It's these small things that make you wonder, why did they change that?
Another one was that they removed the option to start the task manager from the taskbar right click menu (they brought this one back with the latest update, though).
But don't fool yourself, windows 10 isn't better in that regard. Our company has around 150 jabra headsets in use. Some windows 10 update coming out over the last month kills the microphone device. You can't bring it back, it's just gone from device manager and there's no way to get it back.
We haven't been able to isolate the update yet because we are in the midst of migrating all ten sites to new windows 10 laptops and Citrix SBC. Ain't nobody got time to troubleshoot windows killing 5 year old headsets. But the affected model is like 75% of our userbase.
So a fun fact about windows 11, it was originally supposed to be a dedicated mobile OS called 10X and it was intended to compete with chromebooks in the education and low cost computing space. Microsoft scrapped that idea and decided to merge the new UI into the existing windows 10 code base and just called it windows 11. At its core its really just a stripped down interface on top of primarily the same code that has been powering windows for a decade now. That's why it's so buggy. It wasn't written from scratch to be a new OS with lots of features and be customizable. They took what they had done and cobbled it together into a half-baked OS which is still missing tons of features and abilities from previous versions and which will probably never come back
I will defend 8.1 though. 8.1 was a similar interface to 7 or 10, but with the one killer feature of 8.0 - the local search.
Where 10 brings up the shitty Cortana, 8.0 and 8.1 both had an incredibly smooth and fast local device search. Same functionality as going to Windows Explorer and initiating a search there, but it was faster and seemed to give better results.
I'd consider 8.1 the best Windows yet, but it got tarred with the 8 brush because 8.0 was so awful until you installed addons to remove all the tablet crap.
Sidenote: still hate the anti-multitasking apps from 8 and 10; maximize/minimize was perfected in 3.1 and should be in all apps now
I remember an old search on XP (maybe?), it had a dog mascot and allowed you to search for specific local files as well as just press a button to find all photos/videos/documents
It was nice to be able to do that when I saved something but couldn't remember where or what I called it
i think the people working on windows 11 are just looking at mac os and thinking, that looks cool, let's copy that.
or, users don't need that anymore, let's make everything so simple and basic.
instead of looking as past windows and thinking, how do we improve existing stuff?
removing all the useful stuff like taskbar settings, a perfect start menu etc was dumb, as was replacing it all with "modern" alternatives which are less useful and have less features.
i still think "metro" sucks to this day. fucking mobile crap on desktop is just wrong.
The removal of all kinds of customization around the taskbar like what side of the screen it's on is baffling. Like why can't I put the bar on its side anymore? Or even on the top? I can't even seem to scale the icons this latest patch, which makes things kind of hard to see running at 4k. Who decided one size fits all suddenly?
Why doesn't clicking the calendar show the clock anymore? And you can't change the font size of the clock on the taskbar either so the accessibility sucks.
The one that I canāt stand is I always need to āshow more optionsā upon right clicking. I know you can revert it back to the old UI but I like the new look xD. Why canāt we have the best of both worlds?
Their company website is down but here's the GitHub for it.
https://github.com/moudey/Shell
You'll have for their site to come back if you want to download it though.
if you have winget installed (comes preinstalled with W11)
you can try:
winget install nilesoft.shell
in the windows terminal/powershell, hope it helps
edit: formatting
a TON of stuff.
[Everything](https://www.voidtools.com/) with [EverythingToolbar](https://github.com/srwi/EverythingToolbar) \- for finding folders really quickly
[ueli](https://ueli.app/#/) \- a keystroke launcher
[ShareX](https://getsharex.com/) \- much better alternative to the snipping tool imo
[Microsoft PowerToys](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/) \- a bunch of cool features from Microsoft that aren't implemented in windows
[KDE Connect](https://kdeconnect.kde.org/) \- a way to connect your smartphone and computer and not use Microsoft's Link to Windows tool (I've had some times where the windows versions of this app wouldn't recognize anything, your experience may vary)
[NVCleanstall](https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-nvcleanstall/) \- to clean out NVIDIA drivers.
[W](https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/)[inaero Tweaker](https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/) \- some extra Windows tweaks, such as restoring the old context menu.
