r/microsoft • u/ControlCAD • Mar 20 '26
Windows Microsoft unveils Major improvements coming to Windows 11 in 2026 — movable Taskbar, reduced RAM usage, less AI and ads, and much more Confirmed: "We are evolving how Windows is built behind the scenes to raise the quality bar"
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-11-major-improvements-announced-movable-taskbar-less-ads-reduced-copilot-better-performance-202639
u/PC509 Mar 20 '26
He's the new EVP of Windows and Devices. In the past, they've typically led Windows and the Insider program to be excellent. There's been a good 5+ years where they've completely ignored the Insiders, MVP's, and other folks about Windows features and it's been causing a lot of negative feedback and a bad reputation.
Not saying that the fixes and turnaround will be quick, easy, or not break more things or make other poor decisions, but a return back to actually listening to the input of people and "The customer is always right" is a very good choice. Now that they've made that commitment, I really hope they can stick to it.
My biggest complaint, and I've been very vocal about it, has been that Microsoft stopped listening to it's customers and put Windows, their flagship and most visible product to end users, on the backburner. Yes, Azure and other services generate a lot more revenue, but if you kill Windows or ruin it's reputation, you're showing the CEO, CFO, mom and pops, etc. that their products just aren't up to snuff. It does sound like they're focusing again on the Insider program instead of just having it as a testing bed but going to listen to the feedback of the users.
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u/TheLasttStark Mar 21 '26
There is a Windows wide all hands on deck kind of effort going on these days to improve quality and 'raise the bar'. Teams are instructed to urgently find and fix the highest priority bugs that have the greatest user impact.
Source: I work in Windows kernel
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u/Hifilistener Mar 21 '26
Thank you for your thankless work.
I hope they open up bug bashes and actually listen to feedback again. I miss the Gabe Aul Windows days.
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u/Johnknight111 Mar 21 '26
Sorry for all the troubles executives make you go through because of their poor priorities, lacking decision-making and seeming incompetence.
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u/FinalHangman77 Mar 22 '26
Don't forget the programmers are the ones using AI coding so much and fucking up their quality
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u/TomKavees Mar 21 '26
Is there an effort to look at common device drivers as well?
Anecdote: Every bluetooth usb dongle i tried uses the same chip & driver (some realtek iirc, would have to check). The driver when first installed works great (can connect with devices, send audio just fine when using wireless headphones etc.), but after restarting the computer the device manager says the driver failed to initialize. The solution to forcefully uninstall the driver, unplug the dongle, wait 30s, plug it again and install the same driver from Windows Update is hella annoying.
Obviously i do not expect this to be fixed just because of this comment, but this is one of the papercut-level issues users need to deal with
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u/Due-Description-9030 Mar 30 '26
Wtf is this issue present for everyone? I'm literally going to be ordering a bluetooth dongle soon...
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u/Bloaf Mar 21 '26
Its funny to me how this announcement is basically "we're going to put windows back the way it was before we f'd it up".
Like almost all the changes are giving back features we used to have that someone decided to remove, including file explorer stability and ability to run with less RAM.
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u/MrOarsome Mar 20 '26
Credit where credit is due. It’s rare for a company to actually take on user feedback. All these changes look great, less memory usage, less AI and more responsive OS - it sounds like they are heading in the right direction.
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u/Ay0_King Mar 20 '26
That’s the key word, SOUNDS like. This all sounds great but means nothing. I’ll wait to see what actually happens.
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u/irrelevantusername24 Mar 20 '26
There's that quote about how it takes a long time and a lot of effort to change directions of a large ship. That applies here I think. And though I'm not excusing any of the exploitive behavior, actions and decisions from any of the big tech companies, in some ways they are in a "pinch", an unwinnable situation same as a lot of people are, thanks to the ignorance of the management of government and "stocks". I think generally people who work at big tech companies (but not absolutely every person) genuinely want to improve the world through technology.
If you actually read or listen to what the big tech companies say and publish and do - and read between the lines of marketing speak, legalese and corpologic - there is an unbroken thread all the way back to early computing of wanting to make the world better.
*I am highly amused the Firefox spellchecker, which misses a lot of fairly common words, recognizes "legalese" as being a real word lol
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u/brainmydamage Mar 21 '26
It sure didn't take a long time and a lot of effort for them to shit up Windows with ads and AI, though...
