Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned Copilot side pane inside Edge

Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned Copilot side pane in the Edge browser, built on the company’s OneJS web architecture. The update brings the Copilot side pane and the New Tab Page onto a shared layout. Now, it closely resembles the standalone Copilot app.

After updating to the latest version of Edge Canary on both desktop and mobile, I looked for any UI design changes in Copilot. On Android, the flags for the design change were disabled by default. Searching for “Copilot convergence” under edge://flags reveals the option to enable the design change.

For now, on Edge Stable, users also see a message stating that their Copilot is migrating to the new experience. The notice says the process may take a few days and could require restarting the browser.

The image below shows the old design on Android, with no flags enabled.

After I enabled the flags, this is how the design looks.

These changes initially appeared on desktop. On the latest version of Edge (stable), the changes are already live. Some reference images attached below will give you an idea of what has changed. The overall UI layout is cleaner, and some options have been moved to fit the new design theme.

There are also some prompt suggestions (summarize a page/explain a topic) and a direct model selector in the newer version. Recent conversations appear in a dedicated list.

Soon, these changes are scheduled to make their way to Android as well. At the moment, the stable version still uses the older design for Copilot.

So, what exactly is OneJS that the new design is based on? It’s an internal Microsoft system designed to let the company reuse the same JS code databases across desktop, mobile, and web platforms instead of maintaining different implementations.

Information about these changes was initially posted by @Leopeva64 on X.

In other Edge news, the browser is soon getting “watermarking protection” this December to curb data leaks. More on that here.

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