Today, Microsoft posted a new blog entry with some more info on this change. As it turns out, the Windows team is using features that were first created for Windows 11 to cut down its download size for the new Windows 10 updates.

Microsoft first explained how they were able to reduce the download size of Windows 11 back in October 2021. Back then, the company stated:

For versioned data systems requiring forward and reverse delta pairs, “reverse update data generation” provides a way of efficiently distributing the forward delta to the machine and having the machine maintain a path back to its original state. Microsoft has successfully employed this approach in Windows 11, providing a 40% reduction in update size.

Today's blog post says that the Windows team is now "bringing the same functionality to Windows 10, version 22H2." As a result, users will see a pretty major reduction in download size. On April 9, the last "Patch Tuesday" Windows 11 update was about 830 MB in size. This week's non-security update for Windows 10 cut down the size of its download package to just 650 MB,

Microsoft stated today:

This reduction of the LCU package size offers advantages such as reduced bandwidth usage, faster downloads, minimized network traffic, and improved performance on slow connections.

This new development for Windows 10 and its many users comes even as Microsoft is trying its best to get those users to upgrade to Windows 11. The company still plans to end official software updates for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. Microsoft will offer additional updates for the OS for consumer and commercial users but at a price.

Source

Microsoft describes the change as follows:

New! The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available.

 

 

You can turn off new Start menu app ads in Windows 11 builds 22621.3527 and 22631.3527 in the Settings app; here is how to do it:

1. Press Win + I to open the Settings app or launch it using any other method you like.
2. Go to Personalization > Start.
3. Toggle off the "Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more" option.

Microsoft Store app "recommendations" are sadly not the only questionable change coming soon to your Windows 11 PC. Build 22635.3500 (currently available in the Beta Channel) introduces a new "Account Manager," which replaces buttons like "Sign out," "Change user," and "Lock" with a Microsoft 365 ad. Now, to sign out of your profile, you have to witness your subscriptions first, open a new submenu, and only then press "Sign out."

It did not take too long for Microsoft to bring Start menu ads to all users (they will come to all as part of May 2024 Patch Tuesday updates), so expect the new "Account Manager" soon as well.

You can also deal with all these "updates" by using a third-party Start menu alternative or tweakers. Just keep in mind that some of them will most likely stop working soon.

Source

While initially, only PopCnt seemed to be a necessity, it looks like mandatory SSE4.2 requirement is also being added to the underlying code, and unsupported old CPUs that do not pack these instructions will no longer be able to boot into Windows 11 24H2, even when using bypass tricks that work exclusively on the latest version of Windows.

One of the features related to the upcoming AI-heavy Windows 11 is an "AI File Explorer," also apparently referred to as an Advanced Copilot. Initial details of the AI File Explorer were revealed by reports back in March. Essentially, it appears to be like a modern version of Cortana. For those who may not have been following, the Cortana app was killed off in August last year.

Microsoft is also setting a baseline requirement for the AI File Explorer. Code related to such system requirements was discovered recently. Windows user and Twitter (now X) user Albacore, who uncovered the requirements code first, found out that a cautionary message will be displayed on such systems not meeting the requirements. This is sort of similar to the missing PopCnt message or a system requirements not met watermark.

Quite curiously, Microsoft seems to have set the need for an ARM64 processor for AI File Explorer. Hence, it is possible that the feature may be a Surface-exclusive feature, or perhaps Microsoft will add AMD64 ISA to the list later if it intends to bring the feature to x86 PCs as well. After all, the company did announce AI PCs for enterprises alongside AMD just over a week ago

Meanwhile, aside from ARM64 CPUs, 16GB of system memory has also been set as a recommendation for the AI File Explorer.

Source

Signs point to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors showing up in actual, real-world, human-purchasable computers in the next couple of months after years of speculation and another year or so of hype.

 

For those who haven’t been following along, this will allegedly be Qualcomm’s first Arm processor for Windows PCs that does for PCs what Apple’s M-series chips did for Macs, promising both better battery life and better performance than equivalent Intel chips. This would be a departure from past Snapdragon chips for PCs, which have performed worse than (or, at best, similarly to) existing Intel options, barely improved battery life, and come with a bunch of software incompatibility problems to boot.

 

Early benchmarks that have trickled out look promising for the Snapdragon X. And there are other reasons to be optimistic—the Snapdragon X Elite’s design team is headed up by some of the same people who made Apple Silicon so successful in the first place.

 

Rumors indicate that Microsoft's flagship Surface tablet this year will switch to using Qualcomm's Arm chips exclusively rather than selling Arm and Intel versions alongside each other (an Intel Surface Pro 10 exists, but it's only sold to businesses). Microsoft has tried to make Arm Windows happen a bunch of times. But this time feels different.

A brief history of Arm Windows

The first public version of Windows to run on Arm processors was Windows RT, an Arm-compatible offshoot of Windows 8 that launched on a bare handful of devices back in late 2012.

 

Windows RT came with significant limitations, most notably a total inability to run traditional x86 Windows desktop apps—all apps had to come from the Microsoft Store, which was considerably more barren than it is today. There was no x86 compatibility mode at all.

 

That limitation may have been due in part to the limited, low-performance Arm hardware available at the time. Arm processors were still predominantly 32-bits, with slow processors and GPUs, 32 or 64GB of slow flash storage, and just 2GB of memory (at the time, 4GB was generally considered adequate for a PC, and 8GB was roomy). Even if you did have x86 app translation, translated apps would have felt awful since the Arm hardware already struggled to run the native built-in apps consistently well.

 

Windows RT died the death it deserved to die; it never ran on many devices, and those that did had totally vanished from the market by 2015 or so. But the technical underpinnings of the operating system remain relevant today.

 

As detailed by then-Windows head Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft did significant work to define a hardware abstraction layer (HAL), ACPI firmware, and basic class drivers for the Arm version of Windows so that the OS could install and run as expected on a wide variety of barely standardized Arm hardware the same way it did on a thoroughly standardized x86 PC. (Compare this to Google's Wild West approach to Android, which to this day can’t install basic OS or security updates without specific intervention from chipmakers and device manufacturers).

 

These were building blocks Microsoft could re-use for Windows 10, which first came to Arm devices in 2017 with support for 32-bit x86 app translation. This version of Windows-on-Arm also functioned more as a technical demo than the dawn of a new era, but it did come closer to becoming what Windows-on-Arm needed to be to succeed: a drop-in replacement for the x86 version of Windows, where the two versions were largely indistinguishable for non-technical users.

 

The next big step down that path came in 2020 when Microsoft announced a preview of 64-bit Intel app translation for Arm PCs, though the final version ended up being exclusive to Windows 11 when it launched in late 2021 (leaving behind, incidentally, that first wave of Windows 10 Arm PCs with a Snapdragon 835 processor in them—another case where early-adopting into this ecosystem has hosed users. Developers also got an easier on-ramp to Arm when Microsoft began allowing them to mix x86 and Arm code in the same app.

 

That brings us to where we are now: an Arm version of Windows that still has some compatibility gaps, especially around external accessories and specialized software. But the vast majority of productivity apps and even games will now run happily on the Arm version of Windows, with no user or developer intervention required.

Change is in the air

To figure out what Microsoft needs to do to make Arm PCs take off, it's instructive to look at Apple's switch from Intel's CPUs to its own M-series chips. Three big factors made the Apple Silicon switch so seamless and successful:

 

• Apple had an excellent compatibility layer for existing Intel apps in Rosetta 2.
• Apple's new chips were more power efficient and quite a bit faster than what Intel was offering at the time. This gave users some immediately noticeable benefits (namely better battery life) while also masking the performance impact of translating Intel apps.
• App developers were relatively quick to create Arm-native versions of their most important apps, making the increased speed of Apple Silicon chips even more noticeable. Within a year, almost all the apps I used day-to-day had made the switch. Today, a little over three years later, the only Intel-only apps I run into tend to be mostly unmaintained or barely maintained. This was important because while Apple's Rosetta translation looked good in benchmarks, in actual use, there was a minor but perceivable choppiness and lack of responsiveness that didn't exist in Arm-native apps.

