This feature was discovered by a Reddit user named u/MrElectrifyer, who noticed it while trying to switch to Picture in Picture mode. This user found that the “Copy Video Frame” option captures the video frame in its original resolution. It could be particularly useful for content creators or anyone who wants to share high-quality stills from videos.

In addition, Microsoft revealed more features to its Edge browser. One upcoming feature is the Smart Find, set for a September release. This feature improves user search experiences by suggesting related words and phrases, even if the initial search term is misspelled. This could potentially save users time and effort when searching for information online.

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You can toggle between Build 22621 and Build 22631 by enabling "Get the latest updates as soon as they are available" in Windows Update. To leave the more experimental features of Build 22631, turn the setting off, and the next available build will update to Build 22621.

First up, here are the Changes and Improvements in Build 22631.2265

[Emoji]

• With the update of our colour font format to COLRv1, Windows is now able to display richer emoji with a 3D like appearance with support coming soon to some apps and browsers. These emoji use gradients to bring the design style that our customers have been asking for. The new emoji will bring more expression to your communications.

   

[Settings]

• The new Settings homepage which began rolling out with last week’s Beta Channel flight should now be available to all Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel.

   

Here are all the Fixes in 22631.2265

[General]

• Fixed an issue causing explorer.exe to crash on the login screen when attempting to enter safe mode.

   

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• Fixed an issue which was causing apps in the taskbar to appear cut off without a rounded corner on the end when you had a lot of app windows open and the taskbar was set to not combine.

   

• Fixed an explorer.exe crash impacting taskbar appearing correctly after powering on your device.

   

[File Explorer]

• Fixed a few crashes impacting File Explorer launch reliability.

• Did some work to help improve File Explorer launch performance in certain scenarios.

• Fixed an issue where the icons on the desktop may all go blank.

• Fixed an issue where using the Reset Folders button in Folder Options could cause explorer.exe to crash.

• Fixed an issue where if you tried to copy and paste a file out of a compressed folder and into a OneDrive folder might fail with an error code.

• Fixed an issue which was causing File Explorer to crash when navigating to Gallery if you had a large number of images.

• Fixed an issue where saving files to OneDrive locations in File Explorer could take a very long time, making it seem like the app you were saving from had become unresponsive, in the latest Insider builds.

• Fixed an issue where “Automatically type into the Search Box” wasn’t working when File Explorer was open to Home.

• Fixed an issue where the chevrons in the File Explorer address bar were pointing in the wrong direction if your display language was set to Arabic or Hebrew.

   

[Settings]

• Fixed an issue which was causing some labels to be missing across various places in Settings in the last couple flights.

• Did some work to help improve the performance of opening Settings for Insiders with the new Home page.

   

[Dev Drive]

• Fixed an issue where Dev Drives might not auto-mount after upgrading to a new build, causing apps that tried to access them to not work.

• Improved error messages if Dev Drives fail to format.

   

[Task Manager]

• Fixed an issue where if you did a search and then cleared it, the view would still be filtered.

• Fixed an issue which was causing sporadic crashes when using Task Manager, including when ending tasks.

• Fixed an issue where the search icon could become overlapped with the Task Manager text in the title bar.

• Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to move the Task Manager window with touch or pen.

   

There's just one Known issue

[Narrator]

• You may see some of the strings are NOT localized to the selected language. This will be fixed in a future flight.

   

And, no you are not reading it wrong, this flight did not include any new features or fixes in build 22621.2265.

You can check out the full blog post here.

Source

Microsoft stated in the blog:

The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows you to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences.

Microsoft has also made some changes to the user interface in Teams Phones. There's now a redesigned dial pad along with a new “dial pad only” viewpoint when a phone is in landscape mode.

Microsoft has also made some changes to the chat message hover menu in Teams:

Replying to a specific message in a chat thread or editing a message you’ve sent is now easier with an intuitive hover menu design. Alongside emojis and reactions, the hover menu now includes the reply button icon, making it easy to quickly reply to a received message. If you need to make an edit to a sent message, simply click on the edit icon button that shows up in the hover menu on sent messages.

Teams chat can also be switched over to a new compact mode that, among other things, adds things like time stamps and extra line breaks between each message. It also includes indicators of who sent messages.

Teams Rooms also now support spatial audio, which we first reported on at the beginning of August. Microsoft has also added a new sync feature to task lists in Microsoft Loop. It stated:

Tasks added to task lists in Microsoft Loop components will now be accessible in Microsoft Planner and To Do. Simply edit your task list component in Outlook or Teams and your changes will appear across apps, helping you stay on top of your tasks no matter which app you're in.

There's a lot more to check out in the Teams August 2023 blog update, including a number of new third-party Teams hardware devices.

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Here is the changelog:

Changes and Improvements

[Graphics]

In this Insider Preview build, you may notice that there have been some changes in the advanced display settings page via Settings > System > Display > Advanced display. Dynamic refresh rate can now be enabled via a toggle. After being enabled, Windows will then dynamically adjust the refresh rate up to the selected rate to help save power. Click here for more information on Dynamic refresh rate.

Additionally, we’ve made small changes to help bring awareness to limitations (related to the display or the cable being used) that may not allow you to set a high refresh rate while being on a high display resolution. When selecting a refresh rate, you may notice some refresh rates will show an asterisk. That means that in order to select that specific refresh rate, the display resolution will need to be changed to one that supports the selected refresh rate. This behavior happens when there are limitations due to the cable or the display’s capabilities and is not new, but we wanted to make sure you were aware of it.

[Cast]

Building off the Cast improvements introduced with Build 25926, we have updated the Cast flyout in Quick Settings with additional support for you in case you face any trouble discovering nearby displays, fixing connections, and more.

Cast flyout in Quick Settings now shows link for troubleshooting

device discovery and other casting issues.

[Settings]

The graph at the top of the Power & Battery page in Settings has been removed. Insiders can continue to see a graph of battery usage in the battery usage section further down the page. The Power & battery settings page is also no longer broken up by “Power” and “Battery” sections.

Fixes for known issues

• Fixed issues impacting the File Explorer context menu and command bar dropdowns, causing them to become transparent, and not work with touch.

• Fixed issues impacting File Explorer launch reliability.

• Fixed issues causing the Japanese and Chinese IMEs to not work properly in certain apps, and to not work correctly in the File Explorer search box.

