On a new VM I decided to give Edge a whirl.

I don’t use Edge normally, or at all for that matter, but thought I’d try it out to see what it might be able to offer me.

It loaded up and I did a quick search (of course it defaults to MS’ Bing search engine) and that when the problems began.

I tried to right-click on one of the proposed links so I could ‘Open link in New Tab’ (overlooking the English issue for a moment) and couldn’t see any option to do so.  Where was the context menu every other browser I’ve ever used has?

So, I resigned myself to use the application main menu instead.  But wait, that was no better!?  There was nothing there either.

Huston, we have a serious problem.  No the user experience I was looking for.

I resized my window, instead of having it in full screen, and tried again and this time I could see the fact that a menu was there, just ‘transparent’, but off screen it was peaking through ever so slightly.

Holly Crap Microsoft talk about some of that great QA going on here!

The Fix

After some digging and testing I am happy to report that there is a simple fix.  (simple once you know about it)

In Edge’s address bar enter:

edge://flags/#edge-visual-rejuv-materials-menu

press enter and that brings up an Experimental Feature setting page and should bring you directly to the setting:

Enable Windows 11 Acrylic effect in menus
Enables support for the Acrylic effect in menus, if it is available on the system. Requires Windows 11 or later. – Windows
#edge-visual-rejuv-materials-menu

Now, switch this feature to Disabled.

At this point Edge will restart and your transparent menu problems should now be a thing of the past!

 

Let me be 100% clear, I never used Edge in this VM before, didn’t change any settings!

You have to ask yourself why would Microsoft enable any experimental features by default?  Especially one that basically breaks the application!

You also have to wonder why they don’t test any of this before publicly releasing it.

UPDATE 2022-09-21

So, I thought my problems were solve, but recently encountered more transparent menus when trying to access sub-menus?!

I won’t bore you with various attempts, but the final solution that solved this issue once and for all was to disable hardware acceleration!

On the main menu, select Settings.  Then on the left-hand menu select System and Performance.  Finally, at the top deactivate Use hardware acceleration when available.