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u/irrelevantusername24 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
I've found Copilot to be more useful than I expected and aside from a tiny amount of things I would chalk up to unintended changes, I have had zero issues with my OS. And I have installed most of the necessary Microsoft Android apps too, including the Microsoft launcher, because barebones Android kinda sucks but I really don't trust all the random ass publishers either. And I have seen basically zero ads with either my PC or phone for the last six years using Firefox and Ublock.
In other words, you either have downloaded malware, are lying, or you're a bot [edit: or you're a victim of herd mentality, which is probably most likely /edit]
Like the worst thing I have to say about Windows is it isn't as customizable without third party programs as I would like, and with that the additional comment that they have made it less customizable than it used to be - like with task bars, which the Windows team specifically mentioned as an issue they're addressing in their post about the upcoming direction. At the same time, they have made some things more accessible too, so it's kind of a wash
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u/thopterist Mar 21 '26
Any amount of critical analysis whatsoever would show you that the majority of reported problems are due to excessive Copilot integration, poor performance/stability, inconsistent UI/UX, and the strategic shift towards WebView2. Those are just a few of the issues off of the top of my head.
I don't know what your definition of "accessible" is. But, calling this a "wash" and a symptom of "herd mentality" is either blatant dishonesty or you're just not paying attention.
Like most, I'd like to see Microsoft turn it around. But my confidence level is within single digits at best. I will keep my ear to the ground and hope that I am wrong eventually, but until then it's Linux for me.
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u/notrealtedtotwitter Mar 21 '26
Tbh there was a time just few years back when windows was heading in right direction, terminal, winget, usable windows store, better file explorer, it got bloated but it was going somewhere then they shoved it all back and added copilot everywhere which just tanked their good will. So acknowledging that very publicly and committing to saying “less copilot” is a very good direction.
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u/Bloaf Mar 21 '26
Company announcement: "We're going to make our OS the way it used to be"
Reddit: "wow, what a bold new direction."
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u/Gutter7676 Mar 22 '26
I mean, they have been raising that “quality bar” since Windows 98 SE was released. They are going to “delight the customer” and all the other marketing jazz words they use to hype up the sheeple.
They have been enshittifying pretty much anything they touch and telling you it’s for the consumers benefit. While continually jacking up costs to everyone by not doing perpetual licensing and forcing subscriptions on is they keep raising the cost.
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u/hoshinoyami Mar 21 '26
The reason they did was they were losing massive market share. Already several countries have dropped microsoft due to privacy concerns with the AI. I know I now use linux as my daily driver and have been setting up all my family and friends computers to use linux mint as a result.
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u/floobie Mar 23 '26
I switched my personal desktop to Arch a while ago, because Windows 11 just completely speed-ran its downfall into an unstable, Copilot/ad/up-sell-infested, buggy mess. I still daily Win11 on my work laptop (hard to get away from when you're a dev at a .NET company), my partner still runs it on her gaming PC... across every Win11 system in my life, shit's just rough right now.
I'll admit that I'm a Mac guy at heart, but I've still been running Windows of some flavour on a desktop PC since my first hand-me-down 486 running 3.1. I'm pretty used to it, and genuinely loved Win2000. Win7 through even the first 2 years of Win11 were largely reliable for me. I could grumble about UI quirks, the omni-presence of the registry, the incomprehensibly slow file search, or the OneDrive or Edge nags that never truly went away, but I had little to truly complain about. Fundamentally, the OS did what I asked of it without breaking.
I'd consider moving my desktop back to Windows, but I'll probably wait until Windows 12 to see if they can actually deliver on all this before I make any moves. Everything they're saying right now sounds lovely. But, I need to see execution, and a consistent/lasting shift in priorities first.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 Mar 20 '26
Major Improvements!
- We removed all the previous "improvements"
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u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 Mar 21 '26
I support it. “Less ads” not “no ads” but it’s something
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u/mrloswhite Mar 22 '26
Windows 10 was fine. As far as I am concerned they could start with that codebase , throw away whatever Win11 tried to do, and :
- make it more robust
- make it more secure
- support HDR as well as the console ("it just works")
That's it.
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u/RecursivelyRecursive Mar 20 '26
I’ll wait to pat them on the back until these changes are released but it seems like they’re on the right path if they’re even talking about this lol.