• Fixed an issue causing Settings to crash when looking at detailed battery usage.

• The new options for tuning intensity and colour boost of colour Filters now have labels.

You can check out the full blog post here.

Source

The full changelog of the new build is given below:

[Windows Copilot]

• Fixed an issue that was causing the Windows Copilot icon in the taskbar to be flipped backwards for right-to-left languages.

   

[Taskbar]

• Fixed an explorer.exe crash impacting taskbar appearing correctly after powering on your device.

   

• Fixed an issue which was causing apps in the taskbar to appear cut off without a rounded corner on the end when you had a lot of app windows open, and the taskbar was set to not combine.

   

[Live captions]

• Fixed an issue that was causing live captions to sometimes show the same line of text twice.

   

[Input]

• Fixed a high hitting ctfmon.exe crash in recent flights, which may have impacted the ability to type for some Insiders.

   

[Settings]

• Did some work to help improve the performance of opening Settings for Insiders with the new Home page.

   

[Task Manager]

• Fixed an issue that could cause Task Manager to crash when using the end task option in the Details page recent builds.

   

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.

And here are the Known Issues:

[Start menu]

• Some apps under All apps on the Start menu, such as PWA apps installed via Microsoft Edge, may incorrectly be labeled as a system component.

   

[Search on the Taskbar]

• Sometimes the tooltip when mousing over the search box does not match the current search highlight.

   

[Input]

• [NEW] Unicode Emoji 15support which began rolling out with Build 23475and the updated colour font format with COLRv1 support that began rolling out with Build 23506 no longer appear after updating to Build 23531 due to a bug. This issue will be fixed in a future flight soon.

   

[Windows Copilot]

• You can use Alt + Tab to switch out of Windows Copilot, but not back into it. Windows + C will move focus back to Windows Copilot

   

• When first launching or after refreshing Copilot while using voice access you’ll need to use “Show grid” commands to click in the “Ask me anything” box for the first time.

You can find the official blog post here.

Source

AMD's testing had been done on its high-end RX 7900XTX and RX 7900XT GPUs, with both cards performing 16% better in Starfield with the new 23.8.2 driver compared to 23.8.1. The game had been running at 4K during these tests, though exact FPS and graphics settings have not been shared.

The rest of the testing rig had contained a Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, and 32GB DDR5 RAM, with everything running on Windows 11. The company also noted that setting Dynamic Resolution in Starfield to 75-78% range while running ultra-wide monitors can cause driver timeouts or visual corruption. AMD is working with Bethesda to resolve this and recommends players to set a different Dynamic Resolution if the issue pops up.

Starfield goes live on September 1 for Premium and Constellation Edition owners across Xbox Series X|S and PC. Standard edition buyers as well as Game Pass subscribers will gain access to the sci-fi RPG on September 6. While delayed compared to other platforms, preloading is now live for the Steam version too.

Coming back to the driver, the 23.8.2 release has a single fix included in it, which is carrying good news for some Baldur's Gate 3 players:

• Application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Baldur's Gate 3 with DirectX® 11 API set on certain systems with Radeon™ RX 7000 series GPUs.

Known issues are these:

• Performance Metrics Overlay may report N/A for FPS on various games.
• Audio may intermittently become out of sync with video when recording from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition with AV1 codec.
• Display may not reach correct brightness with certain games on select SAMSUNG™ FreeSync Premium Pro monitors or TVs with local dimming setting enabled.

The new WHQL-certified AMD Adrenalin Edition 23.8.2 driver is now available to AMD Radeon users. It can be upgraded to via the Radeon Settings app on Windows. A standalone download link can be found on the release notes page here.

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There is a dedicated blog post for this new release. However, it has the same release notes as the previous one for build 25931. Having said that here is the changelog:

What's New

• Azure Arc-enabled Servers onboarding experience is now available in the latest Windows Server Insider Desktop build. Find the new Azure Arc icon in the system tray (bottom right corner of the taskbar). Try installing and configuring the (free) Azure Connected Machine Agent using the Azure Arc Setup wizard that can be launched from the system tray icon. Once Azure Arc is enabled on your server, find status information in the system tray icon.

• Server Datacenter Insiders! Take Terminal command line utility on Windows Server for a test run! Search for "Terminal" on the latest Server Datacenter Insider build and launch the application.

• Storage Replica Enhanced Log is now available in the latest Windows Server Insider build. Enhanced Log provides improved performance for block replication by removing file system abstractions – and their performance costs – from the Storage Replica log implementation. More info, and deployment instruction, is available on Learn: link.

Known Issues

• If you are validating upgrades from Windows Server 2019 or 2022, we do not recommend that you use this build as intermittent upgrade failures have been identified for this build.

• This build has an issue where archiving eventlogs with "wevetutil al" command causes the Windows Event Log service to crash, and the archive operation to fail. The service must be restarted by executing "Start-Service EventLog" from an administrative command line prompt.

• If you have Secure Launch/DRTM code path enabled, we do not recommend that you install this build.

The Windows Server Preview currently is on the same build number as the current Windows 11 Insider Canary channel, which might indicate we won't see a new Server version until next year when Windows 12 is expected to be released.

Here's some more important info on this release:

Available Downloads

Downloads to certain countries may not be available. See Microsoft suspends new sales in Russia - Microsoft On the Issues

• Windows Server Long-Term Servicing Channel Preview in ISO format in 18 languages, and in VHDX format in English only.

• Windows Server Datacenter Azure Edition Preview in ISO and VHDX format, English only.

• Microsoft Server Languages and Optional Features Preview

Keys: Keys are valid for preview builds only

• Server Standard: MFY9F-XBN2F-TYFMP-CCV49-RMYVH

• Datacenter: 2KNJJ-33Y9H-2GXGX-KMQWH-G6H67

• Azure Edition does not accept a key

Symbols: available on the public symbol server – see Using the Microsoft Symbol Server.

Expiration: This Windows Server Preview will expire on September 15, 2023.

You can download the build here, and find the official announcement here.

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Microsoft’s latest bid to compete with the dominant Google Chrome browser is to remove features from its own Edge browser – rather than adding them.

Since 2020, Edge has been based on the same Chromium engine as Chrome, and since then, Microsoft has been trying to tempt users of Google’s browser to switch to Edge by adding a considerable amount of unique features to differentiate the product.

