Microsoft
The brand new Insider Preview construct of Home windows 11 that was launched this week introduces some useful and oft-requested new options, together with the power to write down in any textual content area with Home windows Ink and reintroducing the Home windows 7-to-10-era “by no means mix labels” setting for app icons within the taskbar.
However Home windows 11 giveth and Home windows 11 taketh away. The brand new preview can also be eradicating a number of power-user-oriented settings away from the File Explorer’s Folder Choices menu, most of which have been round for many years. These are the settings Microsoft has eliminated:
- Cover Folder Merge battle
- At all times present icons, by no means thumbnails
- Show file icon on thumbnails
- Show file kind data on Folder ideas
- Cover protected OS recordsdata
- Present drive letters
- Present popup description for Folder and Desktop gadgets
- Present encrypted or compressed NTFS recordsdata in colour
- Use sharing wizard
The Folder Choices menu, one among a number of Home windows 95-style menus lurking slightly below Home windows 11’s shiny floor.
Andrew Cunningham
Microsoft says the entire settings will live on however that they’re going to solely be accessible by way of registry keys. In a default Home windows set up, a few of these choices are on-by-default and others are off-by-default; Microsoft did not say any of those defaults could be altering.
The opposite main change on this construct is the removing of the on-by-default Chat button, a personal-use model of Microsoft Groups that was separate from the model colleges and companies use and which might solely be disabled by way of the Settings, not absolutely uninstalled. The app is being changed with an icon for the Microsoft Groups – Free service, which may be pinned and unpinned like some other taskbar app with out requiring a separate journey to the Settings app to do away with it.
These are just some of the modifications Microsoft is planning for future Home windows 11 releases. The corporate can also be planning so as to add assist for compressing and decompressing extra forms of file archives, built-in controls for sure forms of RGB equipment, Bluetooth Low-Power Audio assist, new options for MS Paint, and a brand new “Copilot” characteristic that additional integrates ChatGPT-powered generative AI into the working system. Any of those options might arrive within the public variations of Home windows at any time, although it is extra probably that Microsoft will bundle up some or all of them and launch them in a single large batch someday this summer time or fall.
We’re additionally nonetheless ready to study extra about Home windows 11’s 23H2 replace, which must be releasing within the fall someday. As of this writing, the Home windows Insider builds are all nonetheless utilizing Home windows 11 22H2 numbering.