Our Picks

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for July 2023 on Windows Server 20H2, and Windows 10 for the latest supported versions, 21H2, and 22H2. The new updates are being distributed under KB5028166, bumping up the builds to 19044.3208 and 19045.3208.

Microsoft warned customers today that multiple editions of Windows 11, version 21H2, will reach the end-of-service (EOS) in three months, on October 10, 2023.
 
This applies to Windows 11 21H2 editions released in October 2021: Home, Pro, Pro Education, and Pro for Workstations.
 
"These editions will no longer receive security updates after October 10, 2023," Microsoft announced Monday.
 
"Customers who contact Microsoft Support after this date will be directed to update their device to the latest version of Windows 11 to remain supported."

Retro-computing fans can download the final updates released for '90s-era OSes.
 
If you have any interest in retro-computing, you know it can be difficult to round up the last official bug fixes and updates available for early Internet-era versions of Windows like 95, 98, and NT 4.0. A new independent project called "Windows Update Restored" is aiming to fix that, hosting lightly modified versions of old Windows Update sites and the update files themselves so that fresh installs of these old operating systems can grab years' worth of fixes that aren't present on old install CDs and disks.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3John Wick: Chapter 4' tops the chart, followed by 'Knights of the Zodiac'. ‘Fast X' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

If you like your Linux a little more Red Hat flavored, here's how to get started.

 
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is an incredible tool that puts real Linux on top of the Windows 10 or 11 PC you already know and love. Setting up is simple, but out of the gate the default Linux distribution (unless you specify otherwise) will be Ubuntu. 
 
But the choice does not end there. While there are a number of distributions available through the Microsoft Store, you're not even limited to just those. In the case of Fedora, it sort of is. 

The 27th week of 2023 is over, so it is time for another issue of our Microsoft Weekly series. In this episode, we talk about Windows 12 concepts, newly discovered hidden features in Windows 11, malware-like behavior by Microsoft Edge, Windows 11's continuous growth among gamers, and more.

The Windows 11 Moment 3 update will roll out to everyone via July's Patch Tuesday release.
Toward the end of May 2023, Microsoft held its annual conference for developers, Build 2023, where it made many announcements, including integrating Bing into OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, Windows Copilot, and more. 
 
Alongside the long list of announcements, the tech giant indicated it was gearing up to ship Windows 11's second feature drop, also known as "Moment 3." Microsoft had already tested some of the features that are part of the update with Windows 11 Insiders and was now ready to ship it to broad availability. 

Windows 10 and 11 have plenty of built-in screenshot-making tools. However, unlike most modern operating systems, Microsoft's desktop OS takes screenshots in complete silence without giving any confirmation (unless you use the Snipping Tool app). As it turned out, Windows 10 and 11 have a hidden setting that lets you set a sound to play when you use the PrintScreen key to take screenshots. Here is how to enable it.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'John Wick: Chapter 4' tops the chart, followed by 'Knights of the Zodiac'. ‘Fast X' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Another week went down in history after delivering us plenty of Microsoft stories and interesting news. It was full of new Windows 11 features, weird stuff, app updates, and other news worth recapping in the latest episode of Microsoft Weekly.

You can still customize many settings in the Windows 11 Taskbar, and in this guide, I'll show you how.
Although the Taskbar on Windows 11 removes many of the legacy features, you can still change many settings to personalize the experience, and in this guide, you will learn how. 
 
As part of the Taskbar experience, you can, for example, choose the items that appear in Taskbar. You can align the app icons to the left instead of the centered view. You can manage the appearance of System Tray, including the ability to show seconds in the clock. It's also possible to keep the Taskbar hidden to make more space on the screen, control the Taskbar behavior across multiple monitors, and more.

With 2023 entering its second half, it is time to pay closer attention to the next Windows 11 feature update that should arrive in a few months. Currently known as "version 23H2," the upcoming release should introduce several notable and long-anticipated features.
 
