By default, Microsoft Edge includes a feature called the “Mini menu on text selection.” Whenever you highlight a block of text on a webpage, a small, floating toolbar automatically pops up just above your cursor, offering quick access to tools like Search, Copy, and Define. While some find this convenient, it can be incredibly irritating for users who frequently highlight text simply to keep their place while reading, or for power users who rely exclusively on keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl+C). The floating menu often obscures the lines of text immediately above your selection.
This guide explains how to completely disable the Mini Menu on text selection system-wide in Microsoft Edge.
Disable the Mini Menu via Edge Settings
To restore standard, unintrusive text highlighting behaviour, we must disable the feature within the browser’s appearance settings.
- Open Microsoft Edge.
- Click the three horizontal dots (Settings and more) located in the top-right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation pane, click on Appearance.
- Scroll down the right-hand pane until you reach the Context menus section.
- Locate the master toggle switch labelled Show mini menu when selecting text.
- Tap the switch to toggle it to the Off position (the switch will turn grey).
- Additionally, if you want to prevent the menu from appearing inside PDF documents viewed in Edge, toggle the Show mini menu when selecting text in PDFs switch to Off as well.
Verify the Unobtrusive Highlighting
This setting takes effect immediately across all active browser tabs.
To verify the restriction is active, navigate to a text-heavy website (such as a news article or Wikipedia page). Click and drag your cursor to highlight a full paragraph of text, and then let go of the mouse button. The text will remain highlighted in blue, but the floating Mini Menu will no longer appear above it. You can now highlight text freely without UI clutter, relying on the standard right-click context menu or your keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste operations.