How to install group policy templates for Edge

I looked and didn't find anything on this so here it is.

1. Home doesn't have the group policy editor so this won't work on it.

2. Go here and download the policy templates. Click the blue link under the big download button.
Download Edge for Business

3. Copy the 3 admx files from MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates.zip\windows\admx to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions

msedge.admx
msedgeupdate.admx
msedgewebview2.admx

4: Copy the 3 adml files from MicrosoftEdgePolicyTemplates.zip\windows\admx\en-US to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US

(Subsitute en-US for language you use)

msedge.adml
msedgeupdate.adml
msedgewebview2.adml

5: Reboot PC.

Those aren't the real policy files, those are Group Policy Editor templates (ADMX). When installed, GPE can create and properly display settings for any Edge policies defined on this system. The templates have written help on what each setting does, and what are the allowed values. Normally you install the latest Policy templates for Edge, in case there are recent changes.

Actual policies can be exported as .pol files to another PC.

PS - Reminder:

While you can install the Editor on Home edition, along with ADMX templates, that doesn't enable Policies on Home edition. Home edition is hard-wired to ignore most Policies, even if you imported them from a Pro or Enterprise system. This is primarily done to block cheap business owners from replacing Pro with Home edition in the workplace.

garlin said:

Those aren't the real policy files, those are Group Policy Editor templates (ADMX). When installed, GPE can create and properly display settings for any Edge policies defined on this system. The templates have written help on what each setting does, and what are the allowed values. Normally you install the latest Policy templates for Edge, in case there are recent changes.

Actual policies can be exported as .pol files to another PC.

PS - Reminder:

While you can install the Editor on Home edition, along with ADMX templates, that doesn't enable Policies on Home edition. Home edition is hard-wired to ignore most Policies, even if you imported them from a Pro or Enterprise system. This is primarily done to block cheap business owners from replacing Pro with Home edition in the workplace.

Click to expand...

I don't follow, it's not a preset set of policies like one might use to setup workstations but without those templates there is nothing to set for edge.

I installed those so I could change the policies preventing Edge from actually closing when I close it.


But hey, since you mentioned exporting policies, I've never done that before. I'm going to be rebuilding a second PC soon and putting 11 on it too. Is there a tutorial in place to help me export all the policies I've configured on this PC to that one? (We are going to upgrade that one from home to pro just for GPEdit)

Here's a primer on Group Policy:

1. Every Windows PC has a set of both Machine and User policy files. By default, they're empty.
2. The Policy Editor allows you to view or modify the current policies. But it requires an ADMX template in order to interpret or correctly update the policy for a given product.
The product may be Windows itself, Edge, Office, etc. Without the matching ADMX, Policy Editor doesn't know how understanding them.

3. Windows Pro/EDU/Enterprise comes with a limited set of pre-installed ADMX templates. There's a lot more that exist, which can be downloaded from MS.
4. Technical users can create their own custom templates. A template is a combination of documentation text, and suggested settings.

5. Policies can be imported or exported to another PC, using a tool like LGPO. They can also by copied by hand, but need a little tweaking to get properly registered.
6. Policies can be enabled without Policy Editor, if they were imported from another PC which already had the right ADMX templates installed. Your PC doesn't need to have the ADMX templates to obey policy, it does need to view or update them.
7. The act of installing a template doesn't change the current policy. Nothing gets changed until the Editor knows how to modify a setting.

8. Policies are saved as policy files. The net effect of updating policy is a set of registry values (corresponding to the policy) will be pushed. This happens in only one direction. Policy -> registry. It never goes in reverse, registry -> Policy.

9. Many of the tweaking tutorials on this site, modify the downstream reg values without using a policy. This is allowed. But anyone or anything can then change the registry values at will. A policy is a way of always forcing the same settings to be implemented over and over. Policy files are enforced at boot time, or when you run the command "gpupdate /force". This pushes the policy out to be implemented as reg keys.

If you choose to run "reg add" commands or import reg files, you're not changing the policy. You're changing what Windows does to obey the policy. It's a subtle distinction that needs a moment to think about.

When you're modifying reg files, it never pushes in the reverse direction back to the Policy Editor. So you're not going to see things correctly. You pick one of the two methods: enforce by Policy, or enforce by reg file. If you're following Brink's guides, then repeat the same steps on the next PC. But right now you're confusing the two different approaches.

A non-canonical way of doing things.
1. Look
2. Write to the registry, e.g.
New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" -Force
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" -Name "StartupBoostEnabled" -Type DWord -Value 0

I think I'm following now. I changed the title of the post.