 

Microsoft has mostly cracked the compatibility layer part of the equation, and it will actually be better than what Apple offers in some ways (Rosetta 2 never supported 32-bit Intel apps, for example, and Apple chose to foreclose the possibility by dropping 32-bit support on Intel Macs, too).

 

What's been missing so far is good hardware; to date, even the best of Qualcomm's chips have offered performance and battery life similar to Intel's or AMD's, and why would you put up with the compatibility downsides if there wasn't an upside? The Snapdragon X Elite promises to finally fix this, locking another key element into place.

 

That could still fall apart. We've seen a lot about the X Elite's speed and a lot of charts with bendy lines demonstrating the chips' power curve. But if Snapdragon X Elite laptops show up and they look and behave just like modern Intel and AMD laptops—noisy and hot under load, battery life that ranges from mediocre to merely decent—they'll still be a hard sell. But for now, I'm taking Microsoft's projected confidence as a sign that Qualcomm has finally cracked the hardware side of this.

 

Another thing that's different this time? Third parties are getting on board with Arm-native versions of their apps, a couple of years after Microsoft started pushing Arm-compatible versions of its dev tools more aggressively.

 

The most telling of the recent adopters is Chrome, easily the most important app that most people run on their PCs or Macs. Google began testing an Arm-native version of Chrome for Windows in January and released the stable version of the app in March.

 

The thing about Chrome is that Google goes where it thinks users will be; it doesn't want early adopters of a potentially popular platform to try to install Chrome, get frustrated for some reason, and bounce to something else.

 

When it looked like Windows 8 and its touchscreen interface would be a big deal, Google and Chrome were there. When Apple Silicon Macs launched, Google had an M1-native version of the app available within days of their launch. It's telling that now, of all times, after years and years without launching an Arm-native Windows browser, Google has gotten on board.

Recent improvements set the stage

In late 2022, I spent some time with the Arm version of Windows on Microsoft's "Windows Dev Kit 2023," which was literally the system board from the Arm version of the Surface Pro 9 inside a black plastic box. Formerly dubbed "Project Volterra" and sold for a relatively reasonable $600, the PC is intended to give developers a usable and reasonably performant Arm system to develop and test their apps on.

 

Even in 2022, I still ran into quite a few problems with apps that wouldn't install, hardware that didn't work because of unavailable drivers, and other rough edges that kept it from feeling like a "real" PC. But once the things that could be installed and configured were installed and configured, in day-to-day use as a browsing and writing machine, it felt remarkably unremarkable.

 

Things are even better now. The Dropbox client, not even installable 18 months ago, now has an Arm-native client that functions just fine. I had no problems downloading Adobe's Creative Cloud installer, which is an x86 file that seamlessly installed the Arm64 version of the Creative Cloud client and Arm64 versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. These were all things that caused mild-to-moderate headaches when trying to use this same computer not all that long ago.

 

I still ran into issues in instances where I wanted to install the Arm version of an app but got the x86 version by default instead. This still happens while downloading the Handbrake video encoding app from its website or the VLC player from either the Microsoft Store or VLC's website (the Arm64 version of VLC is still only available via unstable nightly builds, it seems). The x86 versions of these apps launch and run fine; you'll just have to deal with the app-translation performance penalty when you could be getting native performance instead.

 

And while it's nice to have Arm-native versions of apps like Chrome and Dropbox, they're still way outnumbered by the x86 apps. The native Slack and Discord clients are both x86, Steam is x86, all other Adobe apps are x86, major video and audio editing programs are all x86, and virtually all games are x86. You'll likely have trouble with any driver not built into Windows, as is still the case for my Focusrite USB mic preamp.

 

Some of these problems are ignorable in the short term because of the x86 compatibility layer. Slack and Discord run OK on the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3/Microsoft SQ3, and they'll run better on the X Elite. A lot of games just work, and Qualcomm seems confident that even recent-ish AAA titles will run fine (the company demoed Baldur's Gate 3 and Control in a recent tech session).

 

But some barriers will be impossible to surmount without attention from developers. Games with any kind of anti-cheat system almost never work with any kind of translation layer. Drivers will need to be written or recompiled. But that kind of work won't start happening before the user base is there, and the user base won't be there until there are (1) concrete benefits to using Arm hardware and (2) broad compatibility for bread-and-butter apps like Chrome.

 

Both of those problems could finally be solved this year. It's still not guaranteed to lead to first-class Windows-on-Arm support from major game makers, but if we see something like Fortnite or Overwatch 2 pick up Arm Windows support, it will be a major sign that the tide is turning.

An actually viable Arm Windows is good for everyone

We've talked about this hypothetical turning point of Windows-on-Arm mostly in the context of new Snapdragon X Elite PCs, but a healthier Arm ecosystem for Windows would benefit many different people, whether they wanted to buy a new PC or not.

 

Some of this is "rising tide lifts all boats"-type stuff, where Windows-on-Arm hardware like 2019's original Surface Pro X or this weird $200 Best Buy laptop will actually get better, faster, and more usable as native Arm versions of apps become more plentiful.

 

But it's also valuable outside of the Windows ecosystem. The experience of using Windows via Parallels on an Apple Silicon Mac, for example, is getting pretty close to the way it used to be on Intel Macs, outside of specific things like being unable to run newer DirectX 12 games. We'll probably never see a version of Windows that can run directly on the hardware, as was possible in the Intel days—the odds of Apple releasing and maintaining its own Windows drivers are near or possibly even below zero—but lack of Windows compatibility was a pain point for Apple Silicon Macs just a few years ago.

 

There's also the possibility of a better hardware ecosystem. If Arm PCs begin selling in significant numbers, we might see companies like Samsung, Nvidia, MediaTek, or Arm itself take more of an interest in high-performance Arm chips for PCs. Microsoft and Qualcomm have allegedly had some kind of often-implied, rarely talked-about exclusivity agreement for the Arm versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11, though various rumors have also reported that it has expired or is expiring soon. One of the reasons to root for the Arm transition is to give us, the PC buyers of the world, options beyond what Intel or AMD are doing. More options beyond what Qualcomm is doing would be even better.

 

Source

An alleged screenshot of the feature hints at how the dialer may look when it rolls out to the masses. As of now, there is no word on the release timeline of WhatsApp's in-app dialer. The website said that it is not ready for beta testers yet and will be available in a future update.

As per the website, it's not clear at the moment how WhatsApp plans to implement the feature. But having a dialer inside the messaging app will make it easier for users to have temporary conversations and call unknown people without saving their number, it added.

Furthermore, a dialer can make WhatsApp an alternative to the stock dialer app on the phone when needed. WhatsApp's end-to-end encrypted video and audio calls happen over the internet, which could be beneficial to users with WiFi or low-cost data plans, the website noted.

With that said, WhatsApp has released features in the past to improve user convenience across the app. For instance, you can chat with unknown phone numbers on WhatsApp without saving them in your contacts.

WhatsApp's Favorites feature, which is currently in best testing, lets you mark important contacts and group chats for quicker access. The instant messaging app also added a toggle button to silence unknown callers automatically.

Apart from that, the Meta-owned messaging platform is working on a stream of features, including offline file transfer, Events for community group chats, picture-in-picture for videos, and support for third-party chats.

Source

Here is the changelog;

Highlights

 

• New! This update starts the rolls out of account-related notifications for Microsoft accounts in Settings > Home. A Microsoft account connects Windows to your Microsoft apps. The account also backs up all your data and helps you to manage your subscriptions. You can also add extra security steps to keep you from being locked out of your account. This feature displays notifications across the Start menu and Settings. You can manage your Settings notifications in Settings > Privacy & security > General.
• New! This update affects Widgets on the lock screen. They are more reliable and have improved quality. This update also supports more visuals and a more customized experience for you.
• This update addresses an issue that affects some wireless earbuds. Bluetooth connections are not stable. This occurs on devices that have firmware from April 2023 and later.
• This update makes some changes to Windows Search. It is now more reliable, and it is easier to find an app after you install it. This update also gives you a personalized app search experience.

 

Improvements

 

Important: Use EKB KB5015684 to update to Windows 10, version 22H2.