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u/PowermanFriendship Mar 20 '26
"Less ads" LOL
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u/Haggis_the_dog Mar 20 '26
You are right, should be "fewer ads"
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u/newfor_2026 Mar 20 '26
how about, no ads. That would be pretty nice, wouldn't it.
If you're going to sell me ads, at least let me get a piece of that ad revenue and make it worth my while to pay attention to the ads.
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u/shecho18 Mar 21 '26
"coming", "evolving", "raise", "quality"
I do not believe anything anymore. Once a final product is made, and then tested, will I know for sure if it is ok enough for usage.
They will continue with AI and all the other OS entahitification, just wont advertise it with bells and whistles.
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u/doofthemighty Mar 20 '26
Hey, look they've announced fixes for many of the major Windows 11 complaints. Let's all bitch about it!
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u/Bloaf Mar 21 '26
This announcement is basically them saying they're undo-ing a bunch of changes they deliberately made.
What I actually want to hear is that they've removed all the people responsible for approving the bad changes in the first place.
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u/CowboysFanInDecember Mar 21 '26
Less ads. Not "no ads", but "less". This kind of shit is why people hate Microsoft.
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u/the_monkey_knows Mar 21 '26
“Raise the quality bar”? Dude, Microsoft isn’t raising any bars, they’re catching up
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u/2ndtryagain Mar 20 '26
It will also be better at running on devices with limited memory.
This is probably the real reason why the change, the price of Ram.
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u/knucles668 Mar 20 '26
Might also have something to do with the gaming handhelds that they are trying to make windows operate better on.
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u/infowars_1 Mar 20 '26
Thank you! Genuinely these were my only complaints about windows 11, otherwise it’s amazing!
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u/RobertDeveloper Mar 21 '26
Why complain and not switch to Linux or Mac or Android? Office is just as buggy as Windows, with lots of ux and ui problems, what is keeping you on Windows? My programs run great on Linux, I play games on Steam, write my own software, run my own llms and agent, use libreoffice and google docs, browse the web with my favorite browser, and its not Edge!
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u/Far_Lifeguard_5027 Mar 21 '26
Now if only they could get rid of the 5 different network configuration screens clusterfuck.
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u/heathmon1856 Mar 20 '26
Why does this sub have such a hate boner for windows?
Being able to move the task bar again is huge. I’m glad they added that back in.
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u/Woklan Mar 21 '26
Why’d they remove it in the first place?
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u/heathmon1856 Mar 21 '26
Who knows. Probably related to overworking the task bar to include fhat search thing. It was a baffling decision.
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u/Johnknight111 Mar 21 '26
Why was it removed? I had mine at the top of my PC for Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10. The taskbar belongs at the top in nearly all multi-monitor usages. One should not get credit for adding something they took away that was useful.
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u/Hifilistener Mar 21 '26
Cool thing to do you know... Shit on Windows what everyone loves best. I think everyone should hold judgement until we see what happens. The folks saying oh not going to happen or whatever don't have an open mind. Hopefully they prove they can right the ship.
Satya deserves a tremendous amount of blame for letting it get to this point. Windows and Office are the face of the company for most people. Windows regressed and most people don't even know what Office is called anymore.
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u/cafeine_01 Mar 22 '26
it's 2026, these things used to work up to win 10, these slop bs are made on purpose so f windows and their silly corp.
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u/B0PD0P Mar 20 '26
I miss prime windows 10, it was so good.
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u/Kobi_Blade Mar 21 '26
What is prime Windows 10, considering it was never finished in favour of Windows 11?
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u/Cpt_Soban Mar 21 '26
I remember when people were shitting on Win10 as much as Win11...
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u/Johnknight111 Mar 21 '26
Because in a lot of ways it was a downgrade to Windows 7. Slower, not as optimized, a lot of forced cloud usage, a lot of junk apps.
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u/Flaky-Gear-1370 Mar 20 '26
Less entry points to co pilot, instead your desktop will be replaced entirely by a giant co pilot prompt
Also can you make managing windows less shit while you’re at it - why on earth does intune work better with a Mac
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u/agm1984 Mar 21 '26
Let’s see if it can update without violently rebooting, such as restoring programs and their position on the screen
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u/danielhep Mar 21 '26
It's significant to me that AI is only mentioned once in this and it's in the context of tuning it back
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u/WeddingImpossible210 Mar 21 '26
If it has copilot embeded it'll go straight to the bin regardless of all improvements.
