Microsoft Edge is about to receive one of the biggest updates to its built-in PDF reader since Microsoft swapped its own engine for Adobe’s, and the headline feature is a native PDF merger. Starting in January 2027, you’ll be able to merge PDFs in Edge without paying for Adobe Acrobat or handing your documents over to random third-party websites.
According to Microsoft’s own roadmap update (id 577186, spotted by Windows Latest), the browser will let you combine open PDF files, reorder pages, extract content, and even translate documents. Here’s everything we know about the update and what it means for Windows 11 users.
How Edge got here
For years, Edge shipped with Microsoft’s own PDF engine. But in early 2023, Microsoft decided to ditch that engine in favor of the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine, and it’s been more than three years since Edge started running on Adobe’s technology.
During that time, Microsoft has mostly been migrating its legacy PDF features onto Adobe’s solution. It even offered an “opt out” toggle that let users revert to Microsoft’s original PDF engine, but that option has now been removed with Edge 156.
Removing that toggle frees up Microsoft’s resources and signals a clear intent: the company wants Edge to be the preferred PDF reader on Windows 11, even though most people still reach for Google Chrome to browse the web. If you’ve used Edge as a PDF reader, you likely already know it’s a cut above most alternatives on the platform.
#1 Merge PDFs in Edge
The star of the show is the ability to merge PDFs in Edge. You’ll open a PDF, then open another one, and combine them into a single file. You can also pick specific pages from each document rather than merging entire files.
Microsoft’s roadmap notes it goes further: “You can also merge the open PDF file with other PDF files that are open in Microsoft Edge tabs or stored on their device, to create a single PDF file.” That means you can pull together files from multiple tabs and from your hard drive in one operation.
Beyond merging, you’ll be able to reorder pages and extract content from documents, including scanned files. That extraction relies on Windows 11’s OCR (optical character recognition) to pull text from scanned or image-based PDFs, which is why Microsoft built it on Adobe’s engine rather than a simpler text extractor.
Importantly, Microsoft has confirmed that files are processed on the device, and the original files aren’t modified. Nothing gets sent to Adobe’s cloud or any cloud at all, and a fresh copy of the file is created whenever you edit it. That’s a meaningful privacy and security detail for anyone handling sensitive documents.
#2 A unified notes pane
Alongside the merger, Edge is getting a dedicated “notes” pane that consolidates all your annotations in one place. Every ink note, comment, and highlight you add will show up there.
Microsoft explains that “Users can search and filter their annotations, jump to each one in the document, and edit, delete or add comments from the pane.” For anyone who annotates long PDFs, having everything in a single searchable list is a genuine productivity win rather than a minor polish.
#3 Translate PDFs
The final feature is full-page translation. You’ll be able to translate all pages of a PDF directly in Edge. Because the reader is powered by Adobe’s solutions, I expect the browser to support translation in up to 62 languages.
You might wonder why Microsoft didn’t use Bing Translate instead. For plain-text PDFs either approach could work, but scanned PDFs are a different story — Adobe’s engine handles text extraction and translation of scanned documents far better than a general web translator would, which is likely the reasoning behind the choice.
What this means for you
For everyday Windows 11 users, this is a substantial shift. The ability to merge PDFs in Edge means one fewer reason to pay for Adobe Acrobat or to visit random online tools that often come with file-size limits, watermarks, or privacy concerns. Since everything is processed locally on your device, your documents never leave your computer.
The unified notes pane and translation support round out what was already one of the strongest built-in PDF readers on the platform. Edge’s PDF experience is quietly shifting from a read-only viewer toward a genuine editor, even if full text editing isn’t part of this update.
If you need something more powerful and free in the meantime, open-source tools like PDF Arranger remain a solid option for merging and reorganizing PDFs today.
How to get it
The PDF merger, notes pane, and translation features are scheduled to roll out in January 2027 to Edge for Windows and macOS. Microsoft hasn’t pinned down an exact date within that window, so keep your browser updated and watch for the rollout in your preferred release channel.
Source: Windows Latest
Over to you: Will you start merging PDFs in Edge, or do you already rely on a dedicated tool like Adobe Acrobat or PDF Arranger?
