Windows

Microsoft is revamping Windows 11’s Task Manager so its numbers make more sense

microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / Beth Washington / July 29, 2025

Copilot+ features, and annoying “features”

Microsoft continues to roll out AI features, particularly to PCs that meet the qualifications for the company’s Copilot+ features. These betas enable “agent-powered search” for Intel and AMD Copilot+ PCs, which continue to get most of these features a few weeks or months later than Qualcomm Snapdragon+ PCs. This agent is Microsoft’s latest attempt to improve the dense, labyrinthine Settings app by enabling natural-language search that knows how to respond to queries like “my mouse pointer is too small” or “how to control my PC by voice” (Microsoft’s examples). Like other Copilot+ features, this relies on your PC’s neural processing unit (NPU) to perform all processing locally on-device. Microsoft has also added a tutorial for the “Click to Do” feature that suggests different actions you can perform based on images, text, and other content on your screen.

Finally, Microsoft is tweaking the so-called “Second Chance Out of Box Experience” window (also called “SCOOBE,” pronounced “scooby”), the setup screen that you’ll periodically see on a Windows 11 PC even if you’ve already been using it for months or years. This screen attempts to enroll your PC in Windows Backup, to switch your default browser to Microsoft Edge and its default search engine to Bing, and to import favorites and history into Edge from whatever browser you might have been trying to use before.

If you, like me, experience the SCOOBE screen primarily as a nuisance rather than something “helpful,” it is possible to make it go away. Per our guide to de-cluttering Windows 11, open Settings, go to System, then to Notifications, scroll down, expand the “additional settings” drop-down, and uncheck all three boxes here to get rid of the SCOOBE screen and other irritating reminders.

Most of these features are being released simultaneously to the Dev and Beta channels of the Windows Insider program (from least- to most-stable, the four channels are Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview). Features in the Beta channel are usually not far from being released into the public versions of Windows, so non-Insiders can probably expect most of these things to appear on their PCs in the next few weeks. Microsoft is also gearing up to release the Windows 11 25H2 update, this year’s big annual update, which will enable a handful of features that the company is already quietly rolling out to PCs running version 24H2.

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Microsoft is trying to get antivirus software away from the Windows kernel

microsoft, Security, Tech, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / Shannon Garcia / June 27, 2025

Working with third-party companies to define these standards and address those companies’ concerns seems to be Microsoft’s way of trying to avoid that kind of controversy this time around.

“We will continue to collaborate deeply with our MVI partners throughout the private preview,” wrote Weston.

Death comes for the Blue Screen

Microsoft is changing the “b” in BSoD, but that’s less interesting than the under-the-hood changes. Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft’s post outlines a handful of other security-related Windows tweaks, including some that take alternate routes to preventing more Crowdstrike-esque outages.

Multiple changes are coming for the “unexpected restart screen,” the less-derogatory official name for what many Windows users know colloquially as the “blue screen of death.” For starters, the screen will now be black instead of blue, a change that Microsoft briefly attempted to make in the early days of Windows 11 but subsequently rolled back.

The unexpected restart screen has been “simplified” in a way that “improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed.”

But the more meaningful change is under the hood, in the form of a new feature called “quick machine recovery” (QMR).

If a Windows PC has multiple unexpected restarts or gets into a boot loop—as happened to many systems affected by the Crowdstrike bug—the PC will try to boot into Windows RE, a stripped-down recovery environment that offers a handful of diagnostic options and can be used to enter Safe Mode or open the PC’s UEFI firmware. QMR will allow Microsoft to “broadly deploy targeted remediations to affected devices via Windows RE,” making it possible for some problems to be fixed even if the PCs can’t be booted into standard Windows, “quickly getting users to a productive state without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.”

QMR will be enabled by default on Windows 11 Home, while the Pro and Enterprise versions will be configurable by IT administrators. The QMR functionality and the black version of the blue screen of death will both be added to Windows 11 24H2 later this summer. Microsoft plans to add additional customization options for QMR “later this year.”