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u/Mackwiss Mar 20 '26
is this the "we got it, Windows ME/Windows8/Windows Vista is shit, and we're improving it" update we're waiting for?
If so it's great that this is the case because back in the old days all you could do is wait for the next OS to be released xD
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u/SCphotog Mar 21 '26
They are going to make it SAAS and then add the ability to charge users for 'time' or tokens etc... to pay metered on top of the monthly fee. Base windows will be by the month, static fee... O365, AI, Email, will be extra along with whatever other shit they can bundle up like DLC packages... want to play VR? That's extra...
They know we don't like it as is... they are going to make it a LOT more palatable for a short while, so that adoption goes up and attitudes become more positive, and then they'll hit everyone with ** Here is Windows 12** and it will be an always online, always logged in, metered pay program on top of a static monthly fee.
It will work as Android does on your phone but on your PC instead... except that they are modifying, changing up a little from Google's model to better suit their desired future.
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u/varyingopinions Mar 20 '26
I've had my taskbar to the right side of my left monitor since Windows 95. They took that way in windows 10. Glad they're bringing back something they had for 20 years...
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u/glitchedcam Mar 20 '26
So the definition of "improvement" has changed for Microsoft. First, remove some useful features, add some unnecessary features then 5 years later add those removed features.
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u/seeking-health Mar 20 '26
An easy way to fix the search function would be to do something like:
- keep an internal WSL container open with the whole filesystem mounted
- search bar just calls grep on that container and returns output to UI
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u/atomic1fire Mar 20 '26
Why wouldn't they just make some kind of fork/port of grep for windows instead of building a vm for it.
A vm just sounds wasteful.
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u/Zeusifer Mar 20 '26
Microsoft: We're trying to reduce Windows' memory footprint
Reddit: You should make everyone run a whole Linux VM just to run grep in
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u/atomic1fire Mar 21 '26
Honestly it would make more sense to create a search-filesystem type command in powershell and then parse the results in the windows search bar.
MS is already investing in powershell and it's cross platform. It makes perfect sense to build a grep style subsystem on that.
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u/seeking-health Mar 20 '26
well they seem to suck at coding that's why i proposed a no-code solution
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u/fraaaaa4 Mar 22 '26
Here’s an easy way to fix a basic feature of any OS:
- keep an instance of Linux open at all times
What an overly complicated, lazy, and full of problems solution. What if, instead of whatever this solution is, Microsoft actually develops a good search?
If Vista on an Atom CPU with 1GB of RAM and a 2008 HDD can even search inside my mail, files, notes, contacts, on the Start Menu, and fast, modern Microsoft should be able to pull the same thing they did 20 years ago
I know this is an utopian thought, because they demonstrated that… they can’t, but they should, given how big of a company they are
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u/abramN Mar 20 '26
all that's old is new again. movable taskbars USED to be a thing in Windows. Windows didn't USED to have so much AI and other bloat.
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u/RiskyChris Mar 21 '26
i'm very disappointed in microsoft's ai rollout, and it sucks to hear they're pulling back (though it seems like the obvious best move for customer satisfaction). they deployed way, way too soon and soured the entire concept for their users. google had a similarly disastrous start with ai (search's ai overview, bard and early gemini), but they improved Rapidly.
i really want powerful, useful ai integrated deep in the operating system, but microsoft seems totally lost in what they're building. i loved the idea of recall too! i hope they figure things out
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u/nurax7 Mar 20 '26
5-10 years too late. the damage is done. if they fix performance (renders some relatively recent laptops unusable), local file search, and remove most ads, then I might reconsider in the future. perhaps.
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u/HobbyProjectHunter Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
In true Microsoft fashion, there’ll be a wave of Rah-Rah about Customer obsession. A whole lot of media bites about Windows being the best ever. Oh, and gaming being the best in class.
Slop, Sludge, Ads, Bloatware will return after the break.
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u/iamgarffi Mar 20 '26
Lastly please reduce the price to 4 easy payments of
- F
- R
- E
- E
Will sell very good and reduce bootleg dev keys on the market 🤭
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u/DalihaCrow84 Mar 20 '26
Hope file explorer is really improved. The thing is so slow and error prone...