 

This non-security update includes quality improvements. When you install this KB:

 

• New! Starting April 23, 2024, the LCU will no longer have the reverse differentials. The client will generate the reverse update data. This change will help to reduce the LCU package size by about 20%. This change also offers a few advantages. It:
  • Reduces bandwidth usage
  • Provides faster downloads
  • Minimizes network traffic
  • Improves performance on slow connections.
• This update addresses an issue that affects apps licensing. Because of this, Copilot in Windows (in preview) does not work as you expect.
• This update addresses an issue that occurs when your device resumes from Modern Standby. You might get the stop error, “0x9f DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE.”
• This update addresses a race condition that might stop a machine from starting up. This occurs when you set up a bootloader to start up multiple OSes.
• This update affects media allocations. It improves their memory granularity for some hardware setups. This lowers overcommitment. Also, performance is more efficient.
• This update addresses an issue that affects an accelerator backing store management path. A memory leak occurs that affects some devices.
• This update makes Country and Operator Settings Asset (COSA) profiles up to date for some mobile operators.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the container networking Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). It returns the wrong Virtual Subnet ID (VSID) for external ports.
• This update affects hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI). It accepts drivers that are now compatible.
• This update includes quarterly changes to the Windows Kernel Vulnerable Driver Blocklist file, DriverSiPolicy.p7b. It adds to the list of drivers that are at risk for Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attacks.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Protected Process Light (PPL) protections. You can bypass them.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC). A memory leak occurs when it retrieves mappings.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). Its Post Authentication Actions (PAA) do not occur at the end of the grace period. Instead, they occur at restart.

 

If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.

 

Windows 10 servicing stack update - 19045.4351

 

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

 

Known issues in this update

 

Symptom	Workaround
Windows devices using more than one (1) monitor might experience issues with desktop icons moving unexpectedly between monitors or other icon alignment issues when attempting to use Copilot in Windows (in preview).	To prevent users from encountering this issue, Copilot in Windows (in preview) might not be available on devices that have been used or are currently being used in a multimonitor configuration.   We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.
Copilot in Windows (in preview) is not currently supported when your taskbar is located vertically on the right or left of your screen.	To access Copilot in Windows, make sure your taskbar is positioned horizontally on the top or bottom of your screen.   We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.
After you install KB5034203 (dated 01/23/2024) or later updates, some Windows devices that use the DHCP Option 235 to discover Microsoft Connected Cache (MCC) nodes in their network might be unable to use those nodes. Instead, these Windows devices will download updates and apps from the public internet. IT administrators also see increased download traffic on their internet routes.   Those of you who use the Home edition of Windows are not likely to experience this issue. MCC and DHCP Option 235 are typically used in enterprise environments.	Option 1: Configure Microsoft Connected Cache endpoint in DOCacheHost policy as indicated in Cache hostname. Additionally, DOCacheHostSourcehas to be set to 1or removed as indicated in Cache hostname source. By default, the DOCacheHost and DOCacheHostSource policies have no value.   Option 2: You can mitigate this issue using Group Policies available through our support channel. Organizations can request help at Support for business.   We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release
After installing this update, youmight be unable to change your user account profile picture.   When attempting to change a profile picture by selecting the button Start> Settings > Account > Your info and, under Create your picture, clicking on Browse for one, youmight receive an error message with error code 0x80070520.	We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

You can check out the full support post here.

Source

Here is the changelog:

Highlights

 

• New! The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available. If you want to turn this off, go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off the toggle for Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.
• New! In the coming weeks, your most frequently used apps might appear in the Recommended section of the Start menu. This applies to apps that you have not already pinned to the Start menu or the taskbar.
• New! This update improves the Widgets icons on the taskbar. They are no longer pixelated or fuzzy. This update also starts the rollout of a larger set of animated icons.
• New! This update affects Widgets on the lock screen. They are more reliable and have improved quality. This update also supports more visuals and a more customized experience for you.
• This update affects the touch keyboard. It makes the Japanese 106 keyboard layout appear as expected when you sign in.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Settings. It stops responding when you dismiss a flyout menu.

 

Improvements

 

Windows 11 23H2

 

Important: Use EKB KB5027397 to update to Windows 11, version 23H2.

 

This non-security update includes quality improvements. Key changes include:

 

• This build includes all the improvements in Windows 11, version 22H2.
• No additional issues are documented for this release.

 

Windows 11 22H2

 

This non-security update includes quality improvements. When you install this KB:

 

• This update adds a new mobile device management (MDM) policy called “AllowScreenRecorder.” It affects the Snipping Tool. IT admins can use this policy to turn off screen recording in the app.
• This update adds support for Arm64 .msi files using a Group Policy Object (GPO). You can now use the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) to add Arm64 .msi files. You can also use a GPO to install these files on Arm64 machines.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the netstat -c command. It fails to perform effective port exhaustion troubleshooting.
• This update addresses an issue that affects a low latency network. The speed of data on the network degrades significantly. This occurs when you turn on timestamps for a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection.
• This update addresses a race condition that might stop a machine from starting up. This occurs when you set up a bootloader to start up multiple OSes.
• This update addresses an issue that affects an accelerator backing store management path. A memory leak occurs that affects some devices.
• This update affects media allocations. It improves their memory granularity for some hardware setups. This lowers overcommitment. Also, performance is more efficient.
• This update affects Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2). Intermittent name resolution fails in a split DNS setup.
• This update addresses an issue that affects universal printers. The system creates duplicate print queues for them.
• This update makes Country and Operator Settings Asset (COSA) profiles up to date for some mobile operators.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the container networking Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). It returns the wrong Virtual Subnet ID (VSID) for external ports.
• This update addresses a memory allocation issue in the Host Networking Service (HNS). The issue causes high memory consumption. It also affects service and pod deployment and scaling.
• This update addresses an issue that occurs when you elevate from a normal user to an Administrator to run an application. When you use a PIN to sign in, the app will not run.
• This update affects hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI). It accepts drivers that are now compatible.
• This update includes quarterly changes to the Windows Kernel Vulnerable Driver Blocklist file, DriverSiPolicy.p7b. It adds to the list of drivers that are at risk for Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attacks.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Protected Process Light (PPL) protections. You can bypass them.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) hardware offload. A stop error occurs on PCs that support it.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC). A memory leak occurs when it retrieves mappings.
• This update addresses an issue that affects Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS). Its Post Authentication Actions (PAA) do not occur at the end of the grace period. Instead, they occur at restart.
• This update addresses an issue that affects the Resilient File System (ReFS). A high load might make the system unresponsive. Also, signing in might be slow.

If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.

 

Windows 11 servicing stack update - 22621.3522 and 22631.3522

 

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

 

Known issues in this update

 

Symptom

 

After installing this update, youmight be unable to change your user account profile picture.

 

When attempting to change a profile picture by selecting the button Start> Settings> Accounts > Your info, and then selecting Choose a file, youmight receive an error message with error code 0x80070520.

 

Workaround

 

We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release

You can check out the full support post here.

Source

In a post on the Microsoft Edge blog, the company says that while modern web browsers like Edge can support things like editing documents, writing code and emails, and more, there have been some limitations to what they can do.

However, Microsoft has been working on new text editing features that have found their way to recent Microsoft Edge stable editions. Some of those features have also been made available for Chromium-based browsers as well.

Two of the features are exclusive to Edge. One is adding Edge's Compose feature to help rewrite editable text in a document inside the browser with the use of Microsoft's Copilot. Microsoft says:

Select a section of text that’s displayed in an editable field and click the Copilot icon to start rewriting that section, by iterating through different AI-generated proposals.You can change the tone, format, or length settings to your needs.

Another new feature that's exclusive to Edge is support for Windows Ink for digital writing in places like the browser's address bar, text area and input elements, and areas with the "contenteditable" attribute. Users can do things like delete digital writing by scribbling over words, add or remove spaces between words by drawing vertical lines, and more,

Some other text editing features have been recently introduced in both Edge and other Chromium-based browsers. One is the EditContext API, which lets users create their own text editors inside supported browsers.