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Why Microsoft’s next Xbox should just run Windows already

ASUS, gaming, microsoft, ROG Ally, steamos, valve, Windows, xbox / 9u50fv / June 18, 2025

Microsoft’s “Xbox Series” consoles haven’t exactly been tearing up the sales charts. Credit: Microsoft

On the PC side, though, Microsoft is still a force to be reckoned with. Practically every desktop or laptop gaming PC runs Windows by default, despite half-hearted efforts by Apple to turn MacOS into a serious gaming platform. And while Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS has created a significant handheld gaming PC niche—and is hinting at attempts to push into the gaming desktop space—it does so only through a Proton compatibility layer built on top of the strong developer interest in Windows gaming.

Microsoft is already highlighting its software advantage over SteamOS, promoting the Xbox Experience for Handhelds’ “aggregated game library” that can provide “access to games you can’t get elsewhere” through multiple Windows-based game launchers. There’s no reason to think that living room console players wouldn’t also be interested in that kind of no-compromise access to the full suite of Windows gaming options.

Microsoft has been preparing the Xbox brand for this ultimate merger between PC and console gaming for years, too. While the name “Xbox” was once synonymous with Microsoft’s console gaming efforts, that hasn’t been true since the launch of “Xbox on Windows 10” back in 2015 and the subsequent Windows Xbox app.

Meanwhile, offerings like Microsoft’s “Play Anywhere” initiative and the Xbox Game Pass for PC have gotten players used to purchases and subscriptions giving them access to games on both Xbox consoles and Windows PCs (not to mention cloud streaming to devices like smartphones). If your living room Xbox console simply played Windows games directly (along with your Windows-based handheld gaming PC), this sort of “Play Anywhere” promise becomes that much simpler to pull off without any need for porting effort from developers.

These are the kinds of thoughts that ran through my mind when I heard Bond say yesterday that Xbox is “working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming” while “building you a gaming platform that’s always with you so you can play the games you want across devices anywhere you want, delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device.” That could simply be the kind of cross-market pablum we’re used to hearing from Microsoft. Or it could be a hint of a new world where Microsoft finally fully leverages its Windows gaming dominance into a new vision for a living room Xbox console.

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Desktop Survivors 98 is more than just a retro Windows nostalgia trip

desktop, gaming, microsoft, retro, survivors, Vamprie Survivors, Windows, windows 95, windows 98 / Kelly Newman / May 23, 2025

If that kind of nostalgia were all there was to Desktop Survivors 98, it would probably not be worth much more than a 15-minute demo. But the underlying game actually takes the developing Survivors-like genre in some interesting directions.

As usual for the genre, the gameplay here centers around navigating through throngs of encroaching enemies (and their projectiles), all while herding those enemies together so your auto-firing weapons can take them out. Defeated enemies drop gems that are crucial to gaining new weapons and powers that also lean heavily on nostalgic computing gags—I particularly liked one weapon based on the “flower box” screensaver and another based on the “bouncing cards” at the end of a successful Solitaire game.

Theming aside, the main element that sets Desktop Survivors apart from its predecessors in the genre is the mouse-based controls. Your old-school mouse pointer is your character here, meaning you get to precisely dodge and dart around the screen with all the speed and accuracy you’d expect from such a flexible input device.

Once you move through these dungeons with a mouse, you won’t want to go back to a joystick.

While there is a serviceable Steam Deck mode designed for analog stick-based movements, it’s a hard control paradigm to return to after experiencing the freedom and speed of mouse movements. Decades of mouse use have likely been preparing you for just this moment, training you to weave your pointer through the tight, quickly closing spaces between enemies without really having to think about it.

More of the same?

Desktop Survivors also sets itself apart by taking place on a series of single-screen battlefields rather than smoothly scrolling maps. These rooms don’t feature any significant obstacles or walls to block your movements, either, making each enemy room play kind of similarly to the ones you’ve seen before it. This also makes it a little easier to avoid many enemies simply by scrubbing your mouse pointer in a wide circle, causing the enemy horde to bunch up in comical blobs.

