Microsoft only seems to care about getting Copilot/AI right in the Edge browser, and it’s slowly removing everything that made it a bit appealing. First, Microsoft removed Collections, then Sidebar, and now it has removed Drop, a feature that let you share files between PCs and mobile devices.

Edge Drop is no longer available in Edge 152, which is now rolling out.

Microsoft Edge isn’t popular, and I know it’s based on the same underlying engine as Chrome (Chromium), but it has its own niche. Some people prefer it for the nifty features that make it unique, such as Windows 11’s design standards, Video Translations, Sidebar, Collections, and more useful ideas like “Drop.”

I personally loved Edge Drop, and if you’ve ever used it, you probably agree.

What is Microsoft Edge Drop?

With Drop, you could copy a huge chunk of text on your PC or mobile and quickly share it with any other device. You could also share screenshots, images, videos, and even files as large as an .ISO.

Edge Drop was basically that “email yourself” feature, but with a proper interface. You just needed to drag and drop files, and they were immediately accessible on your other devices running Edge.

As you can see in the above screenshot, everything appeared in a simple, conversation-like timeline, and Edge could notify your other devices when something new arrived. Microsoft also did not compress files, and they remained in your OneDrive until you deleted them yourself.

If you use WhatsApp Web, for example, to share an image, it does not always retain the original quality. You did not have these issues with Edge Drop, largely because the feature was powered by Microsoft’s OneDrive. The usage counted against your cloud storage quota, but you had about 5GB of free storage to spare.

And because Drop lived inside Edge, it wasn’t really tied to Windows. You could send something from a Windows PC and pick it up on Android, iOS, macOS, or Linux, as long as you were signed into Edge with the same Microsoft account.

Alternatives to Microsoft Edge Drop exist, but they fail to meet my expectations

There are plenty of options to choose from. Windows 11 has Nearby Share, so does Google Android, and there are countless other ways to sync files between mobile devices. However, Microsoft Edge Drop stood out because of its simplicity and how well it worked across platforms.

I know quite a few people who used Edge Drop as a file-sharing feature, and they’re totally disappointed that Microsoft removed something that gave them a reason to use Windows 11’s default browser.

As the company noted in the release notes:

Drop is retired. We’re simplifying Microsoft Edge. Drop is retired in Microsoft Edge version 152.

I do not understand how removing something like Drop, which was optional and lived peacefully in the menu or toolbar if pinned, made the Edge browser complicated. If anything, it’s the Copilot-related features on the New Tab Page, Sidebar, and right-click menu that make Edge far more complicated.

Microsoft began warning users about Drop’s retirement a few weeks ago and urged them to download any text notes they wanted to keep before the feature disappeared.

According to Microsoft, files, screenshots, and other attachments shared through Drop aren’t being deleted because they’re stored in OneDrive. But the text you’ve sent through Drop isn’t stored there in the same way, so Microsoft offered a “Download text” button that exported those notes to a .txt file before the feature was removed.

If you did not save your texts, there’s no way to get them back.

The post Microsoft dumps its best file-sharing tool for Windows-Android-iOS, called Edge Drop appeared first on Windows Latest

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Software is rebounding, is the Saaspocolyse over? 2) Salesforce delivers solid earnings and jumps 22% 3) Why was Dario sitting with Benioff? 4) All software stocks are rising 5) Disruption could still happen, but on a longer timeline 6) Meta's bungled AI layoff strategy 7) How much of AI failures today are cultural? 8) Meta pays billions in landmark addiction settlement 9) South Korean stock market volatility 10) The clash of AI belief and reality

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ASP.NET Core request timeouts can be configured globally or per endpoint with the built-in middleware in .NET 8 and later. The middleware uses cooperative cancellation, so downstream work must observe HttpContext.RequestAborted.

ASP.NET Core does not apply an application timeout to incoming requests by default. The built-in request timeout middleware adds a deadline, but it only cancels HttpContext.RequestAborted. Your endpoint must pass that token into the work you want to stop.

A reverse proxy might return its own timeout first, but then it controls the deadline and response instead of your application.

A slow database query or stalled API call can keep consuming resources after its response is no longer useful. .NET 8 introduced request timeout middleware to give request processing a cooperative deadline.

Let's wire it up.

Add a Timeout to the Endpoint

Register the middleware and apply a three-second timeout in Program.cs:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddRequestTimeouts();

var app = builder.Build();

app.UseRequestTimeouts();

app.MapGet("/reports", async (
    CancellationToken cancellationToken) =>
{
    await Task.Delay(
        TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10),
        cancellationToken);

    return Results.Ok("Ready");
})
.WithRequestTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3));

app.Run();

AddRequestTimeouts only registers the required services. It does not configure a limit by itself.

WithRequestTimeout gives this endpoint three seconds. Minimal APIs bind the CancellationToken parameter to HttpContext.RequestAborted.

After three seconds, Task.Delay observes cancellation and throws. If that exception reaches the middleware before the response starts, the default response is an empty 504 Gateway Timeout.

Test this without an attached debugger because the timeout does not trigger while a debugger is attached.

The Token Has to Reach the Work

The middleware does not abort a thread or call HttpContext.Abort(). It cancels a token and keeps waiting for the endpoint.

Remove cancellationToken from the Task.Delay call above and the handler waits the full ten seconds before returning 200 OK. There is no immediate 504 because no cancellation exception reaches the middleware.