Another recently introduced API now lets users who want to copy and paste HTML formatted text to web apps "to choose when they want to receive the full HTML content, rather than a browser-sanitized version of the HTML." Microsoft says this new API has already solved some issues when cutting and pasting text into the Excel web app.

Finally, with the release of Edge 124, there's also the new HTML attribute called "writingsuggestions". It turns off text prediction for any editable part of a web page. While this is an Edge exclusive at the moment, it may appear on other Chromium-based browsers.

Source

The April updates have been relatively quiet, with some exceptions.

That’s why I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level to 4. Most of my concerns lie not with this month’s patches but rather with the timing of future mandates.

In addition, Microsoft finally acknowledged an “oopsie” with Edge.

Microsoft has been in dribble mode, getting our workstations ready for Windows Copilot. Although we can control this through the use of registry keys and group policy, eagle-eyed Forum reader WHCS noted a few weeks ago that a “Microsoft Copilot” app had been installed. After a bit of investigation, it was found that the app was installed at the same time that a beta version of Edge received an update. In the next few weeks, we started to get more and more reports of this app’s being installed on operating systems ranging from Windows 10 all the way to Server 2022.

Just a few days ago, Microsoft fessed up:

Updates to Edge browser version 123.0.2420.65, released on March 28, 2024 and later, might incorrectly install a new package (MSIX) called “Microsoft chat provider for Copilot in Windows” on Windows devices. Resulting from this, the Microsoft Copilot app might appear in the Installed apps in Settings menu.

It is important to note that the Microsoft chat provider for Copilot in Windows does not execute any code or process, and does not acquire, analyze, or transmit device or environment data in any capacity.

This package is intended to prepare some Windows devices for future Windows Copilot enablement and is not intended for all devices. Although the component installed as part of this issue can cause the Microsoft Copilot app to be shown as part of the Installed apps, this component does not fully install or enable Microsoft Copilot.

As part of the upcoming resolution of this issue, the chat provider for Copilot in Windows component will be removed from devices where Microsoft Copilot is not intended to be enabled or installed. This includes most Windows Server devices.

Note: Edge browser version 124.0.2478.51, released on April 18, 2024, contains a change by which the chat provider for Copilot in Windows will not continue to be installed on every device.

Quite the mea culpa. Microsoft notes that the affected platforms are Windows 11 versions 23H2, 22H2, and 21H2; Windows 10 version 22H2; and Windows Server 2022.

Though it’s great that Microsoft owned up to a mistake, it concerns me that Redmond seems to be rushing these releases and, as a side effect, accidentally pushing things out to all platforms rather than just the ones with Microsoft Copilot licenses. I found this update on all unmanaged devices, whose updates come from Windows Update. Any machine managed by a patching tool such as WSUS or SCCM didn’t appear to get it.

Here’s where things stand.

Figure 1. Turn off Show suggestions occasionally in Start.

My Windows 11 OEM PC at home, with a local account, survived the April updates with no issues. So, too, did my older Windows 10 machine. So for this month, I feel confident in recommending that you install updates for April. This month does include updates for Secure Boot and BitLocker that require additional steps, but for consumer machines I advise you to ignore Microsoft’s recommendations and the six (yes, six) reboots that are required to fully implement those updates.

If you have a machine that does not have Secure Boot enabled, you won’t be at risk by skipping these steps. The only possible risk, once Microsoft finally enforces removal of certain boot certificates, is that you won’t be able to do a refresh. Personally, I don’t recommend refreshes and instead recommend that you perform repair installs to fix anything that your system has issues with — especially when it comes to updating issues.

If you are considering updating your Windows 10 PC to Windows 11, ensure that you update all sound drivers. Specifically, look for drivers for Intel SST Audio Controller prior to updating to Windows 11. Microsoft has found issues with these drivers and has placed a hold on these devices.

If you are not a fan of News and Interests, remember that you can adjust the settings. On Windows 10, right-click on the News and Interests entry on the Windows 10 taskbar. Select News and Interests on the menu that opens. To disable the feature entirely, select Turn off. You may, alternatively, reduce it to an icon-only display. You may also select Reduce taskbar updates, which lowers the frequency of taskbar updates.

For those of you with iPhones, hopefully you have by now installed iPhoneOS 17.4.1, which both fixes security issues and addresses complaints about battery life after the installation of 17.4. It’s always important to install updates — but at the same time, it’s discouraging when any vendor introduces bugs. Here’s hoping that all vendors will do a better job.

The April updates have not introduced new issues, but they haven’t fixed a lot of issues, either.

KB5037754 includes new steps to fully implement fixes. The April 9, 2024, and later updates include fixes to address elevation-of-privilege vulnerabilities with the Kerberos PAC Validation Protocol. For now, you’ll need to monitor the event logs to see which devices in your network are not updated.

Microsoft has updated KB5025885 to document the steps needed to manage the Windows Boot Manager revocations for Secure Boot changes associated with CVE-2023-24932. If you are lucky enough to have ConfigMgr, I strongly recommend reviewing the GARYTOWN blog post that shares a configuration script and provides guidance on how to manage this nearly unmanageable process.

This is definitely a long-term evolution. Microsoft will not enforce these changes until possibly later next year, but I predict that this timeline might change as they see the impact of our testing and as we provide feedback on how insanely complex and potentially disruptive this enforcement is. The company has pushed back the timeline on this implementation and added more manual steps. We will undoubtedly be revisiting this again.

Another reminder: KB5014754 will need to be monitored for long-term changes to certificate-based authentication on Windows domain controllers. In the support note, Microsoft says:

Unless updated to this mode earlier, we will update all devices to Full Enforcement mode by February 11, 2025, or later. If a certificate cannot be strongly mapped, authentication will be denied.

February 11, 2025, or later? It’s interesting how Microsoft states a firm date and then instantly pulls the rug out. My take? Microsoft isn’t giving us a firm date yet because it will be evaluating the long term-impact on our networks.

Last, but not least, last month’s bug that made Domain Controllers leak memory, triggered by the updates released March 12 and fixed with out-of-band updates released later in March, have had the fixes integrated into this month’s updates. If you held off installing the March updates on your domain controllers, you can hop over to the April updates and install them instead.

Resources

On Windows 11, if a window moves out of the screen, you have multiple ways to make it viewable again, and in this guide, I will show you two tricks to accomplish this task.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, you will notice that the system will move a window out of the screen, making it impossible to grab and move the app around the desktop, even if you re-open the application.

Windows 10 has a feature known as "Cascade windows" that organizes open windows into a diagonal stack with visible title bars that fix this issue quickly, but this option is no longer present on Windows 11. However, you still have more than one way to drag the window onto the screen again using the Task View and Move keyboard shortcuts

In this how-to guide, I will outline the different ways to drag an app window into the screen again on Windows 11.

How to move off the screen window to the desktop on Windows 11

Windows 11 provides different mechanisms to relocate a window again on the screen if it goes off the screen.

Option 1: Task View

1. Click the Taskbar's Task View button.

• Quick tip: You can also use the "Windows key + Tab" keyboard shortcut to open Task View.

2. Right-click the off-screen window and select the "Snap left" option. 

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

• Quick note: You can use any snapping location.

1. Press the Esc button to exit from the Snap Assist interface.
2. Click the title bar to drag the app anywhere on the screen.

After you complete the steps, the app window will be accessible from the desktop.

Alternatively, you can also click on the app in the Taskbar and then use the "Windows key + left or right" arrow (depending on where the window is)  multiple times until the window is again on the screen.

Option 2: Keyboard shortcut

1. Use the "Alt + Tab" keyboard shortcut.
2. While holding down the Alt key and pressing the Tab key, choose the app to move to bring it to focus.
3. Use the "Alt + Space + M" keyboard shortcut to enable the move feature.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

4. Quick note: The mouse pointer with four arrows will appear when using this feature.

5. Use the arrow keys to move the window into the screen.

Once you complete the steps, the window will be available on the screen.

Source

The new WhatsApp offline file-sharing feature was spotted by WABetaInfo and is dubbed People Nearby. The feature works like the popular Android option Nearby Share and Apple's AirDrop. The WhatsApp People Nearby feature was spotted in the WhatsApp beta app v2.24.9.22 for Android.