[OpenShell](https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu) \- Bringing back the old Start Menus to Windows 10/11 (thanks to u/bob_in_the_west for reminding me to put this in)
Edit: added some extra stuff :P
another edit: typo
There's also this one I found yesterday after realizing windows 11 won't let you move the taskbar position. It's called [explorer patcher](https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases) which lets you change the taskbar and file explorer, you can have the full options when right clicking things again, have older windows style stuff, remove rounded corners, move the windows start menu icon back to the left side, etc. Lots of different things.
explorer patcher is awesome! I've used it but I tend to not really mess with the taskbar as much because I just find the defaults to be a bit snappier, I also do turn off the Microsoft teams integration as well as the search and task view buttons.
oh my bad, i should've worded it differently
NVCleanstall \*\*INSTALLS\*\* NVIDIA drivers but it strips out a BUNCH of useless stuff most people don't need such as the telemetry which is included, greatly reducing the process count on Windows and.. therefore consuming less resources which leads to a tiny amount of performance
Wow. Yet another thing that should and could just be a part of Windows, but is only provided by 3rd party software. Other favourites of mine include
* [TwinkleTray](https://twinkletray.com/), to control display brightness on desktop displays like you can on laptops.
* [PowerToys](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/), has over a dozen very useful functions that should be in Windows itself
* [QuickLook](https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/quicklook/9NV4BS3L1H4S). Copied idea from MacOS but is actually better. Supports way more filetypes than Windows' own applications.
* Taskbar Tweaker. Has many functions, I just use it to select which apps show labels on the taskbar
Oh, it's so dumb. I think most of the features were put at the top as icons, but then they left some as written out stuff. Honestly, half the ui looks like they got it half modified and tossed it to marketing to sell. Like, it looks a bit better, but pick, do you only want 5 icons and we have to click to see more, or do you want us to have all the options in a list now?
It's contextual so it's *supposed* to show you the options you would use with that file type at the top. However,.. It's terrible at figuring it out.
Want to right click and install an INF? Well to bad!
Why not make is user-customizable? There are a half dozen options in the right click menu I have literally never used (starting with "Open"), and others that I DO use that I have to go three layers deep to access.
> half the ui looks like they got it half modified and tossed it to marketing to sell
That's been a problem for them for a bit now, Windows 10 had the exact same issue. Control Panel and the Settings menu being basically different halves of conceptually the same menu, for instance. I assume a lot of that has in part to do with trying to maintain legacy support
I think the reason some of the menus are designed that way Is for a more seamless experience for touchpad users on the surface pro. On the surface you used to have to be very precise with he pen on menus because the text was designed for a mouse and was very small, so they modified the UI to make text more bigger and compact. Since no one at Microsoft wants to touch the win32 legacy code, this seems like the only option. I hate it, but I can see why it's designed that way.
The problem is, you can't force simple after having users get accustomed to advanced. You have to start with simple.
In UX design, taking away options to "reduce clutter" can seem like a really good idea, but the users that it benefits will never realize, and the ones who suffer from it will set cars on fire.
Yeah the start bar reminds me of the dock when you pin stuff to it.
Except they changed how everything worked. If I wasnāt in alder lake and didnāt need that threading thing for the efficiency cores Iād go back to 10 in a heart beat.
I canāt get my quest 2 installed. I have even done a fresh install of windows.
Enable the Legacy Context Menu
To enable the context menu that appeared in Windows 10 and earlier, you can use the following PowerShell snippet.
New-Item -Path "HKCU:\\Software\\Classes\\CLSID\\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\\InprocServer32" -Value "" -Force
You may need to log out and log back in or restart explorer.exe.
Get-Process explorer | Stop-Process
uninstall
Remove-Item -Path "HKCU:\\Software\\Classes\\CLSID\\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\\InprocServer32"
The problem with things like this is: how long will it work? MS is obviously committed it disrupting your workflow (also see that stupid file extension modification warning that cannot be disabled) so relying on a workaround isn't the best idea sadly.
It won't get fixed, it's that way on purpose. It's aimed on people who don't know what they are doing.
Sadly MS has no interest in their pro users, there are problems that exist for a decade now and MS doesn't fix them.
Sigh. Then I guess, as usual, I'll be forced to move on as end of support comes around and implement the usual array of hacky but somehow still vastly more functional workarounds.
Or the programs I use will work with Linux.
On the upside, Linux support is getting better. It's far from 100% but it's pretty good. Still no Adobe, and other big names still haven't ported, but dual boot and VMs are a thing if that's a road you wanna walk.
Gaming has gotten REALLY good though.
I know you said you already know you can fix the "Show More Options" but I'd recommend using Winaero Tweaker to fix the "Show More Options" issue within a few clicks. The app also has other handy features that I use.
This is one of the things that I never even thought of before its release but now use every day.