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In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you”

AI, copilot, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / DJ Henderson / May 23, 2025

By late 2021, major updates for Windows’ built-in Notepad text editor had been so rare for so long that a gentle redesign and a handful of new settings were rated as a major update. New updates have become much more common since then, but like the rest of Windows, recent additions have been overwhelmingly weighted in the direction of generative AI.

In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite).

Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft’s AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead.

Microsoft notes that all AI features in Notepad can be disabled in the app’s settings, and obviously, they won’t be available if you use a local account instead of a Microsoft Account.

Microsoft is also releasing preview updates for Paint and Snipping Tool, two other bedrock Windows apps that hadn’t seen much by way of major updates before the Windows 11 era. Paint’s features are also mostly AI-related, including a “sticker generator” and an AI-powered smart select tool “to help you isolate and edit individual elements in your image.” A new “welcome experience” screen that appears the first time you launch the app will walk you through the (again, mostly AI-related) new features Microsoft has added to Paint in the last couple of years.

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“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall

Biz & IT, microsoft, privacy, recall, Security, signal messenger, Windows / Mike M. / May 22, 2025

But the changes go only so far in limiting the risks Recall poses. As I pointed out, when Recall is turned on, it indexes Zoom meetings, emails, photos, medical conditions, and—yes—Signal conversations, not just with the user, but anyone interacting with that user, without their knowledge or consent.

Researcher Kevin Beaumont performed his own deep-dive analysis that also found that some of the new controls were lacking. For instance, Recall continued to screenshot his payment card details. It also decrypted the database with a simple fingerprint scan or PIN. And it’s unclear whether the type of sophisticated malware that routinely infects consumer and enterprise Windows users will be able to decrypt encrypted database contents.

And as Cunningham also noted, Beaumont found that Microsoft still provided no means for developers to prevent content displayed in their apps from being indexed. That left Signal developers at a disadvantage, so they had to get creative.

With no API for blocking Recall in the Windows Desktop version, Signal is instead invoking an API Microsoft provides for protecting copyrighted material. App developers can turn on the DRM setting to prevent Windows from taking screenshots of copyrighted content displayed in the app. Signal is now repurposing the API to add an extra layer of privacy.

“We hope that the AI teams building systems like Recall will think through these implications more carefully in the future,” Signal wrote Wednesday. “Apps like Signal shouldn’t have to implement ‘one weird trick’ in order to maintain the privacy and integrity of their services without proper developer tools. People who care about privacy shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice accessibility upon the altar of AI aspirations either.”

Signal’s move will lessen the chances of Recall permanently indexing private messages, but it also has its limits. The measure only provides protection when all parties to a chat—at least those using the Windows Desktop version—haven’t changed the default settings.

Microsoft officials didn’t immediately respond to an email asking why Windows provides developers with no granular control over Recall and whether the company has plans to add any.

“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall Read More »

That groan you hear is users’ reaction to Recall going back into Windows

AI, Biz & IT, microsoft, privacy, recall, Security, Windows / 9u50fv / April 12, 2025

Security and privacy advocates are girding themselves for another uphill battle against Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds.

When Recall was first introduced in May 2024, security practitioners roundly castigated it for creating a gold mine for malicious insiders, criminals, or nation-state spies if they managed to gain even brief administrative access to a Windows device. Privacy advocates warned that Recall was ripe for abuse in intimate partner violence settings. They also noted that there was nothing stopping Recall from preserving sensitive disappearing content sent through privacy-protecting messengers such as Signal.