As per the report, WhatsApp People Nearby uses Bluetooth to transfer files between devices, hence it does not require the internet. According to the shared screenshots, there will be a dedicated People Nearby section within the WhatsApp app.

WhatsApp users would need to grant all necessary permissions for the People Nearby function to work properly. These permissions include media access, Bluetooth to find and connect to devices on the local network, and location access. The People Nearby option can be found under Settings > People Nearby.

After the necessary permissions are granted, the People Nearby will look for nearby devices. However, to be discoverable, the feature should be turned on both devices. So, you cannot start sending files to anyone by just turning the feature on for your device.

WABetaInfo notes that the WhatsApp People Nearby feature is end-to-end encrypted. Your phone number will also be hidden throughout the discovery and transfer process. The People Nearby feature is currently under development and was spotted in the latest Android beta. It is unclear if it will arrive for iOS users or when WhatsApp plans to bring the feature to all users.

Recently, in WhatsApp Android beta v 2.24.9.20, a new option was also spotted under testing that will help community group members create events for various occasions, such as online meetings.

Source

The main change that’s present in this update is the inclusion of GNOME 46. It includes improvements to the Files app, improves accessibility, and the Settings app and other core apps have been refined for better usability.

Some other GNOME improvements highlighted by Fedora Magazine include:

• Grouping of notifications by app. Now, each notification has a header. It shows the app’s name and icon. This makes it possible to see which app sent an alert. Notification now also has an expand button.
• You can now open a new window for apps pinned to the dash by adding the Ctrl modifier. For example: Super+Ctrl+1 opens a new window for the first app in the dash, complementing the existing shortcut of Super+ that launches the app itself.
• By default, Tap to Click is now enabled for touchpad.
• GNOME 46 now features Remote Login option. You can remotely connect using RDP to a new dedicated desktop session when there isn’t an active session.

One of the improvements to look out for in the Files update is the new global search feature which lets you search files across all configured locations. It even lets you search the contents of files, filter files by type and modification data, and search multiple locations at once.

The Files app has also been improved so that switching between list and grid views in Files now happens quickly, compared to the lag noticed in older versions.

Aside from GNOME 46, Fedora Workstation 40 includes performance improvements. There is reduced memory usage in search, terminal apps are significantly faster, app interfaces are more appealing, and there is experimental support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) for smoother video performance.

The VRR support has to be enabled with the following command: gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features “[‘variable-refresh-rate’]”

Finally, there is a branding change with the Atomic desktops. In the past, Fedora referred to Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea, and Onyx as immutable. Earlier this year, the Fedora Project decided to stop calling them immutable and described them as atomic instead. Fedora Sericea and Fedora Onyx are now known as Fedora Sway Atomic and Fedora Budgie Atomic, respectively.

Fedora Silverblue, the GNOME-based atomic option should be similar to Workstation but may offer more security features than Workstation but is admittedly a bit more limited. You can read Neowin’s editorial about why you should pick Fedora Silverblue 40 over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

To learn more about the new update and download the ISOs, visit the Fedora website. If you have Fedora installed, keep an eye on Software for the upgrade being made available.

Source

However, if you want to use the trick above, or some of the other ones available out there, to bypass the Windows 11 24H2 eligibility check on some really old systems, like those sporting Intel Core 2 Duo, to AMD Athlon (the original from back in the early 2000s), then you are going to be out of luck.

Microsoft recently stressed it did not block Windows Terminal on such old CPUs on purpose and there were no conspiracy theories about it. However, it does look more and more like the CPU block on the upcoming 24H2 Windows 11 version is deliberate.

For those who may not have been following the situation, enthusiasts noticed that the Windows 11 24H2 Insider builds from back in February were blocking very old unsupported CPUs from bypassing the check at the start of Setup. Known bypass methods would be stopped in their tracks from working on such old PCs.

Later on, Microsoft also added a message that said "This PC's processor doesn't support a critical feature (PopCnt)" such that users could understand what was leading to the block. PopCnt, short for population count, is an integer instruction that helps count the number of 1s in a binary representation.

Now, a newer build, 26080, seems to raise that block as CPUs without SSE4.2 are also unable to boot into Windows 11.

Something like this was expected considering Microsoft, in a previous build, 26063, had quietly added SSE4.2 to the list of compatibility blocks, and it looks like the implementation is now going into testing with some of the latest Windows 11 preview builds.

Source

What you need to know

• Microsoft is working on a new way to install apps through apps.microsoft.com.
• The new experience reduces the number of clicks required to install an app.
• The change also creates a standalone installer for each application you install through apps.microsoft.com.
• Some developers have complained about the change online, though some frustration was expressed before the change was fully documented.

Microsoft Store installers for web are here to streamline the app installation experience online. The new setup allows you to install applications from apps.microsoft.com with fewer clicks than before. Rudy Huyn, Principal Lead Architect of the Microsoft Store, explained what Microsoft changed to improve how apps are installed.

"We built an undocked version of the Store using the same logic and code as the larger app, managing prerequisites, entitlements, downloads, and installations in the same way. However, this time, it was packaged in a much smaller and undocked executable," said Huyn.

Previously, installing an app through apps.microsoft.com required clicking a second button which used deep links functionality to launch the Microsoft Store. The new setup forgoes deep links and instead extracts code needed to install the app in the form of a standalone installer.

Huyn listed several benefits of the new method of installing Microsoft Store applications:

• Only two clicks needed.
• A lightweight installer launching much faster than the Store.
• Always up-to-date and includes the latest features and supports all products, even if the Store app has not been updated for months. - Always works, even if the Store was removed.
• Supports multi-installations in parallel.

Feedback has been positive, according to Huyn. The Principal Lead Architect of the Microsoft Store said the change has resulted in a 12% increase in installations and a 54% increase in the number of applications launched after installation. Based on that feedback, Microsoft decided to expand the experiment to more markets.

A bit of controversy

(Image credit: Future)

While Huyn cited positive feedback from those who tested the feature, there are those with questions about the new experience. Several developers and X users took to the web to ask Huyn about the new method of app installation.

"Is there some way to opt out of this? One of the biggest advantages of having the "Get it From Microsoft" badge was sending users directly to the ms store, rather than having them download an exe. It may be one less click but it lowers the level of trust imo," said X user AnxiousBoi.

Huyn clarified that developers can choose how their badge in the online Microsoft Store behaves.

I understand Microsoft's reasoning for the change, but I think the end result is worse than the previous experience. Launching a mini version of the Microsoft Store allowed you to install apps through an experience that felt like an extension of the Microsoft Store. The new experience creates a separate installer for every application you install through apps.microsoft.com.

I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but having an EXE file appear in my downloads folder when installing an app feels like a step backward, not forward.

Before Microsoft documented the change, engineer Rafael Rivera expressed concern about changes to app installation through the web.

"The Microsoft Store team has started quietly wrapping apps, like EarTrumpet, with some malware-looking .NET executable wrapper (with my app's name of course) chock full of telemetry and other code. They also target netfx 4.7.2 when my app targets netfx 4.6.2, wtf?," said Rivera.

Sergio Pedri, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, clarified that the new experience is not an "executable wrapper," but that it's the new Store installer. Pedri added that the change should result in more people downloading and installing applications.

Source

Firefox 125 introduced some under-the-hood improvements to better block potentially untrustworthy URLs:

Firefox now more proactively blocks downloads from URLs that are considered to be potentially untrustworthy.

Unfortunately, that change introduced problems with downloading files in specific scenarios, which caused Mozilla to temporarily revert the change. Developers promise to fix issues and re-release download protections in future updates:

Reverted the changes recently shipped in Firefox 125 that more proactively blocked downloads from potentially untrustworthy URLs. The changes caused unexpected problems with downloading files in some situations. We plan to fix and re-enable these protections in a future release. (Bug 1892069)

More information about the bug is available on Bugzilla.

In version 125.0.2, Mozilla also acknowledged an odd problem with the browser launching a blank https://0.0.0.1 page when trying to open Firefox while it is already running.

