Fix Edge Sidebar Reopening After You Disabled It on Windows 11

Quick fix: Disable the sidebar via Group Policy or registry rather than the Edge UI — Microsoft re-enables the sidebar on most Edge updates, but the policy lock survives all of them.

You turn off the Edge sidebar (right-click → Hide sidebar, or Settings → Sidebar → Always show sidebar: Off), close the browser, and it’s gone. Two weeks later — usually right after the next Edge auto-update — the sidebar is back. You disable it again. It comes back again. Microsoft has decided that the sidebar is part of Edge’s value proposition and brings it back on most feature updates. The only durable fix is a policy-level lock.

What causes this

The Edge sidebar setting lives in two places: a per-user preference (set via the UI) and a policy override (set via Group Policy or registry). User preferences are subject to reset during major Edge feature updates — Microsoft uses a versioned preferences schema, and when the schema bumps, certain UI-disabling flags revert to default. Policy overrides write to a separate registry hive that doesn’t reset on update, and they override user preferences on each Edge launch.

The sidebar specifically has been re-enabled three times since its introduction, including a notable rollout where the HubsSidebarEnabled flag in user preferences was reset across all Edge installations.

Method 1: Disable the sidebar via registry (Home edition friendly)

Works on every Windows 11 edition. Locks the sidebar off through Edge’s policy registry path.

1. Press Win + R, type regedit, press Enter.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge. Create the Microsoft and Edge keys if they don’t exist (right-click parent → New → Key).
3. Right-click in the right pane, choose New → DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. Name it HubsSidebarEnabled and leave its value at 0.
5. While in the same key, add a second DWORD named EdgeWalletEtreeEnabled with value 0 (this kills the wallet sidebar variant Microsoft is currently rolling out).
6. Close Registry Editor and restart Edge. The sidebar is gone and the Sidebar entry under Settings → Appearance shows it as policy-controlled (greyed out).

This survives every Edge update because the registry policy path is consulted on each Edge launch — Microsoft can’t reset what they didn’t put there.

Method 2: Disable via Group Policy Editor (Windows 11 Pro / Enterprise)

Cleaner UI for the same registry change. Requires Pro or Enterprise edition for gpedit.msc.

1. Download the latest Microsoft Edge Policy Templates from microsoft.com/en-us/edge/business/download (search for Microsoft Edge Enterprise).
2. Extract the ZIP. Copy windows/admx/msedge.admx to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\. Copy windows/admx/en-US/msedge.adml to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US\.
3. Open gpedit.msc. Navigate to Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Microsoft Edge.
4. Find Show Hubs Sidebar. Set it to Disabled, click Apply → OK.
5. Open an elevated Command Prompt and run gpupdate /force.
6. Restart Edge to apply.

The benefit over Method 1: any future Edge sidebar variants (whatever Microsoft names the next one) usually get a corresponding Group Policy entry — easier to flip with a UI than to track new registry value names.

Method 3: Run Edge with the no-sidebar command-line flag

A lighter-weight option that doesn’t require admin privileges and only affects how you launch Edge yourself.

1. Right-click your Edge shortcut (Desktop, Start Menu, or Taskbar pinned).
2. For Taskbar shortcuts: right-click the pinned Edge icon, right-click Microsoft Edge in the popup, choose Properties.
3. In the Target field, append --disable-features=msHubsSidebar,EdgeSidebarEnabled after the existing path. Full example:

   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --disable-features=msHubsSidebar,EdgeSidebarEnabled

4. Click Apply → OK.
5. Close all Edge windows and relaunch from the modified shortcut.

This works per-shortcut only — Edge launched from other places (default browser handler, file associations) won’t carry the flag. Use this if you launch Edge primarily from one place and don’t want to touch registry or policy.

How to verify the fix worked

• Open Edge. The sidebar should be entirely absent from the right edge of the browser window.
• Open Settings → Sidebar. Always show sidebar should be off and greyed out, with a notice reading This setting is managed by your organization (Methods 1 and 2 only).
• Visit edge://policy in the address bar. HubsSidebarEnabled should appear in the policy list with value false.

If none of these work

If the sidebar persists despite the policy being set, Edge may be reading from a different registry hive — confirm you wrote to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (machine-wide) rather than HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Some corporate-managed Edge installations route through MDM (Microsoft Intune) and override local policies; in that case, the only path is to contact the IT admin who manages your tenant. For unmanaged consumer installs where the policy is set correctly but ignored, verify Edge isn’t running in a stale process — close every Edge window, end any msedge.exe processes in Task Manager, then relaunch. Persistent failure after a Reset Edge (Settings → Reset settings → Restore settings to their default values) usually means a corrupted policy cache — delete %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Preferences while Edge is closed and let Edge rebuild on next launch.

Bottom line: The Edge sidebar resurrects after updates because the UI toggle isn’t persistent — apply the policy lock, and it stays off through every future Edge release.