Is Edge Copilot Mode safe? It's retired, and its tab reading is now in regular Edge

The Morse teamPublished November 7, 20268 min read

As of November 7, 2026, Copilot Mode in Microsoft Edge is retired, and the features it carried, now part of regular Edge, are reasonably safe for everyday browsing but risky on anything sensitive. Microsoft retired the mode on May 13, 2026. Copilot in Edge can now read every open tab and your browsing history, keep summaries of the pages you read if you turn on Journeys, and, for paying US subscribers, click and type on sites where you're already signed in.

We read Microsoft's Edge blog posts from July 2025, October 2025, and May 2026, its Edge support pages for Copilot, Journeys, and Browse with Copilot, its Copilot privacy pages, the Microsoft Privacy Statement (last updated September 2026), and Microsoft's own prompt injection guidance on November 7, 2026. Microsoft deserves credit for one page in particular. Its Browse with Copilot help spells out the attack, the retention period, and the sites to keep the agent away from.

Copilot in Edge key facts, November 2026

Personal Microsoft accounts, desktop Edge, read November 7, 2026.

What happened to Copilot Mode in Edge?

Microsoft retired it. Its May 13, 2026 post says "we're retiring Copilot Mode" and that its features are now "built directly into Edge," on desktop and in the Edge mobile app. Existing Copilot Mode users get early features through Copilot in Edge Preview.

Microsoft launched Copilot Mode on July 28, 2025 as "a new experimental mode" and "a fully opt-in feature." Microsoft's own Copilot Mode FAQ was still live on November 7, 2026, calling it "a fully opt-in feature" available "for a limited time."

Microsoft's own FAQ is out of date on the opt-in. Reading across all your tabs used to need Copilot Mode turned on. Microsoft's May 2026 post says the feature is now "available to everyone" with "No setup required," while keeping the words "with your permission."

Sources: Microsoft Edge Blog, May 13, 2026 and October 23, 2025.

Does Copilot in Edge read your tabs?

Yes, when your prompt calls for it. Microsoft's getting started page says that for a prompt about page content, "Edge can use information from the current webpage, the page title, your open tabs, and your browser history." For other prompts, it says Edge uses nothing "beyond the URL, the page title, your prompt, and previous conversation history."

The data shared is listed on Microsoft's context clues page: URL, page title, "page content or screenshots," and browsing history. The same page says browsing context "is never saved to your conversation history; only your prompt and Copilot's response are." Even with nothing typed, Edge uses "the page titles and URLs of your open tabs" to suggest prompts.

The Microsoft Privacy Statement puts it in one line. When you allow it, Copilot in Edge can access "screenshots of webpages you visit, open tabs, and browsing history."

To stop it, open the More menu (...), select Settings, then Copilot and AI, and turn off Allow Copilot to read context clues on the web. Our guide to turning off Copilot covers hiding the button too.

What does Journeys keep from your browsing?

A summary of each page you view, while it's on. Microsoft's Journeys page says "as you browse, Copilot creates a short summary of the page content you view." Those summaries are combined with page titles, URLs, searches, Copilot chats, and "dwell time," meaning how long you stay on a site.

Microsoft's page sets these limits:

• Off by default. You turn on Copilot new tab page, then Journeys, under Settings > Copilot and AI.
• 14 days. "Older Journeys, along with their underlying data, are automatically deleted after 14 days."
• Filters. Journeys excludes "banking and healthcare sites," account numbers, IDs, sign-in details, and InPrivate or Guest browsing.
• No training or ads. Non-sensitive page content goes to Microsoft's servers to make the summaries, and Microsoft says it's "never used to train AI models or for advertising."
• Deletion when you turn it off. Turning Journeys off "stops data collection right away and deletes information previously stored."

On setup, Journeys may offer to import recent history from another browser on your device. Microsoft says imported history joins your Edge history "and might be used by other Edge features." Skip that step if you'd rather your Chrome or Firefox history stayed out.

Is it safe to let Copilot act on websites for you?

Not for banking, IDs, or anything confidential, and Microsoft says so itself. Its Browse with Copilot page tells you to avoid "financial activity (banking, stock trading, credit card details)," government IDs and medical records, and "highly confidential data."

The agent clicks, types, and switches tabs in your current window. While it works, Microsoft says it "cannot access autofill data, saved passwords, or wallet information." It can use your cookies, though, so "if you're already signed into a site that Copilot has access to, it will also be signed in automatically." Microsoft's fix is to delete cookies first or start a brand-new browser profile.

Microsoft gives its own example of the risk. A recipe page could hide text that tells Copilot to "visit another site to collect sensitive information instead." Microsoft says the agent asks for your attention before it buys something, books a reservation, sends an email, or deletes a calendar event.

Microsoft's security team wrote in July 2025 that indirect prompt injection is "one of the most widely-used techniques" in AI vulnerabilities reported to it. It added that its defense "does not rely on our ability to block all prompt injections." We explain the attack in what is prompt injection, and the same advice from our Perplexity Comet review applies here: give agents narrow tasks, and keep them away from your email and bank.

What does Microsoft keep, and does it train on it?

Microsoft keeps your Copilot chats, plus the agent's screenshots for up to 30 days. Microsoft's Browse with Copilot page says screenshots are "saved with the conversation in your history," "not used for training," and deleted with the conversation or "retained for up to 30 days." Anything you type into a form isn't saved by Copilot, "but it may be saved in Edge."

On training, Microsoft's pages for the new Copilot app, released August 18, 2026, say prompts and responses "aren't used to train foundation models" (Microsoft). The Privacy Statement says Edge's Copilot data use is "consistent with" its general Copilot section, which says Copilot uses prompts "to provide and improve services, including relevant advertising." We couldn't find an Edge page that says which training rule covers the Copilot pane as of November 7, 2026. Our Copilot privacy guide covers the app's history, ads, and human review.

To delete everything at once, sign in to the Microsoft privacy dashboard and go to Privacy > Empower your productivity > Copilot > Your Copilot app activity history > Copilot apps, then choose Delete all activity history (Microsoft).

How to keep a page private from your AI assistant

Copilot in Edge lives inside the browser that holds your tabs, your history, and the cookies that keep you signed in to your bank and email. Settings decide how much of that it sees, and those settings changed when Copilot Mode was retired. Morse is a separate web app in its own tab, and a chat there starts from what you type, paste, or attach.

What you send stays out of a Microsoft account. Morse stores your chat history in your browser, encrypted, and its servers don't keep your messages or log what you write. It doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads, so there are no Journeys summaries, no 30-day screenshot folder, and no ad setting to find. Clearing your browser or deleting your account removes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so save a copy of anything you need.

Pick a mode by what you paste:

• Private, the default, for summarizing or comparing pages without a host keeping them. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, plus Grok, run under Morse's zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, and your account, email, and IP address are removed before anything is sent.
• E2EE, for a page you'd never let a browser assistant read. Your browser checks the secure enclave's hardware attestation, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and Morse's servers relay text they can't read. It rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Anonymous, to ask GPT, Claude, or Gemini about a page without the provider knowing it's you. Our proxy sends the message under Morse's own account. The provider sees the text, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse under its own policy, so leave names out of what you paste.

The Morse privacy policy has the details. For a look at another browser that read your pages, see what ChatGPT Atlas left behind.

Paste the next page you'd have handed to Copilot into a chat from the Morse home page, no account needed, or start free.