When attempting to launch Firefox while it is already running, an extra blank tab with an address of https://0.0.0.1 may sometimes appear. The cause of this has been identified and will be resolved in an upcoming release.

Other than one change and one known issue, Firefox 125.0.2 does not bring anything new to the table. You can find full release notes on the official website. To download your existing Firefox installation, head to Menu > Help > About Firefox.

Firefox for Windows is available on the official Mozilla website. Alternatively, you can get it from the Microsoft Store using this link.

Source

Source

Tiny11 Builder is no longer tied to a specific Windows 11 build. You can use it with any version, language, and architecture. According to the developer, who goes by the @NTDEV_ handle on X, the improvements in Tiny11 Builder were made possible thanks to the better scripting capabilities of PowerShell.

Tiny11 Builder is open-source, which allows everyone to peek under the hood to understand better how the thing works. It uses only Microsoft-made utilities, such as DISM or oscdimg.exe, which is a part of the Windows ADK:

My main goal is to use only Microsoft utilities like DISM, and no utilities from external sources. The only executable included is oscdimg.exe, which is provided in the Windows ADK and it is used to create bootable ISO images. Also included is an unattended answer file, which is used to bypass the Microsoft Account on OOBE and to deploy the image with the /compact flag. It's open-source, so feel free to add or remove anything you want! Feedback is also much appreciated.

Since the updated Tiny11 Builder uses PowerShell, you should set the execution policy to unrestricted before using the project. To do so, run PowerShell as Administrator and execute the Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted command.

You can download Tiny11 Builder from its GitHub repository. Before you proceed, remember that only the official Windows images from Microsoft are 100% safe. If you want to tinker with the OS beyond what Microsoft allows, you should accept potential risks and complications and keep in mind that only you are the one responsible for your system.

Source

But there is another way that is way simpler and doesn't require you to have a USB or a disc at your disposal or go through some advanced steps to get your PC to a working state. You can use the "Fix Problems using Windows Update" feature, which does exactly what it says. This feature was quietly added with the Windows 11 Moment 5 update that rolled out earlier this month.

Reinstall Windows 11 using Windows Update

1. Click on the Start menu button on the bottom-left corner of the taskbar, and select Settings. You can also right-click on the Start menu button and select Settings from the list of options, or press the Win + I keys to access the Settings menu directly.
2. Select System from the left pane of the Settings menu.

   

    

3. On the right side, scroll down and click on Recovery.

   

    

4. On the next page, you will see the option Fix problems using Windows Update, which is described as a feature that would "Reinstall your current version of Windows (your apps, files, and settings will be preserved)".

   

    

5. Click on the Reinstall now button next to the Fix problems using Windows Update option.

   

    

6. A confirmation pop-up will appear. You can check the box next to Automatically restart my PC 15 minutes after installation option and click OK.

   

    

7. After that, your PC will reboot and the repair will initiate.

This process of reinstalling Windows 11 using Windows Update is a safe and easy way to resolve issues if your PC is throwing tantrums, usually after you have installed a Windows update. Besides, it doesn't delete your files, apps, or settings.

Keep in mind that if you are using a PC or laptop that is controlled or managed by your work or school, the option to Fix problems using Windows Update won't be available on your PC. Moreover, the option may also be unavailable if your PC is running a version earlier than Windows 11 with the 2022 annual update, and should have the February 2024 optional update or above to get this feature working.

If you are old school and love how things looked in Windows 10, then you can check out our guide that details how you can get back the old Task Manager on Windows 11. You can also restore the old Notepad using our dedicated guide.

Source

If you want to turn down or up the brightness on your laptop or desktop computer, Windows 11 offers multiple methods to complete this configuration.

You can complete this configuration from the Quick Settings flyout, Settings app, keyboard shortcut, monitor's built-in controls, and more. The key is knowing where to find the options and when to use each. 

For example, you should always use the built-in controls on external monitors since you don't want to change the brightness with software artificially. Also, many options won't be available on Windows 11 if you have an external monitor. 

On the other hand, on laptops, you won't have access to the built-in controls, so in this case, the operating system will make the options available to adjust the brightness.

In this how-to guide, I will share the different ways to change the brightness on your computer regardless of its form factor.

How to turn brightness level down or up on Windows 11

On your desktop computer or laptop, you can use software and hardware controls to adjust the brightness level of the display.

Quick Settings 

To turn down or up the screen brightness from the Quick Settings flyout, use these steps:

1. Click the Quicks Settings button in the Taskbar. 

• Quick tip: You can also use the "Windows key + A" keyboard shortcut.

2. Turn the brightness level down (or up) according to your preference with the slider.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

Display settings

To change the brightness from the Settings app, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on System.
3. Click the Display page on the right side.
4. Turn the brightness level down (or up) with the slider under the "Brightness & color" section.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

5. (Optional) Click the Brightness setting.
6. Choose the "Off," "Always," or "On Battery Only" option from the "Change brightness based on content" setting to allow the operating system to adjust the intensity based on the content on the screen.

Power & battery 

To lower the brightness intensity on your laptop, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on System.
3. Click the Power & battery page on the right side.
4. Click the "Battery saver" setting under the "Battery" section.
5. Select when the feature should turn on automatically when the battery drops to a specific percentage.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

5. Turn on the "Lower screen brightness when using battery saver" toggle switch.

Graphics app

Graphics card manufacturers (such as Nvidia and AMD) include applications to manage card settings and usually include the option to change the screen brightness. 

These instructions show how to change the brightness using the Nvidia Control Panel: 

1. Open Start.
2. Search for the Nvidia Control Panel and click the result to open the app.
3. Click on "Adjust desktop color settings" from the left pane.
4. Change the intensity with the brightness slider.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

Control Panel 

You can also use the legacy Control Panel to change the Windows 11 brightness through the Mobile Center, and here's how:

1. Open Start.
2. Search for Control Panel and click the top result to open the app.
3. Click on System and Security.
4. Click on Power Options.

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

5. Click the Windows Mobility Center option from the bottom-left corner. 

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

• Quick tip: You can always right-click the Start button and select the "Mobility Center" option.

6. Change the intensity with the brightness slider.

Keyboard shortcut 

To lower the brightness using a keyboard shortcut, use the dedicated function keys on the top row. Each manufacturer is different, but they usually assign brightness options to the "F1" (lower) and "F2" (increase) or "F2" and "F3."

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

If you have changed the functionality of the function keys to execute corresponding keys, you may have to press and hold the "FN" key + one of the function keys from the top row, including "F1," "F2," "F3," etc.

Screen built-in controls

If your desktop computer or laptop is connected to an external monitor, you shouldn't be using the software settings. You should be using the built-in controls on the monitor. 

(Image credit: Mauro Huculak)

The built-in controls (or OSD menu) can be found on the left, right, bottom, or back side of the monitor. Once you open the menu, navigate the available settings until you find the brightness option, and use the physical controls to turn down or up the intensity level.

Once you complete the steps, the brightness level will lower or increase according to your configuration.

Source

The change was announced in a lengthy post on X by Rudy Huyn. The logic behind the new web installer is to make app downloads work faster and require fewer actions. Previously, if you wanted to install a program using the web version of the Store, you had to make three clicks: one on the website, one for the deep-link dialog, and one on the Store's mini-window.

Such a complex process was there to combat malicious scripts at the cost of user experience. Now, the new "undocked version of the Store" lets you use smaller standalone installers with the same logic as the Microsoft Store app. One downloadable package can manage prerequisites, entitlements, downloads, and installations.

The new approach provides several benefits. Downloading an app now requires just two clicks—one click to download a package and one click to launch it. Lightweight installers work faster than the Microsoft Store app, plus they are always up-to-date, even on systems with very old Store versions or without it at all. Finally, you can use new web installers to get several apps at once.

According to the post from Rudy Huyn, the initial feedback from early consumer and developer testers showed an increase in installations and app launches:

The feedback from developers and users who participated in the initial three rounds of our experiment has been extremely positive, and the results clearly demonstrate this. This new method of installing Store applications has, on average, led to a 12% increase in installations and a 54% increase in the number of applications launched after installation.