While some of these features have been welcome additions, such as the handy Split screen view, others have been less successful. Not only have these additional features failed to win over Chrome users, but it’s left Edge feeling bloated and overcrowded.

It seems like Microsoft has realized that an over-stuffed Edge is doing more harm than good to its ambitions to increase its market share of web browsers, which may be why, as Neowin reports, Microsoft is killing off some of the less-used features in Edge.

Slimming down

In an announcement for the release of Edge 117 for people signed up to the Beta Channel, Microsoft has explained: “To improve end user experience and simplify the More tools menu, the following features are being deprecated: Math Solver, Picture Dictionary, Citations, Grammar Tools, and Kids Mode.”

If you’ve never heard of any of those features, then you’re not alone – it seems few people bothered to use them, hence why they have found their way onto the chopping block.

The only feature that sounds remotely useful in that list is Kids Mode, which was introduced at the start of 2021, and was designed to make browsing the web safer for children.

However, it appears few parents were interested in the feature, and I can’t imagine many people mourning the loss of Math Solver – whatever that was. While Edge 117 is currently only available to beta testers, it’s planned to roll out to all users on September 14, 2023.

Having a more streamlined browser means Edge will be easier to use (Microsoft specifically says simplifying the crowded ‘More tools’ menu is one main reason for this cull), and it should also hopefully make Edge perform better as well.

While this doesn’t mean Microsoft is going to stop adding features to Edge (the upcoming version actually adds some new features, as well as killing off those unused ones), if the company really wants its browser to win over Chrome users, offering a simple, fast and light alternative would be a great selling point.

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The European Commission launched the investigation in July to see whether the US tech giant was "abusing and defending its market position" by bundling the software together.

If the commission probe finds against Microsoft, the company could face a hefty fine or other ordered remedies.

In a bid to address the concerns, Microsoft will unbundle Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European Economic Area and Switzerland from October 1, the company's vice president on European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, said.

Customers will now be able to buy the software without Teams at a lower price, she added.

"We are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission's investigation continues and we cooperate with it," Linde wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft bundles Teams with its cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, which include its popular Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Excel programmes.

Teams is a platform that allows users to communicate through messages, video calls and file sharing.

The trigger for the commission's probe was a July 2020 complaint from Slack, a US startup competitor to Teams which has since been bought by the company Salesforce.

The commission had also expressed concerns that Microsoft may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and rival products.

Microsoft will now make it easier for rivals' software to work with the firm's own.

There is no set deadline for the EU's investigation to be completed.

"We will continue to engage with the commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe," Linde said.

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VPNs, or virtual private networks, are versatile privacy tools that can improve multiple aspects of your online experience, especially when it comes to streaming TV, sports and movies. But what about gaming? Video games are increasingly online these days, especially as multiplayer genres like MOBAs, battle royales and competitive shooters grow in popularity. Some VPNs claim to be an easy fix for your online gaming needs, but while a VPN could improve your experience playing games online, some people will be better off gaming without one.

CNET has tested the major VPN services, including running thousands of speed tests across multiple devices and comparing key features to help you find the best VPN. We'll also walk through the benefits and drawbacks of a VPN for gaming so you can weigh whether your wallet would be better served elsewhere.

Should I use a VPN for gaming?

Most gamers can enjoy their games without the need for a VPN, but there are a couple of key questions to ask yourself if you're wondering about it:

• Are my connection speeds or latency causing me problems?
• Do I need to change servers outside of a game client?
• Am I worried about people getting a hold of my IP address?

If your answer to any of those questions is "Yes," there's a good chance you could benefit from using a VPN. ExpressVPN is CNET's editors' choice for best overall VPN, but check out our VPN coverage below to find the provider that best suits your needs.

How a VPN can help for gaming

Can potentially lower ping

The main reason to connect to a VPN when gaming online is the ability to choose your own servers. That flexibility has a few benefits, including the potential to lower your all-important ping, aka latency. Ping measures how quickly your device can get information from a game's servers. For competitive online games like Overwatch, Valorant, League of Legends and anything else with online matchmaking, faster ping gives you an advantage by allowing you to respond faster to what's happening in the game. 

The key consideration here is the word "potentially." There's no guarantee a VPN will actually improve your ping. For people in commonly served regions like the US, Europe and eastern Asia, most games do a good enough job of routing you to the appropriate server for the fastest ping. Some even allow you to choose your servers in the game itself. The people who would benefit most from a VPN are the people outside of those regions who are dealing with higher ping -- think 100ms or more. In those cases, you're probably pretty far away from the server, and a VPN could allow you to find a more direct route to the closest servers, thus lowering the amount of time it takes your device to receive their information. But if you connect to a server that's farther away from the game's data centers, you'll actually increase your ping and make latency worse. Unless you know exactly where the nearest data center is, you might have to hunt around.

And if you're not playing competitive games, you probably don't need to manually change your servers unless you're suffering truly unbearable ping spikes. 

Hide your IP address

Playing games with strangers online can be thrilling, but it can also bring out the worst in people. Some gamers can take things much too seriously and look for revenge against opponents or even teammates. In extreme cases, those acts of revenge can include doxxing, where a player looks up your personal information and posts it online, potentially exposing you to any number of unwanted experiences from bad actors, including threatening messages outside of the game client. 

A VPN protects you from doxxing by hiding your IP address, making it much harder for bad actors to look up personal info like your email or physical address. If you're particularly worried about targeted harassment, a VPN is worth considering.

Getting around throttling

If you use a lot of data in your online activity, you might discover that your internet service provider is throttling your connection and giving you slower speeds than you're paying for. Gaming isn't a huge contributor to data usage, but downloading lots of games can add up quickly, especially if you download behemoths like Baldur's Gate 3 or the upcoming Starfield, which involve hefty 100GB downloads. Slower speeds can make it longer to download games and sometimes worsen the quality of your online gaming experience if your internet can't upload and download data fast enough.

VPNs are one of the most effective weapons against internet throttling because they have a variety of tools to fight it, mostly revolving around hiding your IP address. Without a VPN, your ISP will see that you're gaming and may throttle your speeds based on your online activity. But with a VPN, your ISP won't know what you're doing online, so it won't be able to employ activity-based throttling. 

