Introduction

ms-edge-launcher extension allows the user to create and manage configurations/profiles that can be used to launch Microsoft Edge with specific parameters. Without this extension, developers working with Microsoft Edge, have to rely on the command line of the operating system to execute Microsoft Edge along with the parameters applicable for their use case.

Creating a new launcher configuration

Once you have installed the extension, the view Edge Launcher Profiles will be available under the Explorer tab. By pressing the add button, you will be prompted for the name of the configuration file to create.

After the file has been created, a new editor tab will be opened. The file will remain as a temporal file until you explicitly save it. If you close the editor without saving, the file will be lost.

Existing configurations will appear in the extension view. From there, you can hover on the configuration you want to execute and press the play button that appears when hover on each configuration.

Configuration file reference

This section provides an overview of the configuration file schema. The configuration file is a JSON object with the following properties:

• name: String that provides a name for the configuration. It does not have to match the name of the configuration file. This name will be displayed in the extension view.
• executable: String that contains the path of the Microsoft Edge installation to execute
• description: String with custom text that will be displayed in the extension view besides each configuration.
• parameters: Array of parameter object. Each parameter object contains the following properties:
  • key: parameter name to pass via command line arguments. It should include any dash (-) character needed at the beginning of the parameter.
  • value: argument for the parameter. This is automatically quoted.
  • replacements: for convenience, if the argument is a long string which you need to change only parts of it, you can define a string format in the value entry and specify here an array of replacement for each placeholder. Please refer to the example below.

Consider the following as an example of a configuration

{
    "name": "Edge Canary",
    "executable": "C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft\\Edge SxS\\Application\\msedge.exe",
    "description": "This is the default launcher",
    "parameters": [
        {
            "key": "--remote-debugging-port",
            "value": "9000"
        },
        {
            "key": "--another-parameter",
            "value": "locale={0}&foo={1}",
            "replacements": ["en-US", "var"]
        },
    ]
}