A trace-style span waterfall makes the difference visible:

The same rule applies to real dependencies. Pass the token through your application service and into EF Core:

public Task<Order?> GetByIdAsync(
    Guid id,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    return dbContext.Orders
        .AsNoTracking()
        .SingleOrDefaultAsync(
            order => order.Id == id,
            cancellationToken);
}

EF Core forwards the token to the database provider, which decides whether the operation can be canceled. The token has to cross every boundary before the provider can see it:

Pass it into HttpClient, messaging clients, and other asynchronous work where abandoning the operation is safe.

The same token is canceled when the client disconnects. Flowing it through the entire call chain matters even before you add a timeout. When a dependency honors cancellation, timed-out work stops instead of piling up under load.

Choose Timeouts Per Endpoint

Not every endpoint should share the same limit. A small API read and a report export have different latency budgets, so give them different policies.

Replace the parameterless registration with named policies, then attach each one when mapping the endpoint:

builder.Services.AddRequestTimeouts(options =>
{
    options.AddPolicy("api-read", TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3));
    options.AddPolicy("report-export", TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30));
});

app.MapGet("/orders/{id:guid}", GetOrder)
    .WithRequestTimeout("api-read");

app.MapGet("/reports/{id:guid}", ExportReport)
    .WithRequestTimeout("report-export");

app.MapGet("/events", StreamEvents)
    .DisableRequestTimeout();

Small reads get three seconds, report exports get 30 seconds, and the streaming endpoint opts out.

Server-Sent Events, WebSockets, long polling, and large uploads usually need a longer policy or .DisableRequestTimeout(). Once a streaming response starts, the middleware cannot replace it with a clean 504.

If an operation genuinely needs minutes, return 202 Accepted and finish it in the background, as described in scaling long-running API requests.

Summary

A 504 from the middleware tells you that cancellation reached it. It does not prove that every downstream operation stopped.

Start with one endpoint that calls EF Core or HttpClient. Set a realistic limit and force a slow call past it without a debugger attached. Use logs or a trace to verify that the dependency observed cancellation.

Thanks for reading.

And stay awesome!

— Marc Whitten, a former Microsoft and Amazon executive, was named president and CEO of San Francisco-based Dolby Laboratories. He succeeds Kevin Yeaman, who is retiring after leading the entertainment technology company for nearly 20 years.

Whitten spent 17 years at Microsoft, rising to corporate vice president and chief product officer for Xbox. He went on to serve as chief product officer at Sonos before joining Amazon as vice president of entertainment devices and services, overseeing products including Alexa, Kindle and Fire TV.

He later served as president of Unity Create and CEO of Cruise. Most recently, he was vice president of robotics at Meta.

— Fred Hutch Cancer Center announced leadership changes in two divisions.

Dr. Lawrence Fong was named senior vice president and director of the Translational Science and Therapeutics Division, effective Dec. 1. He succeeds Dr. Geoff Hill, who is departing the organization in December.

Fong joined Fred Hutch in 2024 as scientific director of the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center and Bezos Family Distinguished Scholar in Immunotherapy. He previously founded the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Andrew Hsieh, the associate director of the Fred Hutch Human Biology Division, was named the inaugural Larry and Virginia Gordon Endowed Chair in Prostate and Bladder Cancer Research. Hsieh is a physician-scientist at Fred Hutch specializing in genitourinary cancers.

— Two recent notable Microsoft AI-related exits:

Andréa Mallard is leaving her role as chief marketing officer of Microsoft AI after joining from Pinterest in January, according to Business Insider. She will stay on as an advisor until early next year. Mallard, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, previously served as global chief marketing officer at Pinterest for eight years.

Ece Kamar departed Microsoft Research after 16 years with the company. She was corporate vice president and managing director of the AI Frontiers Lab, where she worked on small language models and the company’s agentic AI stack. She has not announced her next role.

— Poppy MacDonald was named president of NationSwell, a social impact membership organization. MacDonald previously served as president of USAFacts, the nonpartisan civic data initiative founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, for seven years. A past recipient of an Uncommon Thinkers award from GeekWire and Greater Seattle Partners, she is also the former president and COO of POLITICO.

— Jeff Buhrman joined Seattle startup Tin Can as head of finance. The company is building a screen-free, WiFi-enabled phone designed to let kids connect with friends and family. Buhrman previously served as CFO of Seattle-based Sleep Doctor for more than four years.

— Susan Loosmore was confirmed to the Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District board, which oversees T-Mobile Park. The King County Council approved the appointment Aug. 25. Loosmore spent more than 17 years in executive leadership at T-Mobile and previously served as chair of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

— Seattle-based SecureW2, a passwordless security company, named Martin Musierowicz as president and Mark Packham as chief marketing officer.

• Musierowicz, who is based in Atlanta, previously served as chief revenue officer at SmartBear and Keyfactor. Earlier, he led global channels and alliances at Atlassian through its IPO.
• Packham, who is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, joins from Dragos, where he was CMO. He previously served as executive vice president of marketing at DigiCert.

— Vancouver, B.C.-based Integrated Quantum Technologies, an enterprise AI infrastructure company, appointed Husam Fezzani as CEO. He succeeds Alan Guibord, who moved to chairman. Fezzani spent nearly 30 years at HSBC, where he held senior technology and engineering leadership roles including global engineering head for the bank’s Commercial Technology Division.