Enshittification at a new scale

Following months of backlash, Microsoft later suspended Recall. On Thursday, the company said it was reintroducing Recall. It currently is available only to insiders with access to the Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 preview version. Over time, the feature will be rolled out more broadly. Microsoft officials wrote:

Recall (preview)saves you time by offering an entirely new way to search for things you’ve seen or done on your PC securely. With the AI capabilities of Copilot+ PCs, it’s now possible to quickly find and get back to any app, website, image, or document just by describing its content. To use Recall, you will need to opt-in to saving snapshots, which are images of your activity, and enroll in Windows Hello to confirm your presence so only you can access your snapshots. You are always in control of what snapshots are saved and can pause saving snapshots at any time. As you use your Copilot+ PC throughout the day working on documents or presentations, taking video calls, and context switching across activities, Recall will take regular snapshots and help you find things faster and easier. When you need to find or get back to something you’ve done previously, open Recall and authenticate with Windows Hello. When you’ve found what you were looking for, you can reopen the application, website, or document, or use Click to Do to act on any image or text in the snapshot you found.

Microsoft is hoping that the concessions requiring opt-in and the ability to pause Recall will help quell the collective revolt that broke out last year. It likely won’t for various reasons.

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Acer CEO says its PC prices to increase by 10 percent in response to Trump tariffs

Acer, china tariffs, Donald Trump, PCs, Policy, Tech, Windows / Beth Washington / February 19, 2025

PC-manufacturer Acer has said that it plans to raise the prices of its PCs in the US by 10 percent, a direct response to the new 10 percent import tariff on Chinese goods that the Trump administration announced earlier this month.

“We will have to adjust the end user price to reflect the tariff,” said Acer CEO Jason Chen in an interview with The Telegraph. “We think 10 percent probably will be the default price increase because of the import tax. It’s very straightforward.”

These price increases won’t roll out right away, according to Chen—products shipped from China before the tariffs went into effect earlier this month won’t be subject to the increased import taxes—but we can expect them to show up in PC price tags over the next few weeks.

Chen also said that Acer was considering moving more of its manufacturing outside of China as a result of the tariffs, something that Acer had done for some of its desktop PCs after Trump imposed similar tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term. Manufacturing systems in the US is also “one of the options,” according to Chen.

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Wine 10.0 brings Arm Windows apps to Linux, still is not an emulator

asahi linux, Linux, Tech, Windows, Wine / Kelly Newman / January 22, 2025

The open source Wine project—sometimes stylized WINE, for Wine Is Not an Emulator—has become an important tool for companies and individuals who want to make Windows apps and games run on operating systems like Linux or even macOS. The CrossOver software for Mac and Windows, Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, and the Proton project that powers Valve’s SteamOS and the Steam Deck are all rooted in Wine, and the attention and resources put into the project in recent years have dramatically improved its compatibility and usefulness.

Yesterday, the Wine project announced the stable release of version 10.0, the next major version of the compatibility layer that is not an emulator. The headliner for this release is support for ARM64EC, the application binary interface (ABI) used for Arm apps in Windows 11, but the release notes say that the release contains “over 6,000 individual changes” produced over “a year of development effort.”

ARM64EC allows developers to mix Arm and x86-compatible code—if you’re making an Arm-native version of your app, you can still allow the use of more obscure x86-based plugins or add-ons without having to port everything over at once. Wine 10.0 also supports ARM64X, a different type of application binary file that allows ARM64EC code to be mixed with older, pre-Windows 11 ARM64 code.

Wine’s ARM64EC support does have one limitation that will keep it from working on some prominent Arm Linux distributions, at least by default: the release notes say it “requires the system page size to be 4K, since that is what the Windows ABI specifies.” Several prominent Linux-on-Arm distributions default to a 16K page size because it can improve performance—when page sizes are smaller, you need more of them, and managing a higher number of pages can introduce extra CPU overhead.

Asahi Linux, the Fedora-based distribution that is working to bring Linux to Apple Silicon Macs, uses 16K pages because that’s all Apple’s processors support. Some versions of the Raspberry Pi OS also default to a 16K page size, though it’s possible to switch to 4K for compatibility’s sake. Given that the Raspberry Pi and Asahi Linux are two of the biggest Linux-on-Arm projects going right now, that does at least somewhat limit the appeal of ARM64EC support in Wine. But as we’ve seen with Proton and other successful Wine-based compatibility layers, laying the groundwork now can deliver big benefits down the road.

