Today, Microsoft’s in-house browser Internet Explorer is the third most popular web browser out there. Though it used to work against many web standards (while using own rules), considering security, still it is preferred by many people and organizations. And day by day, it is getting better.

Every web browser ships with advanced and hidden experimental settings. These advanced and experimental settings are not normally accessible as users may make damages to their browser by modifying them.

Internet Explorer Advanced and Experimental Settings

As of experimental settings, Internet Explorer didn’t have it until IE11 in Windows 10. Also, Internet Explorer has many deep advanced settings that cannot be found from its normal interface. And there are several ways to access and change advanced settings in it. Here we will learn how to change experimental and hidden advanced settings in IE. The following guide is made on Windows 10 Technical Preview with IE11.

How to Enable Experimental Features

  1. Open Internet Explorer.
  2. In address bar, type about:flags and press Enter.about:flags to bring Internet Explorer experimental settings
  3. You will get some options that are still experimental, but you can test them.

Example: You can change user agent by selecting Enabled and changing UA string to something like Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0 to pretend it as Firefox browser on Linux. Checkout list of browser User Agent Strings.

How to Modify Advanced Hidden Settings

Internet Explorer has several ways to access advanced settings. To find all those settings, you need to the following methods:

From Internet Explorer Options

  1. Click on gear like Tools icon from top right corner, and choose Internet Options.
    IE Tools
  2. Hit Advanced tab to get advanced settings.
    Change Advanced Settings in Internet Explorer
  3. That’s it.

Example: You can disable GPU acceleration for graphical contents by checking Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering.

From Group Policy Editor

  1. Hit Windows Key + R and type gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
    Run gpedit.msc
  2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer.
    Internet Explorer settings in Group Policy Editor
  3. These settings are especially for system admins.

Example: You can turn off security settings check feature by double-clicking and enabling it.

Note: Windows home edition doesn’t include this program.

From Registry Editor

  1. Hit Windows Key + R and type regedit and hit Enter.
    Launch Registry Editor from Run
  2. Navigate to HKEY_Current_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer.
    Internet Explorer settings in registry
  3. Here under Internet Explorer folder, you will get all other sub folders with corresponding settings.
  4. Change registry values to modify settings. Again, these are for power users.

After All, Internet Explorer has more settings compared to other browsers. And most of them are not for general users.

Author: 

Jaber is a Programmer and Tech Enthusiast Geek from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the founder and Chief-Editor of TechGainer. While he is away from his keyboard, either he's fishing or messing with wildlife. In case, you can contact him at rijans[at]techgainer[dot]com.