How a VPN could make your gaming worse

Slower connection speeds for most users

Unless your ISP is throttling your connection to lower your connection speed, a VPN is going to slow down your connection speed. While raw connection speed is not generally as important for gaming as ping is, a slow enough speed will start to detract from your ability to download and play games. The fastest VPNs might knock your speeds by about 10%, but most VPNs will slow things down by much larger margins, even up to half.

The most important factor here is your internet connection speed without a VPN. Single-digit Mbps can be sufficient for gaming, although 10-25Mbps will yield the best results, according to CNET's sister site, Allconnect. If your connection speeds are significantly higher than that (roughly 50Mbps or higher), a VPN probably won't slow you down enough to make a difference. But if your connection speed is any lower, and you're not actively being throttled, a VPN might lead to a worse gaming experience, especially if you have a lot of other devices connected to your network and eating into your bandwidth. 

Potential terms of service violations

This is a common consideration when using a VPN, but be sure to check the terms of any services you're using, including the games themselves as well as any storefronts and launchers. For example, the popular app Steam prohibits users from using VPNs to disguise their place of residence, as stated in their subscriber agreement:

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to order or purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account."

Playing a game through a VPN doesn't appear to constitute a breach of those terms, but forgetting that you're connected to a different server when you buy a game could constitute a bannable offense. Make sure to check the ToS for your favorite games and platforms before using a VPN and look for language like the Steam example above.

Cost

The most worthwhile VPNs cost money, and while you can try to control costs by subscribing to a cheap VPN, you're still paying for a service. For users with specific needs that VPNs can accommodate, they're well worth the cost, but not every gamer ultimately needs a VPN. If you don't play games with online multiplayer, you have good speed and ping or you aren't worried about IP leaks, you won't get your money's worth from a VPN.

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• Duet AI adds new features to Google Workspace, including meeting attendance and note-taking.

• The features were made available to the public on Tuesday. 

Google is hoping its new AI tool will be as helpful as possible for tardy and under-pressure workers.

The company's Duet AI for Workspace was made available to the public on Tuesday and offers several new features for the productivity tool. One of them allows users to send the AI to meetings in their place.

Duet AI can join a meeting on a user's behalf, deliver a message, and recap it for them later. Google is also introducing a new "take notes for me" feature, which can capture notes, action items, and record video snippets. During a meeting, attendees will also be able to chat privately with Google's AI chatbot to go over meeting details.

There's also a "summary so far" feature to brief any latecomers on what they missed.

Other notable features are a real-time translation option for Google Meet, as well as face detection that can separate workers on the same screen. AI-generated presentations and charts based on content from Drive and Gmail are also available.

The features are aimed at giving busy workers a productivity boost.

Early adopters of AI-powered programs such as OpenAI's ChatGPT have already found the chatbots useful for various workplace tasks. AI tech, however, is prone to mistakes and hallucinations, which has already caused issues for some companies.

Microsoft has introduced similar features to its workplace platform, Office. The two tech giants have been engaged in what's been dubbed an "AI arms race" as they rush to bring AI-powered products to market amid a boom in general and investor interest.

Source

The popups, one of the first was published on Reddit more than two months ago, use the title "Switch your default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome". Customers are informed about the benefits of switching to Bing -- earning Microsoft Rewards points, using the new AI-powered Bing, and installing Bing Service to improve the search experience -- and get options to say "yes", which switches the default search engine in Chrome, or "don't switch".

The design of the popup has changed in the meantime, with one of the last iterations shown at The Verge earlier this week.

What makes this particular campaign worrisome for some is how it is implemented. Many Windows 11 users may already know the notifications that Microsoft displays to get them to use certain products or features of the operating system.

This particular campaign, however, does not use the regular notification system of the operating system. Microsoft is using the digitally signed program BGAUpsell.EXE for the campaign, which it places in the directory C:\Windows\Temp\MUBSTemp\.

In Tom Warren's case, Microsoft displayed the popup while a fullscreen game was being played. While that may be a bug, everything else concerning the popup is intentional.

Microsoft placed the file deliberately on user systems and the name of the file gives a good indication of its main purpose. It is designed to get users to use Microsoft products and services. In this campaign, Microsoft appears to target Chrome users who use a search engine as the default that is not Bing.

It is likely Google Search, as it is the default search engine of Google's browser, but it can also be any other search engine. Microsoft is using its control of the Windows platform to push its other services, even in third-party applications.

The consensus on Virustotal, a Google-owned service, seems to be that BGAUpsell.EXE fills all criteria for potentially unwanted programs: it was not installed by the user, was not run by the user manually, and suggests to make changes to a core feature of a program it is not related to.

Some community members call the program malware and spyware, and it certainly matches some of the criteria as well.

Microsoft informed The Verge that it has paused the campaign to address "unintended behavior". Pausing indicates that Microsoft has every intention to continue the campaign at a later stage. It is unclear what Microsoft exactly means with "this unintended behavior", but it may refer to the popup being displayed while fullscreen apps or games are running.

Günter Born discovered that the campaign rolled out via server-side updates, something that users and administrators have little control over.

Microsoft's methods of getting customers to switch to Bing, Microsoft Edge and other company products have increased in intensity and aggressiveness in the past couple of years. Ads have appeared in various sections of its Windows operating system, such as the Get Help support app, Settings, or the Start Menu. Microsoft pulled some, like the ones that made the Weather app barely usable, but new ones appear regularly throughout the operating system and on Microsoft properties.

While Microsoft is not the only big Internet player that uses its dominance to push its products, Google is also doing this to some extend, the fact that others do it should not be taken as an excuse. People pay for Windows, either directly or indirectly, when they buy OEM systems. These customers should not be bombarded by ads and other, mostly unwanted, notifications and behaviors, unless Microsoft makes it very clear that this is the new standard on Windows.

Source

Also:  Microsoft’s incessant Windows ads are getting out of control.

The proposed backpack would have a camera, microphone and other sensors to collect visual and audio data from the surroundings. It could then use this contextual data to complete voice commands given by the user.

According to the patent filing, the backpack could provide navigation assistance, add calendar events, compare prices while shopping, and more. It would access the user's data to help provide relevant information.

Microsoft notes that many current digital assistants are limited to the home and aren't as helpful on-the-go. This backpack aims to bring more portable, context-aware AI.

First, a digital assistant consistent with the present concepts is available with a wearable that is worn by the user.

