It has been found that when applying internet restrictions to a student device from classroom.cloud, if the student is using the Edge (Chromium) browser, they are able to continue to search the web using the sidebar feature built into the browser.
To prevent students from using the sidebar feature to browse the web, you can disable this functionality using the Microsoft Edge ADMX template files. To download the Microsoft template files, please click the link below and under the relevant OS (64bit or 32bit), you will find an option to download the policy files.
Once the template files for Microsoft Edge have been downloaded, use the following steps to apply the policies required to prevent access to the sidebar feature.
- Add the templates to your environment.
- Create a new GPO or open an existing one.
- Within the Group Policy Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Edge.
- Locate the policy: Allow default search provider context menu search access.
- Set this policy to disabled.
- Next, navigate to the following policy: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Edge > Default search provider.
- Locate the policy: Enable the default search provider.
- Set this to enabled.
Once these two policy options have been applied to the student device, this will prevent access to the sidebar feature within the Edge browser, preventing the students from using this when restrictions are applied from the classroom.cloud Teacher console.