Applies to: Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Edge Dev, Microsoft Edge Canary
As more of us are using online services for personal use, work use and school/education. It is important that we are making sure we are keeping our accounts/data safe and secure. Hackers and criminals are getting more creative in the ways they try and steel our passwords and gain access to sensitive information. Thus, we need to make sure we are keeping one step ahead of them by making it harder for them to gain access to sensitive information.
Microsoft Edge has tools built into the browser that allows you to keep your passwords secure, and help you create new secure passwords you can use for different sites. This article will go through these features and provide you with instructions on how to enable them. These may differ between builds/versions of the Edge browser.
Sign in
To use some of the features in this article, please ensure you have signed into the Edge browser and that it is synchronising. If you have a local profile and want to sign into your account (either work/school or personal account), please launch Edge.
Then, on the top-left of the browser window, you want to click onto your avatar
A menu should appear with your account information & Microsoft rewards points. You want to select Add profile which is found at the bottom of the menu.
It will then load a new instance of the browser on a new profile and begin to ask you to sign in and setup your browsing experience.
Locating these features
The features that are discussed in the article are in the password section in Edge settings. You can get to this setting by copy and pasting, or typing, the following URL: edge://settings/passwords
You can navigate to these settings by clicking onto your profile avatar located on the top-left of your window.
Then select the key symbol on the Microsoft Wallet tile. 
You will see Microsoft Wallet open in a new tab on your browser where you can see your passwords that are saved on your Microsoft account.
To manage your settings for Microsoft Wallet, please click onto the settings option on the left-hand menu for Microsoft Wallet
Once you click onto the settings option, you will be taken to the Wallet's settings page. This is where you will be able to manage how Wallet behaves and when it should store bank/billing information along with passwords.
To view all your password settings, you want to scroll down to where it says "Passwords" which will be under "Order tracking".
When you get to the password's settings, you want to click onto "More settings" which is found at the bottom of the tile.
Password Monitor (Scan for leaked passwords)
One feature Edge has is the Password Monitor. This scans your passwords against a database that contains leaked passwords. Leaked usernames and passwords are usernames and passwords that have been identified and made available on the internet for others to use. This occurs when other sites/online services have been hacked and the data has been compromised.
This will enable hackers to be able to use your passwords to sign into websites/services that use the email address/username and password combination.
Password Monitor can be found under Autofill Passwords option, which may be enabled already, it is called Show alerts when passwords are found in an online leak which is shown in the image below in the red box.
You can toggle this option on and off. If it is blue, and the white dot is to the right, then it means that it is on. I would recommend having this option enabled and checking your passwords once a week to check if information has been leaked.
By having this option enabled, you are keeping your account secure by allowing Edge to identify any credentials (username and passwords) that have been leaked. This allows you to be notified when one of your credentials is public so you can change your password.
For security, you should not use a password more than once for different sites. You should use one password for each site. This way, if one is compromised, the attacker cannot get into other accounts using the same password.
Viewing credentials that have been leaked
You can view leaked credentials at any time, by going into your saved passwords by clicking onto "Passwords" on the Wallet menu
At the top of the window, you will see a tile called "Password security check" that will display a a message telling you when it was last checked.
You want to click onto check found on the right-hand side of the tile.
This will take you to page where you can view passwords/accounts that have been identified/leaked in the Password Monitor.
If you wanted to check the database to see if any of your email addresses and passwords have been leaked, please click onto check at the top.
This will run a check for you. While it is doing a check, you can open a new tab and continue browsing the internet. Once it has finished, it will update and tell you if it has found anything or when it was last checked.
Suggest strong passwords
Another way we can keep our accounts secure online is by allowing Microsoft Edge to suggest strong passwords you can use on sites that you are creating accounts on. This generates random characters, numbers, and symbols that you can use as a password.
This setting is called "Suggest strong passwords" which is found at the bottom of the list of features. You can see this option highlighted in the red box below.
You can toggle this option on and off. If it is blue, and the white dot is to the right, then it means that it is on. By having this option enabled, Edge will offer randomly generated passwords you can use when signing up to sites. It will then save these passwords in Microsoft Wallet, so you don’t need to try and remember the password it has generated. This will sync to your other devices you have signed into your account on.
Once this feature has been enabled, you will notice that Edge will automatically generate a password for you to use on a site.
You will notice that this will be automatically generated and placed inside the password box. When you click into the password box, you can choose to refresh (generate a new password) or you can leave it alone and go ahead and create a new account on the site.
If you find that it hasn’t generated you a password automatically, please right click into the password box. You should see an advanced menu
You will see the option "Suggest strong password" as the first option on the list (as seen in the image above, in the red box). When you select this option, Edge will suggest a strong password for you. You can then continue with the account creation. Once you have created your account, and the site moves onto the next stage, you will see the following notification in Edge.
Just want to point out, I got Edge to generate a new password to use, so my password isn’t the one shown in the image!
This tells you that your password has been saved and is accessible in the password manager in the Microsoft Edge browser.
View and autofill passwords and passkeys
Microsoft Wallet allows you to choose whether you want the browser to autofill passwords that it has stored for websites.
Once you have enabled this option, by default, the fill website password and sign in automatically option will be enabled. When you sign into a website that you have saved a username and password for, Edge will autofill your username and password for you as soon as you click onto the email/username box. While this is good that Edge, along with most browsers, do this. It is not secure.
If someone were to use your account on your computer. They could go to a site you frequently visit and sign in automatically. If the site has an option to show password, as seen in the google sign in window underneath, they could obtain your password you have used.
While this option is not commonly used online due to privacy concerns it holds, it can be found on some websites. However, when you use the autofill setting, the Reveal password button is not displayed.
Under the Autofill passwords option, there are a few options that you can choose from for added security for your accounts/passwords you have stored on Edge.
Prompt for device password before filling website password
This option can be found under Fill website passwords and sign in automatically within the Autofill passwords setting. You can see this option in the image below, in the red box.
Once selected, you will be asked for your device pin/password before this option is applied.
Once you enter your device password/pin this setting will be enabled. The browser will ask for your device password/pin before filling out the username/password field on the website. You will be given two options to choose from with this setting. Always ask permission or Ask permission once per browsing session.
I would set it to always ask permission, just to be safe. However, this is up to you. If you choose to ask permission once per browsing session, if someone was to use your account on your computer to browse the internet and you haven’t closed your browser to end browsing session and you have already entered your device password. The other person will still be able to sign into sites using the autofill option.
I hope it was useful. Other articles you may be interested in reading are:
Article Info:
- 05.11.2022 - Article published
- 18.03.2023 - Updated images to reflect new UI design
- 18.08.2024 - Updated images and information in article to reflect design changes in Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Wallet
- 06.07.25 - Moved article from Microsoft Community