Second, a user can interact with the digital assistant hands-free using voice commands and one or more of auditory feedback, visual feedback, and/or haptic feedback without distracting the user away from the current task at hand.

Third, the digital assistant can perceive the user's surroundings and thus is context-aware, enabling the user to provide contextual commands to the digital assistant.

The user could activate the backpack's AI via buttons on the straps, with different taps and holds triggering different functions. Potential use cases include asking for directions hands-free while walking or asking the backpack to identify an item while shopping and look up reviews.

It shows Microsoft's interest in expanding AI capabilities into wearables beyond watches and glasses. The patent reinforces Microsoft's broader efforts to integrate AI across its products and services, from Office 365 to Bing. However, it also illustrates the experimental side of AI development. Talking backpacks are an accessible way to showcase AI's potential.

Depending on the complexity of the environmental context and/or the sophistication of the artificial intelligence engine, the user may adjust the level of detail in the contextual voice command.

For example, the user may specify, “Hey Backpack, add this poster to my calendar.” Or if there are two posters aligned vertically, the user 102 may specify, “Hey Assistant, add the bottom poster to my calendar.

Even if the product never reaches the market, Microsoft aims to bring context-aware voice assistants and other AI technologies into consumer products.

Source: USPTO

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As the company said when it released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23531 to the Dev Channel on Friday, links in Windows systems apps will no longer open using Microsoft Edge, ignoring the users' browser of choice.

"In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links," the Windows 11 Dev build's changelog explains.

While this might not seem like a big deal to many, Microsoft's choice to push Edge over the default web browser has irked Windows users for a while now.

Windows 10 and Windows 11 include many features that display internet links you can click on, such as help articles in the Settings screens and Windows programs, search results in the Start Menu, and the Widget articles.

However, when clicking on these built-in links, Windows forces them to open in Microsoft Edge regardless of the default browser you have configured.

Earlier this year, the company also confirmed that web links from Outlook emails and Team chats now open in Edge "to improve and streamline [..] product experiences" (although this behavior can be turned off).

The forcing of Microsoft Edge on Windows 11 users has annoyed enough people that some have created dedicated tools (like EdgeDeflector) specifically designed to enforce the default browser by rewriting microsoft-edge:// links used in Microsoft apps and across the OS shell to https://, which open using the default browser.

However, Microsoft caught wind of their efforts after Brave and Firefox also added support for opening microsoft-edge:// links, which prompted Redmond to make changes to the OS so that this workaround no longer works in Windows 11 build 22494 and later. 

This change was also implemented in Windows 10, according to Daniel Aleksandersen, EdgeDeflector's developer.

Microsoft has yet to explain why it's only allowing European users to open all links on their systems using the default web browser and hasn't implemented this change for all Windows users.

While news has been met favorably by users in Europe, Windows users from other countries are now even more frustrated because this will not be a global change.

"How do I make Windows 11 think I'm in the EU?," someone asked today on the Hacker News social news platform.

"When you're at the point of tricking your operating system into thinking you're in a different country in order to make it function properly, it may be time to try a new OS," came the reply.

When BleepingComputer reached out earlier today, a spokesperson said that "Microsoft does not have anything further to add beyond the blog."

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August can be a weird month where patching is concerned.

I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level, but with caution. I usually hope to give time near the end of the month for patches to be applied, by lowering the level to 4 and sometimes 5. This time, I’m wishy-washy. Caution is the order of the day, so I’m lowering the level to just 3.

In my house, August represents a tradition — things occur that make me think technology wants to take a vacation, just like the rest of us.

This year, a limb dropped onto a cable line and broke the Internet connection to the house. You find out really fast how dependent you are on Internet, television, and phone when that happens. As I waited for the technician to come the next day, I used my Surface tablet and Lenovo laptop because they have cellular broadband connections. Those are not as fast as a wired connection, but at least I was able to write this article and connect to streaming services.

Outages instantly bring to mind Xfinity’s upcoming Storm-Ready Wi-Fi, which includes a built-in cellular connection as an automatic failover. It might be time to spring for that equipment.

It appears Microsoft had some technology mishaps this month as well. Although my home computers went through the updates just fine, as did the servers at the office, I can’t say the same for a business patcher dealing with Exchange this month. I’ll get to that in a minute. I’m also tracking some lingering issues with VPN side effects.

These are my primary reasons for caution and for my decision to set the level to 3. Patch, but afterward you must review your systems to make sure they are functioning properly. Don’t just patch, walk away, and assume everything’s fine.

For business patchers, the special registry keys that we were advised to use to deal with CVE-2023-32019 are now included in the August updates. If you recall, this was the infamous patch that was supposed to have side effects. I have not seen any. I don’t think Microsoft has, either, because the fix is now enabled by default. Note that you will not see any registry keys — this is apparently a “trust us, they are there” deployment.

I’ve been running Linux Mint “Victoria” Cinnamon version 21.2 for a while now, but for those of you who are more advanced, consider it similar to service packs or feature releases. Wait a bit for all the bugs to be worked out. Remember to check your system tray for alerts about new updates.

Apple Ventura received 13.5.1 on August 17. This is a bug fix for the 13.5 release and fixes an issue regarding location services settings on the Mac.

Since July, users have complained about an issue with the location privacy settings. The bug prevents you from accessing and controlling location permissions for first- and third-party apps. If you have been impacted by these bugs, you may wish to make this a priority — but remember to back up your system first.

For Windows 11 workstations, ensure that you have updated any third-party apps that modify the menu or file system on Windows 11. One of the reasons for delaying updates is to give these vendors time to deal with the changes each month may bring. As you read this, I think vendors have had time to deal with the side effects introduced by recent updates.

My Windows 10 workstations have been trouble-free this month and have handled the updates without a hitch.

For anyone looking for the firmware updates that will fix the Downfall vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-40982, keep in mind that Intel will be releasing these updates over time. But don’t panic — this vulnerability enables a user to access and steal data from other users who share the same computer. This vulnerability will not be a risk for a home or consumer user. Computers in a hosted setting or a data center will be at risk, not you.

There is nothing more frustrating than receiving a confusing error message from Windows update, indicating that the system is having problems getting updated. I suggest you bookmark the Microsoft documentation page Fix Windows Update errors by using the DISM or System Update Readiness tool. It will give you a hint as to what the problem is, but not necessarily a solution.

