What is Caret Browsing and How To Use It in Microsoft Edge

Caret Browsing is a feature that lets you navigate webpages using your keyboard. When turned on, you can scroll through the webpage letter by letter, line by line with a blinking cursor, much like the way you work in a Word document.

To turn Caret Browsing on in the current tab, simply press F7 key on your keyboard. A window pops up asking what you want to do with Caret Browsing. Click Yes to turn it on, and No to turn it off.

Once you turned it on, just click anywhere on a webpage to place a blinking cursor that you can move up/down using your keyboard. Hold down the Shift key and use arrow keys to highlight the text on the page.

The feature is an on-demand one that will be off once the tab or the browser is closed. If you want to turn it on permanently,

1. click … button in the top right corner and click Settings to open up the Settings sidebar.

2. scroll down to the bottom of the Setting sidebar, click View advanced settings button.

3. and toggle a switch called “Always use caret browsing” in the Advanced settings menu to turn Caret Browsing on permanently.

4. Restart Microsoft Edge to see the change.

Caret Browsing appears to also exist in Internet Explorer and Firefox but not in Google Chrome but there are plenty Chrome extensions available to make it work, such as this one.