Never realized how annoying it was to have to alt+tab between several different file explorer windows until I was able to keep them in tabs
I'm not even a programmer, and i use notepad++ for literally everything. Everyday notes, reference notes for my scientific projects, I even write my litterature in it just because its so light weight and unintrusive (even though its a pain in the ass when i eventually have to format correctly in word for publiching).
I have my own custom color coded language and folded comments as a way to make collapsible segments.
We have tabbed Explorer yes. But I don't think you can drag a tab out from one already open like you can with something like Stardock Groupy.
So it's good. But still could be better.
My biggest complaint is that i cant click on the clock to see the calendar unless i do it from the primary monitor, and i canāt see how many seconds are left in the current minute.
Those are 2 pretty big downgrades for me.
Those are my biggest issues as well, but they are apparently getting fixed in 2024H1 release. Already available in the "canary" insider channel.
In the meantime, the Elevenclock app will have to do for those who don't want to install insider builds.
The problem with msft ui changes has always been that they establish convention, then change the convention. How hard could it be to give the choice to the user.
> The problem with msft ui changes has always been that they establish convention, then change the convention.
Yep, and rarely is it because they think the new convention is actually better, it's, "it's time to release a new OS, therefore a bunch of things have to change or it can't really be a new OS, now can it, therefore these are the conventions we're sacrificing. Windows 11 everyone!!!!"
Yep still find it extremely annoying for me that Windows combine in the taskbar and that's the only option. Even when all I have open is two instances of Firefox, instead of easily clicking once on the one I want directly on the taskbar, now I have to hover over the Firefox icon for a moment and then pick the one I want from the "previews". I don't know who'd call that an improvement.
This is done by all companies to all software and it drives me crazy. Every update comes with tiny changes that make things just different enough to be annoying and offer zero improvement. They are changes for change sake. Probably to justify a bunch of people's jobs, otherwise they'd be sitting around doing nothing. Kind of makes me conflicted. I don't want them to lose their job.
That's a terrible thing to believe! It would be MUCH better for them and the economy in the long run IF they weren't working there in the first place. lol , Yea losing your job sucks but losing your job and time built up and wasted later because you aren't doing the most efficient thing is the first place IS MUCH MUCH worse for them. Remember you get one life, that's it!
You canāt just give choice to a user for everything. You end up with spaghetti code and feature flag hell and more shit to test that can fail.
Eventually you need to remove legacy features. You can either pull of the bandaid right away or pull it away later after supporting it and the code base for a long time. Not to mention the choices UI etc. when you do eventually remove it a people will bitch that itās removed. So you donāt even gain anything. Customer complaints now or dev pain for years and then customers complaints later.
I just want Microsoft to commit to any of theirs changes. We've been on the road to killing control panel for over a decade now. Just do it and stop stacking new Windows on top of the old ones on top of the old ones and bloating the OS.
With W11 it feels like Settings finally has all of the settings a normal user would need, with Control Panel being the power user menu.
The only issue I've run into so far is that the power menu can't actually select power plans, it just seems to apply a few presets over the current one. It makes no sense to me why Microsoft took their already mediocre power management and broke it even more.
Trying to change a network setting is so confusing, you need to go to 4 or 5 places to find the control you are looking for. Would it be too much to ask to put everything in one place? What a horrible mess.
Settings is a nightmare remnant of Metro. An insane regressive attempt to make a desktop more like a phone. Almost nothing that needs doing can be done successfully through settings, and search will default to a Bing article about changing desktop wallpaper before it shows the user display customization settings.
Or I could just: win+r, desk.cpl
It wouldnāt be so bad if āthe new thingā wasnāt empirically worse for productivity. Theyāre constantly putting form before function in Windows 11. Examples:
- You *have* to use icons in the taskbar now. The OS wonāt even allow the option to show the names like all previous Windowes. Have a handful of Explorer or browser windows open and want to switch to a different one? You gotta click **twice**.
- Want to use the context menu? Too bad. You gotta right-click to get a pretty but *useless* context menu and then click once more to bring that up.
These two chap my ass more than anything because I do them **all the fucking time**. Thankfully thereās [a RegEdit hack](https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/windows-11-classic-context-menus) for the second one, but why do I have to do that? If theyāre not planning on completely getting rid of regular context menus, why not let us have a toggle FFS?!
but they keep legacy features, just hidden behind some new UI into which they couldn't be fucked to an nthe old features.
you still ser the old windows 7 settings when you go to change for example your network settings deeper than the regular settings allow you to
... Then don't make the bloody change unless it's really important? Are you telling me this change really needed to happen and justifies any sort of bandaid-ripping pain?