Developers who use the "Get it from Microsoft" badge for their apps can specify what happens when users click the badge and opt out of the new experience to redirect users to the Microsoft Store instead of downloading a new web installer.

You can find more information about the latest Microsoft Store update on X.

Source

For people who use Word on nearly all platforms, it looks like it will be integrating Microsoft's AI-generated image maker Designer sometime in June with the help of Copilot. The roadmap states:

Copilot in Word now integrates with Designer to help you find the perfect image or create a banner to bring your document to life.

Designer is coming to the desktop, Mac, web, and iOS versions of Word. There's no listing on the roadmap site for Designer coming to the Android Word app yet.

Another Copilot-related feature that will be added to Word platforms later in April is Bing search integration:

Ask Copilot a question in Word chat and Copilot generates an answer using the power of integrated Bing search. And you never have to leave the app.

That feature is coming to the desktop, Mac, and web editions of Word. Those versions of the word processing app will also add integrated Copilot Graph-grounded search features in April as well.

In May, the desktop and Mac versions of Word will add another Copilot function:

Use Draft with Copilot in Word with the on-canvas Copilot menu when a user selects text, a list, or a table, which generates new content from Copilot and provides a richer, more interactive experience.

Copilot will also be a part of a web update for Excel in May:

Additional support for complex conditional formats beyond the basic top and bottom or conditional operators. For example, Copilot analyzes two factors when highlighting all rows where the product is bikes and sales is greater than 100.

In June, the new Outlook for Windows and the web will get some new copy and paste keyboard shortcuts:

Users will be able to copy and paste emails in Outlook using the shortcuts Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, allowing them to quickly transfer emails to the desired folder, streamlining workflow, and enhancing productivity.

Finally, the Microsoft Teams Calls app will get some AI features in June for all platforms:

The Calls app in Teams will soon have AI-generated notes and action items from your calls, so you can pay attention to your conversations and save time coordinating next steps. Intelligent call recap will work for both VoIP and PSTN calls, and summaries will be generated from calls for which transcription was enabled.

That's our look back at the past week on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site. We will return next Sunday with another installment.

Source

However, as it turns out, it looks like this bypass trick works for non-LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) as well, as discovered by the same Twitter (now X) user and tech enthusiast, Bob Pony. However, it seems to work only on the latest Windows 11 version, 24H2.

As many of you already know, the Windows 11 system requirements have always been a bone of contention among enthusiasts and users alike as Microsoft deemed relatively new processors (at that time), like Intel's 7th gen (Kaby Lake) and AMD's first-gen Ryzen (1000 series), as incompatible. These were fairly capable CPUs and would have easily been able to run Windows 11.

However, these chips, and anything older, did not possess certain security features that the Redmond giant felt were crucial in order to run its latest OS. From time to time, the company updates the CPU list as new products are released. The latest update was made in March this year.

Aside from CPUs, TPM version 2.0 was also made mandatory. Again, Microsoft reasoned that such were the strict security characteristics Windows 11 brought. The recently announced AI PCs now include Microsoft Pluton to improve on that, though this is not a mandatory requirement.

Regardless, people have continued to use bypasses so as to be able to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. Interestingly, Microsoft, too, made a registry bypass official, though with a fair amount of warning.

Back in October 2023, we reported about a single command trick that allowed users to bypass the Windows 11 system requirements check during the setup process. While we only came across it in October, this trick had been doing the rounds since back in 2022.

Source

The other is also a former Windows engineer who labeled the performance of the Start menu as "comically bad" and wanted to bring the company's attention towards the apparent general 'unfinished' state of Windows 11.

However, there is some positive development too. The Start menu on the newest Beta build, 22635.3500 (KB5036985), launched earlier today introduces grouping by letters in the "All apps" option in the Windows 11 Start menu. This should make it much more convenient to navigate through and find apps. It also looks far less cluttered.

And this is in addition to the newly announced Microsoft Account (MSA) manager feature being added to the Start menu. The build also brings the ability to add MSA recovery mail address.

Here is how the new Start menu with apps sorted by letters looks like (courtesy of Windows enthusiast and X user PhantomOcean3😞

This is not the first instance in recent times that Microsoft is making a welcome Windows 11 Start menu change. Towards the end of last month, hidden inside Beta build 22635.3420, it introduced the grid view for the All Apps section, making it a lot easier to quickly navigate or scroll through the apps.

As mentioned, that was a highly requested feature and several of them happened to be related to the Start menu indicating that users want more changes here.

Hence, this continuous effort to improve the Start menu design is certainly something users will likely appreciate, considering the recent negative press coverage it garnered as a consequence of its stance towards adding ads and promos.

Source

One of them called out the "comically bad" performance of Windows 11 and tried to draw the tech giant's attention towards the seemingly 'unfinished' state of the OS. Another ex-Windows head made a sarcastic comment at the company right after it started testing more ads and promos on the Start menu.

There are also instances where veterans share some interesting stories about various Windows components and how they came to be. Last month, Dave William Plummer, the author of several key Windows components and features like the Task Manager and Zip support, shared how he bought a Corvette at that time and that it was related to his work on the latter. You can read about that here.

However, the Corvette was not a coincidence as Plummer has revealed in his new post which serves as a back-story. The luxury sports car was one of those things that motivated him when he was coding during the nights. The Microsoft residential area at that time had a person owning a 3,000 sq. ft. house with a Corvette parked in the driveway, and Plummer liked that, so much so that he said he plastered the Corvette's image on his monitor as a way to drive him so that he could one day drive a Corvette too.

Dave Plummer in his early days at Microsoft (Image credit: Dave Plummer)

If you are wondering what made him work at night, the ZIPFolders project was a side hustle Plummer was working on outside of his day job at Microsoft. It was inspired by an MSJ (Microsoft Systems Journal) magazine sample "Big GAK".

If you are wondering about moonlighting clauses, Plummer says Microsoft was fine with working on the side with the manager's approval as long as it was not on a product that was competing with the company, which was standard.

The friction started when Microsoft noticed Plummer began selling this shell extension program as a shareware called "Visual Zip" and someone at Microsoft took offence over it and complained to HR.

What was funny about the situation was that Microsoft did not seem aware at that time that a Microsoft employee was doing this as a side hustle and as such the company was looking into acquiring the Visual Zip developer.

Ultimately, things resolved when Dave Plummer realized that it would be futile to refuse Microsoft's deal about adding the Zip component into Windows as that would mean he would not only have lost his job at Microsoft but also have had to compete with the company as he was working on competing products.

Hence, initial Zip support finally landed in Microsoft Plus! 95, which was an enhanced version of Windows 95, and it got better in Windows 98 and 2000.

If you find the bygone era of Windows and its apps interesting then you can read this story we covered recently wherein a talented geek painstakingly ported "thousands of apps" to Windows 95.

Source: Dave Plummer (X / Twitter)

Source

This month we are half a year from the 20th anniversary of Ubuntu, it also coincides with the release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, but I have to say, it’s not the new shiny distro I would choose to install. Instead I would opt for a specific version of Fedora 40, namely, Fedora Silverblue 40, also out this month.

A bit of history

If you’ve only used Linux from around 2012 onward, there’s a good chance you’ve had an easy time installing and setting things up; this is because lots of effort has gone into making installers easy to use and in many cases, third-party software and drivers now get installed out-of-box.

Things haven’t always been this way, however, getting Linux up and running used to be a real chore. This is one of the things Canonical wanted to resolve with Ubuntu, it wanted to make Linux easier for users.

When I started using Linux, I started on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS about a month after it came out and it was OK depending on the hardware I chose to install it on. It wasn’t anywhere as near as straightforward as it is nowadays, but it was a big improvement on the state of things prior to Ubuntu’s existence.

Another notable event from the past

As a full-time Linux user, Spring 2008, when I discovered Linux, is something I can quite vividly remember. Another event I remember about 18 months after this was when Google held a keynote introducing ChromeOS and several follow-up videos it released showing off the architecture and the big advancements in security and stability that ChromeOS offered over traditional operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux.

As we all know, one of the major issues with ChromeOS is that it’s a web-first system. While this becomes less of an issue as time marches forward, it is still an issue. It seemed like if you needed a fully-fledged desktop, you’d need to stick to a less securely architectured operating system.