In July, one of my servers received a message with the error code 0x80073712 (ERROR_SXS_COMPONENT_STORE_CORRUPT). It means the component store is in an inconsistent state. But how do I fix it? Any time there is an error hinting at something corrupt, I normally do a repair install over the top on any Windows 10 or Windows 11 machine. To do an over-the-top repair, refer to our own knowledge base guidance 6000015 – Repair install of Windows 10 22H2. You will not lose data or program files, and your system will be fixed.

But this wasn’t any old machine, it was a domain controller server — a special role in a network that needs a bit more care. Normally in large businesses, you would just deploy a new domain controller role, replicate the active directory information, and then remove and destroy the faulty domain controller. But I wanted to see whether I could use Microsoft’s own tools and instructions to get this server back into patching condition. When I ran sfc /scannow from an administrative command prompt, it confirmed that it was seeing issues but could not fix the problem. Then I attempted the DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth command. No go. It still would not fix the underlying corruption.

I ended up downloading an ISO image of the server operating system, in my case Server 2019, and mounting the ISO as a drive letter. You do this by clicking on the ISO; in my case, 😧 was assigned. Then you use the following command:

It took a while. Upon completion, it reported that the system was repaired. I tried installing the August updates; those were applied and worked.

Microsoft, fixing corruption should be easier than this. Granted, I don’t know the root cause of the corruption; but needless to say, a domain controller server is not a system on which I will be surfing the Internet and thus will not expose it to those types of threats.

August has been an absolute disaster for Exchange patchers. First, the updates wouldn’t install on non-English servers; then there were issues found in the English releases. Microsoft re-released all the Exchange updates. Also, there is a manual step that needs to be completed on all Exchange servers. Microsoft has provided a grid of exact steps, depending on where you are or where you left off. Ugh.

Microsoft is making the domain-join process more secure. In the process, this may cause issues — even with Windows workstations. KB5020276 documents the changes that have occurred that limit the ability to join a domain to only those workstations you intend and not to an attacker. As a result, Microsoft urges you to configure a new allow-list policy, using group policy on a domain controller, before September 2023. You’ll want to remove any legacy client-side workarounds before that date. Bottom line: Review that KB for impact on your network. I’ll have more on this in a future article.

Business users who use VPN with L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) on Windows 11 may be experiencing slowdowns. Some have reported that enabling Routing and Remote Services (look in the services snap-in) and changing the startup type from disabled to enabled sped up their VPN connection. It remains to be seen whether this is a permanent workaround or whether Microsoft will finally identify the root cause and issue a fix.

Resources

MS-DEFCON 3: Patch carefully

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As it turned out, Microsoft decided to add another small but pretty interesting new feature in Edge that was not covered in the official release notes. As noted by a Reddit user this week, it includes a new "Copy Video Frame" option.

Neowin's own Taras Buria actually spotted this menu option a few days ago. He then posted it on his X (formerly Twitter) feed. It was apparently added to the Canary version of Edge earlier.

Now we know what the Copy Video Frame feature actually does. As its name implies, it offers a new and better way to capture screenshots from web-based videos like you might find on YouTube. The nice thing about the feature is that it will actually capture the full resolution of the video frame, even if you are not watching the video as a full-screen option.

Obviously, this makes this perfect for people who want to capture a cool part of a movie or game trailer on YouTube and use it as a wallpaper on their desktop.

By the way, we are not sure what that red square that's next to the Copy Video Frame feature is for. It's possibly a bug that Microsoft has yet to fix.

Microsoft already has plans to add new features for its Edge browser in the near future. It has announced that it will add the AI powered Smart Find feature sometime in September for all Edge users. If you search for a word, the feature will bring up related words and phrases that might help you better find what you are looking for. It will work even if you misspell the word in your search string.

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The company decided to retire Visual Studio for Mac after carefully analyzing user feedback and usage patterns. Also, Microsoft wants to focus its efforts on optimizing Visual Studio, accessible through the C# Dev Kit for VS Code and available on every modern operating system.

With today’s announcement, we’re redirecting our resources and focus to enhance Visual Studio and VS Code, optimizing them for cross-platform development. No new framework, runtime, or language support will be added to Visual Studio for Mac. For the next 12 months, however, we will continue providing essential updates such as servicing updates for critical bug fixes, security issues, and updated platforms from Apple.

We will also continue to provide runtime and workload updates so you can continue building and shipping applications built on .NET 6, .NET 7, and the Mono frameworks. While not officially supported, we’ve also enabled rudimentary support for .NET 8 in Visual Studio for Mac for building and debugging applications. We hope with these commitments and the investment in the alternatives below, we can minimize the disruption to your workflow on the Mac.

Microsoft encourages users to move to Visual Studio Code with the new C# Dev Kit and related extensions or opt for local or cloud-based Windows virtual machines. Luckily, there is no shortage of free and premium virtualization software for macOS (Parallels Desktop recently received a major update), plus you can use Microsoft's free developer-focused virtual machines with Windows 11 (evaluation).

You can learn more about the Visual Studio for Mac retirement on the official Microsoft Dev Blog.

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In an interview with Vandal, Bethesda senior vice president Pete Hines stated that The Elder Scrolls VI has now moved past the pre-production phase and into full development.

When asked if fans could expect more details after the launch of Starfield, another highly anticipated Bethesda title, Hines remarked that the studio's sole focus currently is "on perfecting Starfield." Furthermore, he did not provide any information about the pre-production phase of Elder Scrolls VI.

In a statement translated from Spanish, Pete Hines said;

We have put all of our studio's focus on making this game the best it can be. And yes, there are people working on The Elder Scrolls 6, but this is what the studio has focused on. So no, you are not going to hear soon about The Elder Scrolls 6. Starfield is our focus for now, and it's going to remain our priority for a while before we talk about anything else.

This will come as welcome news to fans eagerly awaiting the next entry in the beloved fantasy RPG franchise since Skyrim's release in 2011. A brief teaser trailer was shown at E3 2018, but little else has been revealed about the game in recent years.

During the recent Microsoft-FTC trial, Xbox head Phil Spencer hinted the game is still at least five years away. This aligns with Hine's comments that Starfield remains the current development priority.

While details are still scarce, the confirmation that Elder Scrolls VI has entered full development is a major milestone for the title. It signals that after years of waiting, fans may finally get closer to returning to Tamriel, even if that return is still several years off.

