Disable Microsoft Edge Workspaces using Intune and GPO
In this article, you’ll learn how to disable Microsoft Edge Workspaces using Intune and GPO. Both of these methods will prevent users from accessing the Workspaces feature.
Microsoft Edge Workspaces helps improve productivity for users in your organization. It’s a new feature in Edge that lets users organize their tabs into dedicated windows.
Some organizations may want to restrict access to the Edge workspaces feature for their users, in which case you can use Intune or a group policy. The “Edge Workspaces” policy in Intune allows you to enable or disable the workspace feature for Edge browsers. We will demonstrate both of these methods in this article, and you can choose the one that works best for you.
Note that Edge Workspaces is enabled for users who have a Microsoft Entra account and are using Edge version 114 or later. You can manage Edge Workspaces for your users by using theEdgeWorkspacesEnabledpolicy.
What is Microsoft Edge Workspaces?
The concept of Microsoft Edge workspaces is interesting. Using the Edge Workspaces, users can organize their browsing tasks into dedicated windows. The user and their collaborators each construct and curate their own sets of tabs and favorites for each Edge Workspace. Edge Workspaces are continuously updated and saved automatically.
The Edge Workspaces are enabled for users signed in with a Microsoft Entra account onEdge version 114 or later．Edge Workspaces created within a Microsoft Entra tenant are only accessible to users who are logged into Microsoft Edge with their matching Microsoft Entra account. Users must have access to aOneDrive for Businesslicense to create an Edge Workspace.
For further reading, we recommend going through Microsoft’s article onMicrosoft Edge Workspaces．
Locating Workspaces in the Microsoft Edge browser
If you are new to workspaces in Edge, the workspace icon is located in the top-left section of the browser. The screenshot below shows the location of the workspaces icon on the top toolbar.
Hide Workspaces from Edge toolbar
Edge users can hide workspaces from the toolbar with the following steps:
- Launch the Microsoft Edge browser.
- In the top-left corner of the browser, right-click theWorkspacesicon and selectHide from the Toolbar．
Disable Microsoft Edge Workspaces using Intune
In this section, we will create an Intune policy that will disable Microsoft Edge workspaces for Windows 10 and Windows 11 users.
First, sign in to theIntune Admin center．SelectDevices>Windows>Windows Policies>Configuration Profiles．To add a new profile, select+ Create Profile．
On theCreate a profilewindow, configure the following settings and selectCreate．
- Platform: Windows 10 and later
- Profile Type: Settings Catalog
In theBasicstab, enter the following details:
- Name: Enter a descriptive name for the profile that can be easily identified later. For example, a good profile name isDisable Microsoft Edge Workspaces using Intune．
- Description: Enter a brief description of the profile. This setting is optional but recommended. For example, you can enter the description as “Disables the Edge Workspaces feature for users．”
ClickNext．
In theConfiguration Settingssection, underSettings Catalog, clickAdd Settings．Intune设置目录允许您启用and configure Edge workspace settings for Windows.
On theSettings pickerwindow, type “workspaces” in the search box and clickSearch．From the search results, selectMicrosoft Edge Workspaces Settings．
In the bottom pane, you’ll see a list of Edge workspace settings available for Windows devices. From the list of settings, select the setting “Enable Workspaces“. Close the settings picker window.
Enable Workspaces: As per Intune, if you enable this policy, users will be able to access the Microsoft Edge Workspaces feature. If you disable or don’t configure this policy, users will not be able to access the Microsoft Edge Workspaces feature.
Since we want to disable the workspaces for the Edge browser, leave the Edge Workspaces option set to “Disabled“. This will turn off access to Edge Workspaces for the users.
In Intune,Scope tagsdetermine which objects admins can see. In theScope tagssection, you specify scope tags. Specifying scope tags is optional, and you may skip this step. ClickNext．
In theAssignmentswindow, specify the device or user groups for which you want to disable Microsoft Edge workspaces. We recommend deploying the profile to a few test groups first and then expanding it to more groups if the testing is successful. SelectNext．
On theReview + Createpage, review all the settings that you have defined to disable Edge workspaces for Windows users using Intune and selectCreate．
After you create aconfiguration policy in Intune, a notification appears: “Policy created successfully“. This confirms that the policy has been created and is being applied to the groups we chose. The Edge workspaces profile that we created appears in Intune’s list of configuration profiles.
Sync Policies on Windows Devices
Once you have assigned a policy to your devices, you must wait for the policy to be applied to the targeted groups, and the devices will receive your profile settings once they check in with the Microsoft Intune service. In order to receive policies from Intune, the devices must be online. You can alsoforce sync Intune policieson your computers to get the latest policies and settings from Intune.
Monitor Disable Edge Workspaces Policy Assignments in Intune
To monitor the Edge Workspaces policy in Intune that you applied to Windows devices, select the policy and review theDevice and user check-in status．
Under theDevice and user check-in status, we see the total number of devices that succeeded in receiving the policy. In some cases, the disable Edge workspaces policy may fail to apply on certain Windows devices. To resolve the issues, you will need to troubleshoot the issue by reviewingIntune logs on Windows computers．
The screenshot below shows that the Disable Edge Workspaces policy in Intune has been successfully applied to our devices. Click onView Reportto view all the Windows devices that have received the policy settings.
End User Experience
After the devices successfully receive the Intune policy settings, we will now verify if the Workspaces icon is removed from the Edge browser. Sign in to a Windows device and launch the Edge browser. The Workspaces icon has been removed from the Edge browser, as shown in the screenshot below.
Disable Edge Workspaces using GPO
In this method, we will use group policy to disable Edge workspaces on Windows computers running Edge browsers that are joined to the Active Directory domain.
Before you proceed further, To manage Edge workspaces using group policy, admins must haveMicrosoft Edge version 114 or greaterinstalled and version 114 of the policy files. If you have downloaded the latest policy files for the Edge browser, you must import them to retrieve the settings in GPMC. Refer to the following guide toimport ADMX files for the Edge browser．
When you create a group policy, you need not apply it at the domain level. You can either apply it to selected OU’s or link the GPO to multiple OU’s.
To create a new GPO, you can either log in to a domain controller or a member server installed with GPMC. You can alsoinstall the GPMC on Windows 11and configure the group policies.
- LaunchServer Manager from the Start menu and select Tools > Group Policy Management Console．
- In the Group Policy Management console, expand the domain, right-clickGroup Policy Objectsor anOU, and selectNew．
- Enter the name for the group policy, such as “Disable Edge Workspace” and clickOK．
In the Group Policy Management Editor, navigate toComputer Configuration>Policies>Administrative Templates>Microsoft Edge>Edge Workspaces Settings．Right-click theEnable Workspacessetting and selectEdit．
From the policy description, we see that setting the “Enable Workspaces” policy to “Disabled” will completely remove the Workspaces icon from the Edge browser. ClickApplyandOK．
在下面的截图中,我们看到了启用Workspaces GPO has been configured, and it’s set toDisabled．
在组策略对象配置之后,您need to link the GPO to an OU if you haven’t already. You can also link it to the domain, but doing so will make the GPO applicable to every computer in the domain, so it is not advised. The best approach is to choose a test OU, connect your GPO, and test the policy settings.
It’s time toupdate the group policyon the client computers and check to see if the access to Edge workspaces feature has been removed. You can use multiple ways toperform the group policy update on remote computers．On a test client machine, you can manually perform the group policy update by running thegpupdate /forcecommand.
Log in to the computers that have received the GPO, and launch the Microsoft Edge browser. We see the Edge workspaces is disabled. This completes the steps to disable Edge workspaces using GPO.