A better architecture for full desktops

Although I only discovered it much later, the Fedora Project released an “atomic” version of its desktop operating system alongside Fedora 28 in May 2018. Called Fedora Silverblue, this edition of Fedora Workstation is a full, but immutable, operating system.

Immutable doesn’t mean you can’t do anything, of course you can install your programs and transfer your documents, what it refers to is the underlying system; the things you ideally don’t want mucking up.

With this read-only architecture for the base of the system, it means that you get a more stable system that is less prone to bugs. Atop this rock-solid base, you are strongly encouraged and more or less railroaded into using Flatpak versions of programs meaning they’re all containerized into their own little box separate from the base system boosting your system’s security.

On top of this, Fedora Silverblue grabs the latest software updates for you almost immediately after you’ve logged into your session; GNOME Software is set up by default to download updates automatically and they’re installed the next time your shut down your computer; this makes sure your software is fresh and less likely to be exploited.

Just some of the programs in GNOME Software.

As it uses something called OSTree, Fedora Silverblue has a nifty little feature that saves a previous version of your system (before the latest updates), which you can always roll back to if you notice that anything has broken. This snapshotting feature is also useful if you decide to jump between different atomic versions of Fedora, that’s a bit more advanced, but you can read about it in the Fedora Docs (check out the last three paragraphs of the upgrading section).

To me, the improvements brought about by Fedora Silverblue and the other atomic versions (one for most of the other desktop environments) deliver much of what Google was promising with ChromeOS to the traditional desktop scene. I would also say that the introduction of atomic desktops does for security just what Ubuntu did for ease-of-use 20 years ago.

Your choice this month

The Fedora Project is lining up the Fedora 40 series for release on April 23 while Canonical is set to release Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on April 25. While there is an argument to choose Ubuntu if you want to stay on one release for many years as opposed to upgrading every 13 months, I think most people would benefit by opting for Fedora Silverblue.

Not only do you get a better security setup, but Fedora also ships with newer software in some cases, such as the GNOME desktop environment. For end users, this option is probably the most ideal, while there is a case for Ubuntu’s fewer changes in business and possibly education settings.

My experience with Fedora Silverblue

I have only come across Fedora Silverblue relatively recently, but I have to say, when stacked up against other systems like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, it is my favourite. Not only do I appreciate the added security and more punctual update settings, but it has also been pretty pleasant to run on this resource-strangled laptop.

Another thing I like about Fedora in general is the Fedora Writer tool to get the Silverblue installation media set up. Fedora Writer is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux - it lets you select the version of Fedora you want and which USB stick you want to write it to, it then downloads the OS, verifies it, writes it to the media, and then verifies the installation media to ensure it’s not corrupted.

The security of obtaining Fedora Silverblue via Fedora Writer plus the implicit security of Fedora Silverblue make it an extremely resilient choice, especially when the number of cyber attacks are ever-increasing. For those who don’t remember, the Linux Mint website was compromised eight years ago and a malicious ISO was replaced by the legitimate one; this incident helped push the need for verifying ISO images, which Fedora Writer does automatically.

A potential drawback of Fedora Silverblue for some users is its reliance on Flatpaks. If you use a lot of desktop applications, you may possibly find a piece of software unavailable. I would recommend checking Flathub to see whether a Flatpak package exists for all the software you need but there is a lot available so most people should be covered.

If you do find all of your apps in Flathub, the best way to install them after setup is to search for them in the Software utility that comes with Fedora and do a search; everything that’s on Flathub is in Software too.

Based on my usage of Fedora Silverblue 39 over the last few months, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. I think my biggest gripe (it’s really not that much of an issue) is just after I log in and the system decides to grab available updates. Also, for anyone that uses Firefox, you'll want to install the Flatpak version of Firefox from Mozilla in GNOME Software so that you don't have any issues with video playback on the web, it will also be free of Fedora's customisations to that browser.

This particular laptop struggles a bit due to the nature of the CPU (1.1Ghz dual core), so when the updates start to download and I’m attempting to open the browser things can get a bit sticky but generally this resolves quickly and the device is fast(ish) again. Most people shouldn’t run into this issue if they’ve bought a decent computer in the last decade.

One unknown to me is how well a big upgrade of Silverblue will go, I’ll first get to try this when Fedora Silverblue 40 is released later this month. If it’s anything like the updates though, I don’t expect any issues at all.

Here are my laptops specs, in case you were wondering

Seeing as I've mentioned my laptop's hardware, I thought it would be fitting to share more details about the particular laptop I'm using to experience Fedora Silverblue. I have previously run Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and to a limited degree, Windows 10 on it so have seen how each runs on here.

Some of the key specs are as follows:

• CPU: Intel® Celeron® N4000 (1.1 GHz) × 2
• Memory: 4.0 GB
• Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 600 (GLK 2)
• DIsk Space: 500 GB

As you can see, the RAM should be sufficient for running an operating system and a couple of apps and in fact know that it is sufficient because I've watched the memory manager not even get full while the machine is struggling; it's all down to that underpowered, dual-core, dual thread CPU.

Of all the operating systems, Windows 10 and Ubuntu were definitely the heaviest feeling. If I recall correctly, there was a super irritating bug I ran into with Ubuntu where the whole system would lock up when trying to transfer my data to a back up.

The Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint was good, better than one of the supposedly lighter spins in fact, but still not as smooth as Fedora Silverblue has been for me.

I'm not too sure if it's GNOME's way of handing things or what, but Fedora Silverblue seems to throttle background apps to enable the maximum performance of the program that is in view. This feels slightly different compared to other operating systems that I've used and it really does benefit this laptop greatly.

The fact that Fedora Silverblue runs great on my under-powered laptop, highlights that it should be a great choice for most hardware people try to install it on. This fact leads well into the next point I want to discuss.

A solution for computers that don’t support Windows 11

This editorial has included a good chunk of reminiscing. In the time since I discovered Linux in 2008, many of our computing activities are done online, heck, I’m even writing this article up in Google Docs, a web browser-based office suite. With this trend away from desktop applications, the fact that Linux doesn’t support some Windows programs is not as much of an issue, and, by the way, Linux offers some great alternatives in a lot of cases.

The analyst firm Canalys reported in December that a massive 240 million PCs could end up in landfills after Windows 10 expires in October 2025 as people upgrade their machines to get Windows 11. Put frankly, this is an environmental disaster seeing as many of these PCs have no issues whatsoever except the fact that they don’t meet some arbitrary requirements.

With this in mind, I would recommend Fedora Silverblue to anyone who is facing the Windows 10 End of Life dilemma. Even if you do decide to get another machine for Windows 11, at least you’d have a backup computer or you could give it away to friends or family as a hand-me-down in the full knowledge that it’s running a secure operating system.

What about Ubuntu?

Look, I like Ubuntu but its core is still much what it was 20 years ago when it came out, overly reliant on deb packages. Canonical has also failed to convince the community of the benefits of snap packages, just as it failed with the Unity desktop. So, I think with Fedora’s more developed atomic desktop and without the politics around snap, Fedora Silverblue 40 stands as the better distribution to choose this April over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Hopefully, the Fedora Project pushes on with its atomic desktops and moves to make them the default option and I hope Canonical sits up and pays attention and makes a similar move too. As things stand, Canonical doesn’t offer anything equivalent to Fedora Silverblue for desktop users, which is a shame, I’d like them to move in that direction, or at least have it as an alternative to the main version of Ubuntu.

Concluding remarks

Unless something very nasty happens during the upgrade to Fedora Silverblue 40, I have to say that I’m fully sold on Fedora Silverblue. I have used Ubuntu and Linux Mint extensively over the past decade, and for me, neither of them match Silverblue. It finally feels like we have most of the security advantages of ChromeOS with a full desktop experience.

If you’ve got experience with Fedora Silverblue, I am keen to hear your views about it and whether you’ve had any significant issues, let me know in the comments section. If you’re looking to upgrade or change your computer’s operating system this month, which way are you going to go? Ubuntu, Fedora Silverblue, or a third option?

Source