Using PowerShell to download Edge Chromium for Business

In Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager you can create an Edge Application using a Wizard that will download the latest (or a specific) version.

Here there is also an option to select that once the browser is installed that it will auto update itself. However once this package is created it will always install the version that was chosen and "latest" only means the latest version at time of creation.

So once created it will download two files to the path that was choosen during the wizard. The MSI file for Edge Chromium and a PowerShell file that will handle the installation.

So what does this mean and it is a problem? Well not really, if it is allowed to auto update it will update itself as soon as it is deployed or if allow auto update isn't selected but updates are available via WSUS/CM it will eventually get to that version. However since applications tend to have security fixes and bugfixes it can be a good idea to keep the source Application somewhat up to date as well.

Of course there is always the option to manually download the latest file from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/business/download and then manually replace and update the Edge Application. But since ConfigMgr seemed to have an automated way of identifying the latest version and downloading it I though that there must be a way to replicate this with PowerShell.

First I needed to figure out from where ConfigMgr got the file. Trying a common search engine failed this time so decided to fire up Fiddler in my LAB to see what URL:s ConfigMgr was talking with.

Turns out it talked to a site called:

https://edgeupdates.microsoft.com/api/products?view=enterprise

Bingo! That was what I was looking for, searching for that URL instead gave a hit here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/apps/deploy-use/deploy-edge

There it states that the above URL must be allowed which is good since that means it will likely not be changed or removed in the near future.

Using PowerShell and Invoke-WebRequest on https://edgeupdates.microsoft.com/api/products?view=enterprise

will get a JSON response that can be used to figure out what channels and which versions are available.

So I created a sample PowerShell script that can be used to download either a specific version of a channel or the latest available version. This script only downloads the Edge MSI to for the specified channel but can easily be extended to also update your Edge application in ConfigMgr.

The script can be found here:

https://github.com/matbe/PowerShell/blob/master/Other/Get-EdgeEnterpriseMSI.ps1

Available parameters:

• Channel (Mandatory)
  • Channel to download, Valid Options are: Dev, Beta, Stable, EdgeUpdate, Policy.
    
• Folder (Mandatory)
  • Where the file will be downloaded to
    
• Platform
  • Platform to download, Valid Options are: Windows or MacOS, if using channel "Policy" this should be set to "any"
    Defaults to Windows if not set.
    
• Architecture
  • Architecture to download, Valid Options are: x86, x64, arm64, if using channel "Policy" this should be set to "any"
    Defaults to x64 if not set.
    
• Version
  • If set the script will try and download a specific version. If not set it will download the latest.
    
• Force
  • Overwrites the file without asking.

Example:

Downloads the Beta MSI into D:\Temp and overwrites any previous file already there.

.\Get-EdgeEnterpriseMSI.ps1 -Channel Beta -Folder D:\temp -Force

Downloads a specific version (if available) of the stable channel and will prompt for overwrite.

.\Get-EdgeEnterpriseMSI.ps1 -Channel Stable -Folder D:\temp -Version 82.1.2.54

Hope someone finds this usefull!

/Matt
Twitter: matbg