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RIP EA’s Origin launcher: We knew ye all too well, unfortunately

EA, EA app, ea play, Electronic Arts, gaming, microsoft, Origin, steam, Windows / Mike M. / January 21, 2025

After 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced. Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed to install the newer EA app, which launched in 2022.

The launch of Origin in 2011 was a flashpoint of controversy among gamers, as EA—already not a beloved company by this point—began pulling titles like Crysis 2 from the popular Steam platform to drive players to its own launcher.

Frankly, it all made sense from EA’s point of view. For a publisher that size, Valve had relatively little to offer in terms of services or tools, yet it was taking a big chunk of games’ revenue. Why wouldn’t EA want to get that money back?

The transition was a rough one, though, because it didn’t make as much sense from the consumer’s point of view. Players distrusted EA and had a lot of goodwill for Valve and Steam. Origin lacked features players liked on Steam, and old habits and social connections die hard. Plus, EA’s use of Origin—a long-dead brand name tied to classic RPGs and other games of the ’80s and ’90s—for something like this felt to some like a slap in the face.

RIP EA’s Origin launcher: We knew ye all too well, unfortunately Read More »

Microsoft finally releases generic install ISOs for the Arm version of Windows

ARM, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11 / 9u50fv / November 14, 2024

For some PC buyers, doing a clean install of Windows right out of the box is part of the setup ritual. But for Arm-based PCs, including the Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips in them, it hasn’t been possible in the same way. Microsoft (mostly) hasn’t offered generic install media that can be used to reinstall Windows on an Arm PC from scratch.

Microsoft is fixing that today—the company finally has a download page for the official Arm release of Windows 11, linked to but separate from the ISOs for the x86 versions of Windows. These are useful not just for because-I-feel-like-it clean installs, but for reinstalling Windows after you’ve upgraded your SSD and setting up Windows virtual machines on Arm-based PCs and Macs.

Previously, Microsoft did offer install media for some Windows Insider Preview Arm builds, though these are for beta versions of Windows that may or may not be feature-complete or stable. Various apps, scripts, and websites also exist to grab files from Microsoft’s servers and build “unofficial” ISOs for the Arm version of Windows, though obviously this is more complicated than just downloading a single file directly.

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Not just ChatGPT anymore: Perplexity and Anthropic’s Claude get desktop apps

AI, Anthropic, Apple, chatgpt, Claude, desktop apps, Mac, native apps, openai, Perplexity, Tech, Windows / DJ Henderson / October 31, 2024

There’s a lot going on in the world of Mac apps for popular AI services. In the past week, Anthropic has released a desktop app for its popular Claude chatbot, and Perplexity launched a native app for its AI-driven search service.

On top of that, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT Mac app with support for its flashy advanced voice feature.

Like the ChatGPT app that debuted several weeks ago, the Perplexity app adds a keyboard shortcut that allows you to enter a query from anywhere on your desktop. You can use the app to ask follow-up questions and carry on a conversation about what it finds.

It’s free to download and use, but Perplexity offers subscriptions for major users.

Perplexity’s search emphasis meant it wasn’t previously a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but OpenAI recently launched SearchGPT, a search-focused variant of its popular product. SearchGPT is not yet supported in the desktop app, though.

Anthropic’s Claude, on the other hand, is a more direct competitor to ChatGPT. It works similarly to ChatGPT but has different strengths, particularly in software development. The Claude app is free to download, but it’s in beta, and like Perplexity and OpenAI, Anthropic charges for more advanced users.

When ChatGPT launched its Mac app, it didn’t release a Windows app right away, saying that it was focused on where its users were at the time. A Windows app recently arrived, and Anthropic took a different approach, simultaneously introducing Windows and Mac apps.

Previously, all these tools offered mobile apps and web apps, but not necessarily native desktop apps.

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