While waiting for the next major version of Windows scheduled for summer 2024, Microsoft will bring some small new features to Windows 11 in February via the Moment 5 update, and is reportedly working on an improvement to the Start menu.
A little more than two years after its release, Windows 11 is still struggling to convince the general public and still divides users by certain choices in terms of design and ergonomics. Since its publication, Microsoft has continued to refine and improve its operating system, although with a disconcerting pace of updates. Between major annual system revisions and monthly security patches, the Redmond firm also publishes intermediate updates called “Moment”, which gradually bring new functions and tools to Windows 11.
The fifth iteration of these Moment should arrive in February 2024, with some interesting new features, while waiting for the next major evolution of the operating system, scheduled for October 2024. In addition, a recent exchange on Twitter (X) between the new director of Windows at Microsoft and an Internet user suggests that the Windows 11 Start menu could see a welcome overhaul in the near future.
Windows 11 in 2024: an improvement to the Start menu
It all started with a survey launched by Mikhail Parakhin, the new director of “Windows experience” at Microsoft, in which he asked developers about certain development priorities for Windows. In response, an engineer named Mark Szili tells him that he wants a change to the Windows 11 Start menu, so that he can scroll directly through all applications without having to make an additional click on the “All applications” button.
Surprisingly, the director of Windows responded that he too was very annoyed by this operation and indicated that he was going to push the development team in the direction of improving the Windows 11 Start menu, in a misappropriation of Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “make start menu great again”.
If this is only an informal exchange on a moribund social network, it nevertheless gives hope that Microsoft will soon improve a central element of the user interface of its operating system. The taskbar and the Start menu emblematic of Windows have in fact experienced a rather terrible ergonomic regression with the transition to Windows 11, in a desire for modernization that was not necessarily necessary, which attempted to mix in a poorly controlled way ideas that came at the same time. from the Linux and macOS world.
These radical changes in a proven interface known to users have certainly contributed to the low adoption rate of Windows 11, alongside the crazy and incomprehensible hardware requirements imposed by Microsoft for the installation of the new operating system. The arrival of a new director, who seems sensitive to these ergonomic issues, could therefore herald welcome changes in this area.
Windows 11 in 2024: new features in February with the Moment 5 update
The next Moment 5 interim update should appear in early 2024, during February according to information from Windows Central. This will bring some minor but interesting changes to Windows 11.
Firstly, in order to comply with the Digital Markets Regulation (or DMA for Digital Market Act) of the European Union, Microsoft will offer the possibility of uninstalling several in-house applications from computers running Windows. It will therefore become possible to completely and permanently delete Edge, Photos, Camera or even Cortana from your system, which was not possible until now.
Still within the framework of the DMA, the future update will allow you to freely choose the engine used by the Windows taskbar search function, which allows you to search files contained on the PC but also on the Internet . For the moment, this function exclusively uses Microsoft’s Bing solution, and the next update will therefore allow users to define the search engine of their choice, such as Google or an alternative more respectful of privacy and neutrality of the site. Web such as DuckDuckGo.
These two new features, which will give users more control over their PC, will only concern consumers located in the European Economic Area, and will therefore be available in France. On the other hand, France will be deprived of another development, this time concerning Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant. The interaction panel with Copilot, currently anchored to the right of the screen, can become a floating window and be resized.
Finally, some new practical functions, such as the possibility of using a stylus to write in input fields, a word counter in the notepad or new voice shortcuts for accessibility will also appear.
While all these developments are welcome, they remain minor additions and some seem quite anecdotal. The Moment 5 update therefore mainly looks like a way to make users wait and occupy space, while waiting for the next major version of Windows, scheduled to be released in two stages, between summer and fall 2024 .
Everything happens as if Microsoft had somehow acknowledged the failure of Windows 11 to convince the public and businesses, once again giving reason to the legend according to which one in two versions of Windows would be a failure (Windows Me, Windows Vista, Windows 8), and that the company was now focusing all its efforts on preparing for the next generation of its operating system. Once expected to be simply called Windows 12, recent rumors suggest that Microsoft would abandon this name and move away from its numbering system, in order to mark a radical departure for its new OS. Given the omnipresence of artificial intelligence in Microsoft’s recent communications, we might venture to hypothesize that the company’s marketing teams might set their sights on an uninspired moniker such as Windows AI.