Windows 11

Five-hundred-and-twenty-one 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 use the Widgets feature without a Microsoft Account. Microsoft is testing the change in development versions of the operating system currently.

With Windows 11, Microsoft changed the way it releases updates for the operating system with its "Moment" updates. So far, there has only been one Moment released, but it was a significant one that saw the addition of tabs in File Explorer and more.

We've already heard rumors that the Moment 2 update is scheduled for release in March next year, but now there are also suggestions that yet another update is due in May. What is not clear, however, it whether this will be Moment 3, or what has been referred to as a Continuous Innovations update.

Users of Microsoft's cloud storage have a new version of the OneDrive desktop client to install, compete with an updated look and feel.

After a period of testing during which the refreshed app was available to Insiders only, Microsoft has now released the new OneDrive app to everyone. The latest update gives the app a Windows 11-style makeover, including support for light and dark modes.

Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel have a new Windows 11 Build to play with today, and it’s the last one of the year. The next new builds will begin to arrive in January 2023.

Build 25267 comes with a good selection of improvements and fixes, as well as an improvement to how search looks on the taskbar.

The December 2022 Bug Bash is well underway for Windows Insiders in both the Dev and Beta Channels.

For insiders in the Dev channel, today also sees the arrival of a new Windows 11 build in time for the weekend. Build 25262 comes with a number of fixes and Microsoft has also dropped the sign-in requirement for the widgets board and made it available for all users.

Five-hundred-and-twenty 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 released an out-of-band update for Windows 10 this week that improves updating to Windows 11. It prompts users to update to Windows 11 when new major updates are released for the operating system.

Back in October, Microsoft -- possibly inadvertently -- revealed that Windows 11's Snipping Tool screen capture utility was getting a significant update with the addition of a screen recording option.

After the Surface event at which the news was seemingly leaked, there has been no news about the Windows 11 screen recorder. But now Microsoft has made the new capability available to a select group of users, signalling that a wider roll-out could be just around the corner.

Piriform has added some new cleaning rules to CCleaner that help to detect and remove surplus files generated by new Windows 11 features including Widgets, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Microsoft News, Windows Defender, OneDrive, File Explorer, and Microsoft Family Safety.

The update also adds more apps to CCleaner’s cleaning list and improves cleaning in Slack.

Windows 12 will offer a number of improvements that will make it better than its predecessor, Windows 11. One of the biggest advantages of Windows 12 is that it will offer improved security. Microsoft is introducing multiple new features to better protect user data, such as a new secure kernel, a secure boot process, and a new sandbox security model.

In addition, Windows 12 will offer improved performance, with better memory management and faster start-up times. The new version of Windows will also provide better support for multi-core processors, and it will introduce new graphics APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan, which will provide improved performance in gaming and multimedia applications.

The uptake of Windows 11 has been rather slow, almost certainly slower than Microsoft would have hoped. With Windows 10 users sticking doggedly to their slightly aging operating system, the company is seeking way to promote and simplify Windows 11 upgrades -- and with the KB5020683 update, it has done just this.

KB5020683 is an out-of-band update that Microsoft released recently to little fanfare. It has one aim: improving the out-of-box experience (OOBE) so users have the option to upgrade to Windows 11 immediately.

Windows 11 is a good operating system, for the most part, but it’s not without its problems. It seems every new update Microsoft rolls out these days introduces fresh annoyances. No wonder the vast majority of users are sticking with Windows 10.

Although Windows 11 has only been out for just over a year, talk of its successor, Windows 12, has been bubbling in the background for a few months now and if you were wondering how it might look when released, we have the answer.

Five-hundred-and-nineteen 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 released a preview update for Windows 11 this week that fixed the game performance issues that some users experienced. The update did introduce an issue of its own though. It breaks the Task Manager for some users, apparently.

If you want to use a supported version of Microsoft’s operating system you have two choices -- Windows 10 or Windows 11. Although people would usually opt to use the latest OS, especially given it’s a free upgrade, Windows 11 has struggled to find a meaningful audience despite being out for over a year now.

Its lack of adoption hasn’t been helped by the operating system's stricter system requirements.

It is the time of the month when Microsoft release preview versions of Windows updates. True to form, the company has released the KB5020044 update for Windows 11 22H2.

As well as fixing various issues, this update also brings new features such as combining Windows Spotlight with Themes on the Personalization page, and helpful information for OneDrive users. It also fixes game performance issues which caused Microsoft to block upgrades to Windows 11 2022 Update for some users. And true to form, the update also breaks some things as well as fixing others; in this case, Task Manager.

Thanksgiving is done and dusted for another year, but Microsoft has something for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel to be thankful for -- a new Windows 11 Build!

Build 25252 comes with a handful of improvements and fixes, but also highlights some new known issues.