Windows 11

Microsoft is not shy about introducing controversial changes to its software, even if feedback forces it to reverse course further down the line. Windows 11 has seen a huge number of modifications, not all of which have proved popular, and a proposed change to the functionality of a key in Windows 11 is likely to be a divisive move.

The key in question the Print Screen (or Prt Scr and numerous other variations) which currently takes a screenshot and copies it to the clipboard. But in the latest builds of Windows 11, pressing the key does something different by default.

Microsoft made a significant investment in Windows 10 Mobile, including acquiring Nokia to produce its own handsets. Despite the strengths of the tiled mobile operating system, it was unable to compete with the dominant iOS and Android platforms. While Windows 10 became a successful operating system for PCs and tablets, Microsoft was eventually abandon its mobile ambitions

As Windows 11 gradually replaces Windows 10, the question remains whether it would perform better than its predecessor in the mobile space.

Use Windows 11 for long enough, and you will almost certainly encounter an app that becomes unresponsive. And when an app freezes, you're likely to find that it misbehaves to the point that it is not possible to close it in the usual way.

When this happens, you may well fire up Task Manager, locate the troublesome app or process in the list and terminate it. But to help optimize this unnecessarily lengthy process, Microsoft is introducing a new End Task option that can be accessed from the Windows 11 taskbar.

If you’re running a modern version of Windows, you'll either be on Windows 10 or Windows 11. For a while though, Microsoft was working on Windows 10X, a version of the OS designed for modern PCs.

Windows 10X was built from scratch on top of "Windows Core OS" and aimed to do away with legacy features and offer a simplified Windows experience. It was cancelled in 2021, although leaked builds did give us an idea of how it would look and what it would offer.

Five-hundred-and-thirty-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft's official Store on Windows 11 has a new section for widgets. Follow this link to open the Widgets section. Listed widgets may be installed so that they may be displayed in the Widgets interface.

As well as a new Windows 11 build for Insiders on the bleeding edge Canary Channel, Microsoft has rolled out a new flight for testers on the Dev Channel.

New features here include a change to how urgent and important notifications are handled when 'do not disturb' is turned on -- users will have the option to click a 'view notification' button.

Windows Insiders have been made to wait all week for a new Windows 11 build, but arriving in time for the weekend comes a new flight on the experimental Canary Channel.

Build 25336, which is also available for Insiders with Arm64 devices, comes with a couple of changes and improvements.

Microsoft has issued a reminder to users of certain versions of Windows 10 that their operating system will reach end of serving in mid-June.

The announcement applies to the Home, Pro, Pro Education and Pro for Workstations editions of Windows 10 21H2, and when June 13 rolls around no more monthly security updates will be issued. Microsoft says that in order to ensure protection, users will be automatically updated to a supported version of Windows.

Having announced its plans to do so last year, Microsoft has added support for Gmail accounts to the new Outlook for Windows preview for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Gmail support is something that has been available to Office Insiders for a little while, but now the company is opening it up to anyone who is running the preview of the new Outlook for Windows. Microsoft says that it also plans to add IMAP support as well as support for Yahoo and iCloud, but for now it is Gmail users the company is treating -- but there is something you need to do first.

Windows Sandbox is a built-in feature of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Its main purpose is to provide a safe environment for running applications. Anything that is executed in the sandbox, e.g., a software that is installed, remains trapped inside. It can’t break out and affect the "real" operating system.

As a consequence, malware, spyware and other unwanted and undesirable code, can’t infect the system or pull data from it.

Change is often good, but not when it comes to changing the way Windows works -- particularly the fundamental features that people have become used to. But this is precisely what Microsoft is looking to do by introducing a controversial new limitation on Alt-Tab in Windows 11.

As anyone who has used Windows for any length of time will know, the Alt-Tab keyboard shortcut provides an easy way to switch between open apps and windows. In recent years, Microsoft has added functionality by making it possible to Alt-Tab through Edge tabs, but now the company is testing a new implementation that reduces its usefulness.

When Microsoft released the latest Dev build of Windows 11, one of the new additions was Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) -- an energy-saving feature that works by dimming areas of the screen depending on the content that is being viewed. Much was made of the fact that CABC was something that would benefit everyone, including desktop users. But it turns out that this is not actually the case.

Microsoft has now backtracked on its announcement, revealing that CABC is rather more underwhelming than we were first led to believe -- and far fewer Windows 11 users will be able to take advantage of it than first suggested.

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Adaptive screen brightness is a familiar function of smartphones, with both iOS and Android boosting brightness in lighter conditions to improve screen visibility, and dimming it when it is darker so you're not blinded during nocturnal social media sessions. Now Microsoft is bringing a similar -- but better -- feature to Windows 11.

Microsoft's take on the feature is called Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC). There is a clue in the name about how it works, and it is about more than just ambient lighting conditions. [UPDATE: Microsoft has had something of a change of heart, as detailed here.]

Five-hundred-and-thirty-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Windows 11 users may soon install free apps or games directly from Windows Search results. The change landed in the latest Windows 11 Canary Insider build.

New Insider builds of Windows 11 are usually about Microsoft testing out new features of the operating system, but sometimes the company tries something a little different. This is something that is true of the latest Canary release, build 25330, and Dev release, build 23424.

In both of these new releases, there are important changes to the Microsoft Store. The latest version of the app gives Insiders a new way to install free apps and games faster than ever.