Due to end if IE life, I am replacing the WebBrowser (IE based) control in our native .net forms app (c#) to Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.WebView2.
The distribution page says, the user needs to install the WebView2 Runtime, which is about 100 MB!
My question, is this really needed? Isn't it enough to have the MS Edge installed (which is on EVERY Windows 10 machine)?
This page says:
Prerequisites: Ensure you install the following list of pre-requisites before proceeding. WebView2 Runtime or any Microsoft Edge Insider (preview) Channel (Beta, Dev, or Canary) installed on a supported OS (currently Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7).
However, I am not sure if Edge Insider is a normal user's Edge Browser?
So, do I really need to distribute 100MB WebView2 Runtime (some of our customers are offline users) together with my App Installer (which uses WinForms.WebView2 control to display HTML pages inside my native App), or it's enough if MS Edge is installed on those systems?
The answer is: Yes, you need to install the WebView2 Runtime! The version of Edge installed on user's machines is NOT insider channel - it's the Stable channel.
Although you can use the Edge Insider channel, this is is not recommended except for developing, since only developers has this version.
To quote the page you linked to: "Microsoft Edge Stable channel isn't supported for WebView2".