Microsoft Promises Long-Overdue Changes To Windows 11 That You're Going To Love

Windows 11 has faced significant backlash as of late. Even before Microsoft integrated a number of controversial Copilot AI related features, users balked at the many changes to the operating system that diminished functionality, like the new Start menu, the still-quite-fragmented settings app, and the slower and roundly inferior new file explorer. Fortunately, it turns out Microsoft's Windows team has heard your complaints, and is working on improving many of these things.

This assessment comes from a couple of social media interactions with design team folks at Microsoft. Back in late March, Diego Baca, Microsoft's Design Director for Windows, replied to a user complaining about Start menu functionality by saying that "search performance + predictability" is a metric that Microsoft is "absolutely looking at." This came after David Pilcher (@OpenInternetFan) complained about the Windows 11 Start menu's laggy nature and about desired items in search results shifting around as web and app results filter in.


That's promising, but we're potentially more interested to see the results of March Rogers' promises. Rogers is "Partner Director of Design" at Microsoft, and he's "really focusing on design craft in Windows at the moment." A user replied to him remarking that the legacy Control Panel is "still better than Settings when it comes to network settings," and also that Printer settings still use a legacy dialog, too. Rogers replied with this:

We're working our way through migrating all the old control panel controls into the modern Settings apps. We're doing it carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices & drivers we need to make sure we don't break in the process.
— March Rogers, Microsoft

The responses to this were mixed; many users are understandably afraid of Microsoft removing the Control Panel and related dialogs and settings before those controls have been reproduced in the modern Settings app.


Still, it's less what March is saying and more that he's saying it directly to users. Microsoft seems keenly aware of user dissatisfaction with Windows 11, and much of its messaging in the last few months has been aimed directly at addressing the diminished reputation that both Microsoft and Windows have accrued in the years since the launch of Windows 11. Many power users and gamers are unhappy with the OS, and this frustration trickles down to end users who may not know what the problem is but generally aren't impressed.

As someone who uses Linux and Windows daily, it's tempting to take the chance to dunk on Microsoft, but the reality is that I still spend the majority of my time in Windows because it still "just works," for the most part; Linux can still be flaky with multi-monitor-on-multi-GPU configurations and diverse audio devices. Hopefully Microsoft can right the ship so that the experience of using Windows becomes as smooth as it was in the Windows 7 era.

_{Shout out to WindowsLatest for the spot.}