Source: Vandal via IGN

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Earlier this month, Microsoft celebrated the 10th anniversary of the reveal of its ID@Xbox indie game publishing program. Microsoft's efforts have led to over 3,000 games being published for its Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X consoles from small indie teams.

However, well before ID@Xbox, Microsoft was trying to get people to publish small digital games for its Xbox 360 console. 17 years ago today, on August 30, 2006, the company released the first beta version of its XNA Game Studio Express development tools to the public

XNA Game Studio Express was an extension of the company's XNA game software development platform, which was first announced in March 2004. The platform was supposed to make it easier for game developers to make games that would work on Windows, Xbox, and Windows Mobile devices.

Microsoft also launched Xbox Live Arcade in 2004 for the original Xbox, and it was included with the Xbox 360 when it launched a year later. The company wanted to promote the fact that both consoles could actually let people purchase and download small digital games directly to those consoles, which was a fairly new idea at the time.

However, Microsoft wanted to go a step further and give anyone a chance to make games that could be sold on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. So it decided to release XNA Game Studio Express for small teams to make games that could be released for the console.

In Microsoft's initial announcement of XNA Game Studio Express (archive by Wayback Machine), the company stated:

By providing an integrated, seamless development environment based on Visual Studio Express and .NET that simplifies the integration and use of game content, XNA Game Studio Express makes game development easier to accomplish for smaller projects, strongly increasing the chance for great game ideas to make it out of the concept stage and into the hands of gamers everywhere.

The tools even included "starter kits" as templates to quickly make games in specific genres like first person shooters and real-time strategy games. The tools could also be used to make Windows games. but developers who wanted to publish their titles digitally on the Xbox 360 had to join the Microsoft XNA Creator's Club for an annual fee of $99.

After the initial release of XNA Game Studio Express, Microsoft updated the tools several times. It also dumped the "Express" part of the name with the release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 in 2007. Along the way, the updates added features like cross-platform multiplayer support and more. The last update of the tools was released in 2011.

Nathan Fouts, who worked at Insomniac Games, decided to leave the developer to make indie games on his own and used XNA as his platform. In an article he wrote in 2013, he says that a number of popular indie games, including titles like Bastion, Fez, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and Terraria, were first developed, at least in part, by using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio tools.

In February 2013, Microsoft announced it would no longer offer updates for its XNA platform or its XNA Game Studios development tools. It was the end of one era of Microsoft supporting indie developers but it was quickly replaced with the ID@Xbox program later that year, which is still going strong today.

In 2023, indie game developers can access many powerful tools to make PC and consoles games for free or for a very low cost, like Epic's Unreal Engine, Unity, GameMaker, and more. However, Microsoft was one of the first to encourage small teams to make downloadable games with XNA Game Studio. It helped to lead the way to democratize development for anyone who has a passion for making games, and that's no small achievement.

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We’ve been treated to another Chrome leak which shows exactly how a previously leaked feature – the option to share your passwords with other Chrome users – will work.

This again comes from a font of much browser-related knowledge on X (formerly Twitter), Leopeva64.

Previously, Leopeva64 discovered the ability to share passwords on Chrome’s password management page (in testing, back at the end of June), and now they’ve found out how this works.

You’ll be able to click and share passwords – the ones you have stored within Chrome – but only with those who are a member of a Google ‘family group’ apparently.

If you haven’t set up a family group, trying to use this feature will prompt you to do so.

So, your next question is likely – what’s a family group?

Well, the name pretty much gives it away: it’s a small group – of up to six – of your family members with which you can easily share things from the Google ecosystem. (With those shareable elements consisting of passwords, as noted – plus the family group also facilitates functionality such as setting ground rules for what your kids can do online).

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The GNU Linux-libre project announced today the release and general availability of the GNU Linux-libre 6.5 kernel for those who seek 100% freedom for their GNU/Linux computers and software freedom lovers.

Based on the just-released Linux 6.5 kernel series, the GNU Linux-libre 6.5 kernel is here to rework the cleaning up of the iwlwifi driver to reflect the revamp of blob names in it and adjust the cleaning scripts to account for cleaned-up ARM dts files that were moved in the “source” tree.

The GNU Linux-libre 6.5 kernel also cleans up the usual assortment of new dts files that declare dependencies on binary blobs, updates the cleaning up of the amdgpu, adreno, rtl8xxxu, and x86 touchscreen drivers, as well as of the atomisp docs, and cleans up new drivers for rtw8851b and the TAS2781 speaker.

Other than that, this release comes with all the new features and improvements, as well as the updated and new drivers that have been included in the upstream Linux 6.5 kernel series. However, the GNU Linux-libre kernel does NOT ship with non-free components, as the upstream kernel does.

The GNU Linux-libre kernel is targeted at software freedom lovers and Linux purists who want to build a 100% free GNU/Linux computer without any proprietary drivers or code. You can download the latest release’s compressed tarballs right now from the official website.

Ready-to-use binary packages for Debian-based (DEB) and Red Hat-based (RPM) distributions can be found at the Freesh project and RPM Freedom. The GNU Linux-libre kernel can be installed on virtually any GNU/Linux distribution alongside or as a replacement for the standard kernel.

Image credits: GNU Linux-libre project

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Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA's default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author's intent.

A change made back in 2020 to the kernel module code inherits the TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE and better protects against proprietary modules using GPL-only symbols following a NVIDIA GPL condom incident. Well, NVIDIA Linux engineers have since worked around that to be able to use GPL-only symbols within their binary blob. As a result we have new defenses being put in place for the kernel.

Christoph Hellwig who authored the latest defensive measure explained:

"It has recently come to my attention that nvidia is circumventing the protection added in 262e6ae7081d ("modules: inherit TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE") by importing exports from their proprietary modules into an allegedly GPL licensed module and then re-exporting them.

Given that symbol_get was only ever intended for tightly cooperating modules using very internal symbols it is logical to restrict it to being used on EXPORY_SYMBOL_GPL and prevent nvidia from costly DMCA circumvention of access controls lawsuits.

All symbols except for four used through symbol_get were already exported as EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL, and the remaining four ones were switched over in the preparation patches."