It is easy to lose track of new features and major changes since Microsoft releases new Windows 11 preview builds each week. Therefore, here are five great features the next OS update should introduce.

Do you remember several years ago when it became trendy for websites to detect adblockers and make you disable them? Well, it looks like that’s coming to YouTube.
 
According to Redditor Reddit_n_Me, YouTube now issues a popup to people using an adblocker on YouTube that informs them they can only watch three videos while blocking ads. It then gives you the option to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, which gives you an ad-free experience for a monthly fee.

Last night, Microsoft released a new Dev build for Windows Insiders. The new update bumped the build version to 23493 and brought the much anticipated Windows Copilot.

Internet users who want to access content on Twitter without account may have noticed that Twitter is now redirecting some attempts to do so to its login page.
 
Twitter content is often linked in other publications. Users who follow these links may notice that they can't read the content anymore without a Twitter account.
 
It is unclear if Twitter is limiting access regionally or rolling out the change currently to all anonymous users. The access issue seems to affect topics and not individual threads at the time, at least on our test systems and confirmed by our colleagues over at Deskmodder.

Microsoft released Patch Tuesday updates on Windows 10 (KB5027215, among others), and Windows 11 (KB5027231) on June 13, which was the second Tuesday of the month. The update addressed security issues, among other bugs. Aside from OS security, Patch Tuesday also fixed security issues in Office 2013 and 2016, for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also announced the arrival of a full-screen notice about Windows Hello that will now be displayed on both Windows 11 as well as Windows 10.
 
And as is often the case, there are major bugs affecting it as well. On Windows 11, Patch Tuesday was causing Malwarebytes to go a bit haywire and block Google Chrome. Meanwhile, users reported that Windows 10 updates were having installation issues.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Extraction 2' tops the chart, followed by 'Fast X'. ‘John Wick: Chapter 4' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Microsoft has released a new set of free virtual machines for developers. The Windows Development Environment (WDE) has been updated to version 2306, and you can download it for free from the official website.

The developer of the multi-boot tool Ventoy has released a new utility called iVentoy. Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drives using one or more disk image formats. Unlike tools such as Rufus, which support creating a bootable USB drive using a single operating system, Ventoy supports multiple operating systems on a single drive.

A couple of days ago, Ventoy received its latest update with version 1.0.93. The new version fixes multiple bugs and issues like incorrect installation when plugging out the USB, a booting issue with Fedora/CentOS, EFI chainloader image device path issue, and more.

Today is Sunday, so it is time for Microsoft Weekly, your regular software giant news roundup bringing the most interesting stories from the last seven days. During the 25th week of 2023, we saw AI-generated Windows keys, new preview builds to test, Microsoft pressing the undo button, Windows 11 and ME celebrating their birthdays, and many more.

Why hasn't Microsoft made this app themselves?
What you need to know
An app called DisplayBuddy allows you to control the brightness of your external monitors through the system tray. Windows 11 does not support this functionality natively, though some monitor manufacturers, such as Dell, have similar apps. DisplayBuddy is available for $6.99 through the Microsoft Store, and you can try it for free.

Firefox 114.0.2 is the second point update for Firefox 114. It is a non-security update for the stable channel of the Firefox web browser that fixes several crashes in the browser and corrects Web Extensions regressions.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Extraction 2' tops the chart, followed by 'Fast X'. ‘Kandahar' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

Last month, Microsoft hosted its annual Build developer conference, where the company announced dozens of Windows 11 features and tools for app-makers (check our coverage here if you missed the most interesting stories). Now it is June, the traditionally gaming-filled month. Even though the physical E3 conference is no longer with us, we still had a lot of gaming-related news, new title announcements, showcases, and more exciting stuff for those playing on PC or Xbox.
 
But it is not all just games—this week delivered plenty of other news from the world of Microsoft, so here is your weekly recap highlighting new Windows 11 features, upcoming games, controversies, bugs, and other traditional stuff.