RIP: Internet Explorer will be disabled in Windows 11

Windows 11 has officially signed the death sentence for Internet Explorer as it will be disabled when users upgrade to the new operating system.

As part of Microsoft's announcement of Windows 11, they also listed the features and applications that would be removed when people upgrade to the new operating system.

In the announcement, Microsoft states that Internet Explorer will be disabled in Windows 11 as Microsoft Edge now includes the IE Mode feature.

"Internet Explorer is disabled. Microsoft Edge is the recommended replacement and includes IE Mode which may be useful in certain scenarios," says Microsoft's list of deprecated applications in Windows 11.

In May, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would reach the end of support on June 15th, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10.

"Microsoft Edge has Internet Explorer mode (“IE mode”) built in, so you can access those legacy Internet Explorer-based websites and applications straight from Microsoft Edge. With Microsoft Edge capable of assuming this responsibility and more, the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10."

Windows users who still need Internet Explorer for legacy web applications could use the Microsoft Edge IE Mode feature that opens a website in a legacy rendering engine to work correctly.

Users will know they are in IE Mode as a little Internet Explorer icon will appear in the address bar, as shown below.

IE Mode in Microsoft Edge

Now that Windows 11 is disabling Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge includes IE Mode, it is not clear if Microsoft will accelerate the retirement in Windows 10 as well.

As they will continue to support Windows 10 for the enterprise, they will likely continue supporting Internet Explorer on that OS until Windows 10 reaches the end of life.

However, as Microsoft has removed IE in Windows 11, they have shown that they are done with the archaic browser and have no intentions of supporting it for any longer than they need to.