build 14316.

If for some reason WebM and the two codecs have not been activated, keep in mind that the web browser will require a restart after a manual activation.

More about the topics: Google, Microsoft Edge issues