This change to only allow symbol_get of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL modules will now be in place with Linux 6.6. Luis Chamberlain further added in today's pull request:

"Christoph Hellwig's symbol_get() fix to Nvidia's efforts to circumvent the protection he put in place in year 2020 to prevent proprietary modules from using GPL only symbols, and also ensuring proprietary modules which export symbols grandfather their taint. That was done through year 2020 commit 262e6ae7081d ("modules: inherit TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE"). Christoph's new fix is done by clarifing __symbol_get() was only ever intended to prevent module reference loops by Linux kernel modules and so making it only find symbols exported via EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(). The circumvention tactic used by Nvidia was to use symbol_get() to purposely swift through proprietary module symbols and completley bypass our traditional EXPORT_SYMBOL*() annotations and community agreed upon restrictions."

Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver. At least NVIDIA is now maintaining their open GPU kernel driver option since last year as an alternative to their proprietary kernel driver.

The full list of modules changes for Linux 6.6 can be found via this pull request.

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I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend. There I was minding my own business in Chrome before tabbing back to a game and wham a pop-up appeared asking me to switch my default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome. Stunningly, Microsoft now thinks it’s ok to shove a pop-up in my face above my apps and games just because I dare to use Chrome instead of Microsoft Edge.

This isn’t a normal notification, either. It didn’t appear in the notification center in Windows 11, nor is it connected to the part of Windows 11 that suggests new features to you. It’s quite literally a rogue executable file that has somehow appeared in c:\windows\temp\mubstemp and is digitally signed by Microsoft.

“We are aware of these reports and have paused this notification while we investigate and take appropriate action to address this unintended behavior,” says Caitlin Roulston, director of communications, in a statement to The Verge.

The latest Bing popup appeared above the taskbar on Windows 11. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge

This annoying popup even appeared above a game. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge

I have no idea why Microsoft thinks it’s ok to fire off these pop-ups to Windows 11 users in the first place. I wasn’t alone in thinking it was malware, with posts dating back three months showing Reddit users trying to figure out why they were seeing the pop-up.

I’m sure Microsoft is legally covered by the myriad of license agreements that nobody reads, but in reality I never knowingly consented to Microsoft abusing its ability to analyze my PC usage to show me a Bing pop-up just because I use Chrome with Google search.

This isn’t Microsoft’s first rodeo, either. I’m growing increasingly frustrated by the company’s methods of getting people to switch from Google and Chrome to Bing and Edge. Microsoft has been using a variety of prompts for years now, with pop-ups appearing inside Chrome, on the Windows taskbar, and elsewhere. Microsoft has even forced people into Edge after a Windows Update, and regularly presents a full-screen message to switch to Bing and Edge after updates.

Microsoft also started taking over Chrome searches in Bing recently to deliver a canned response that looks like it’s generated from Microsoft’s GPT-4-powered chatbot. The fake AI interaction produced a full Bing page to entirely take over the search result for Chrome and convince Windows users to stick with Edge and Bing.

Microsoft even took over Chrome search results in Bing recently. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

You’ve probably never seen this latest pop-up or even some of the ones in the past, and that’s because Microsoft only experiments with a small number of Windows users before there’s an outcry and the company pivots to try and find another way to nag Windows users. Microsoft even had to backtrack on plans to force the Chrome default search to Bing for businesses installing its Office apps.

You might argue that this is Microsoft’s operating system, or that when using Microsoft’s browser and search engine it’s well within its rights to try and sway people away from Chrome. After all, Google runs similar notifications on its webpages to get people to use Chrome or it’s annoying YouTube premium spam. But Microsoft’s behaviors here are totally beyond a simple webpage prompt. I shouldn’t have to be dismissing pop-ups that appear on top of my apps and games, or ones that magically appear after I update my copy of Windows.

Windows isn’t freeware, it requires a license that almost every consumer ultimately pays for. That could be in the form of the price of a laptop that has a Windows OEM license baked in, or a product key if you built your own PC. Microsoft should respect the fact that people already pay for Windows and don’t want ads shoved down their throats. Windows is an important productivity tool for many people, and shouldn’t be treated like a cheap streaming box loaded with ads.

I truly hope Microsoft changes its ways here, but this has been going on in several different forms for years now so I’m just counting the days until the next annoying pop-up appears.

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To recap, the Mountain View company had introduced the Chrome 2023 Refresh in an update for the Canary channel, via Google Labs. The new interface is based on Google's Material You design language, it isn't a major overhaul per se, rather it has subtle improvements to the UI to match modern design standards across various operating systems. 2 months later, these improvements have finally been shipped with the stable version (spotted by Windows Latest).

As Onur reported in his article, the changes in the new interface include rounded corners (edges) for many visual elements such as menus, address bar, etc. The Search box (Omnibox) has a Tune icon, that you can click to view information about the current web page, such as the security of the connection, and cookies and site data. Even the profile menu in Chrome has been redesigned.

I noticed a few more changes in the current version. The Settings menu is now slightly larger, and displays an icon next to each option. There are some new options in the menu, such as the profile manager. The bookmarks menu includes a way to access your reading list.

Chrome's new design includes a button for Translate, which, as the name suggests, will translate the current web page that you are on. The option to cast has been removed from the menu, it is now available under a new menu called Save and Share. The other settings that you may access from this menu include save page as, create shortcut, copy link, send to device, and create a QR code. The Edit menu options have also been removed and merged under the Find and Edit section. You may also notice an animation effect when you mouse over the options, menus, tabs, etc.

Here is a comparison of the old vs the new interfaces.

You will need to have Google Chrome 116 installed on your computer, to try the following steps.

How to enable Google Chrome's new design in the stable version

1. Go to chrome://flags

2. Search for refresh, and you should see a couple of options named Chrome Refresh 2023 and Chrome WebUI Refresh 2023.

3. Both options are set to the default value, which is disabled. You need to click on the drop-down menu next to each option, and change it to Enabled.

4. Click on the Relaunch button that appears at the bottom of the window to restart the browser.

The Google Chrome 2023 Refresh is available across Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Fuchsia, and Lacros.  So when will this become the default interface in the browser? Back in May 2023, Google had revealed its plans to replace Chrome's HTTPS lock icon with the tune icon for security reason. The company had mentioned that the change would happen along with the redesigned interface that would ship in September. The next major update, Chrome 117, has been scheduled for September 12th. So it is very likely that we will see an announcement from the Search Giant in the coming weeks, to educate users about the changes in the new design.

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