In Microsoft Edge, Copilot shows up in four places. First, in the top-right corner of the browser, a Copilot “Chat” button shows the sidebar. Second, on a PDF, an “Ask Copilot” button is in the top bar. Third, in the Developer Tools pane, when selecting an element, an “Ask Copilot about this element” button appears after the element. Fourth, when right-clicking a page, a “Summarize with Copilot” option is in the middle of the context menu.
I don’t use Copilot, and even if I did, these buttons (except the sidebar button) are nonfunctional. I want to remove them, but following the steps provided by most sites (see below) doesn’t work.
Relevant System Information:
I am using X11 and am running under Linux 6.8.0-94-generic. Microsoft Edge is on version 144.0.3719.92 (Official build) (64-bit).
What I’ve Tried:
Most sites tell me to go to Appearance >> Copilot and Sidebar then click Copilot under App-specific Settings, but I don’t have that section (see below). I tried contacting Microsoft support, but they told me to “contact Linux support”, whatever that means.
That’s because much those instructions are for the Windows version of Edge where all the Copilot features actually work.And the ones that are linux specific aren’t of any help when it comes to removing the icon(s).
Other than what you can do under the Appearance settings is you can go into Start,home and new tab settings and toggle Copilot new tab page off. But neither of these settings on or off really make a difference as Copilot is completely nonfunctional in Ubuntu.
As far as I know the Copilot icon(s) are not removable and in the end you just have to learn to live with them.Edge on Ubuntu is nothing more than Chrome wearing a Microsoft dress.
This isn’t really useful in a technical support conversation where someone is asking for help. It’s also, as pointed out by @coarse - not entirely true. Microsoft actually adds features, and strips some things out, before they build Edge.
Let’s try not to judge software choices, but help people. If we can’t help, don’t wade in.
On Linux (Edge 144), Copilot cannot always be removed from the normal Settings menu because Microsoft does not expose full Copilot controls in the Linux version. If disabling it under Settings> Appearance is not available, you can remove it using Edge flags or a managed policy file.
First, try opening edge://flags and searching for “Copilot.” Disable any Copilot or AI-related flags and restart the browser. If the buttons still appear, create a managed policy file.
Create the folder /etc/opt/edge/policies/managed (if it doesn’t exist) and add a file named copilot.json with the following content:
{
“HubsSidebarEnabled”: false,
“EdgeCopilotEnabled”: false
}
After saving the file, fully close and reopen Edge. This should disable Copilot in the sidebar, PDFs, DevTools, and the right-click context menu. You can verify the policy is active by visiting edge://policy.
I had the ability to get rid of the sidebar in Settings>Appearance but could never get rid of the chat icon in the top right even though it didn’t work it drove me nuts to have to look at it.
If you’re launching from terminal. For permanent setup, edit your Edge desktop entry and add these flags to the Exec line.
This forces the browser to report Chinese language and location to Microsoft servers. Copilot checks these at the browser level, so it’ll disappear without changing your system time or locale.