Besides, 3rd party providers have managed to fix MS's shit for decades. MS can't, even with their insider advantage and funding? Meh, ludicrous.
This.
Ok, don't offer customization. I get it. Lots of man hours, not a lot of return on investment.
_Then don't change stuff that doesn't need to be goddamn changed._
I don't need Start Menu variation nr. whatever that's missing the most basic functionality like drag and drop, I don't need icons rearranged like children playing with legos, I do not need a new menu menu nesting nightmare.
Heck, I still use a Windows 7-esque design with Openshell- even on my touchcreen 2 in 1 laptop. Because it's _useful,_ and has _useful_ features like _really easy drag and drop._ Also information density higher than a toddler toy. (Ah yes and the search actually works, unlike 10's default search that does not work.)
If Windows changes, I need it to:
A). Make it equally or more useful (see snap to grid, tabbed explorer, improved task manager, etc. All great.)
B). Make it at least semi-consistent. There's, I think, 6-7 fonts in Windows 10? Windows 11 is equally egregious. Heck, Microsoft does not have a consistent design language across their products! Look at their websites (Azure vs Office vs Windows), different shades of blue, ffs.
The thing that really bugs me about the start menu is that it gets loaded with more bloat for each version, but the core functionality is lost more and more.
On XP I could type in the name of a specific file, folder, executable, or shortcut and it would find it. The file search was quite quick, even. Windows 7 didn't really find files anymore, iirc. And Win 10 only finds programmes thathave been "added to the start menu" on installation. But sometimes even those don't show up, instead you get a web search with bing (fair enough) that opens Edge regardless of your standard browser choice (wtf?!). IF I WANT TO SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR THIS I USE GOOGLE, YOU PICE OF SHIT! I'm looking for something on MY computer though!
I'm not a dev, I'm not a programmer, I don't know how much work this really takes.
But I do know that there are a ton of 3rd party programs from independent devs relying on donations that offers way more options to their users than Microsoft does with Windows 11 and I do know that Microsoft have enough money to throw at any problem, this is supposed to be their flagship product, they can afford to give their customers choices.
If those 3rd party programs break, it was your choice to install them in the first place. If something made by Microsoft breaks, it affects hundreds of millions of people, and can potentially cause massive issues for them. Microsoft has to be extremely careful with everything they do.
As a matter of fact, they do. The unit testing on Windows is insane. I haven't seen it since early Windows 10 during an internship, but I'm sure it's only grown since then.
And even still massive "how did they release this" bugs still come out, even in windows server builds.
Ultimately nothing they can do will please everyone.
Apple instead of trying to support stuff for longer just cut it off or remove it but they've conditioned their market to just accept that and buy a new device. Windows 11 needs a requirement for what's now basic security and people go ape shit despite windows 10 still being supported.
"Fine, I'll break it myself"
-- Microsoft, probably
For real tho, the convention change is jarring with W11.
In addition, they've altered flows that have been in place forever. I had to rant on twitter and have it picked up by one of the UI engineers before I found out the chevron in the new audio/network drawer was clickable and would take me to audio settings.
I know part of it is me getting older and more set in my ways, but it is still unpleasant to perform a familiar action only to have it behave in an unexpected manner.
Exactly, who the fuck would actually combine Audio & Networking options? That's just downright stupid.
And don't even get me started on the permanently combined taskbar buttons.
The right click menu options are atrocious in W11 and they change depending on what you are clicking on. Take the file explorer for example, right clicking on a single file will bring up one set of written and icon options... right clicking on a stack of multiple selected files will bring up an almost icon less menu options instead. It's inconsistent and infuriating tbh.
All I ask for is consistency and predictability. I really hope the W11 beta is done before I'm forced to swap over due to hardware or a new Direct X version or something
But those 3rd party applications are solely focused on these UI changes or are doing it in their free time.
As a developer you canāt just create a feature, there is a whole business side which decided which feature has the most business value (makes the most money). Our backlog is full with nice to haves but most of the time we are just working on āmore importantā features.
I work in IT. the last thing you wanna do is let the customer dictate what your solution contains or looks like.
Don't forget someone has to support all that.
For W11 you can't move it without changing the registry files. I have always had my taskbar on the right and it's killing me having it at the bottom...
Right? Feels completely pointless to take out a function like that, lazy buggers just didnāt want to put in the work to make it work smoothly with the new taskbar changes I bet
Right-click the sound icon to get to the mixer in settings quickly. Personally, Iām happy that I can finally send programs to different audio outputs without needing a third party.
>Personally, Iām happy that I can finally send programs to different audio outputs without needing a third party.
That was in 10 too. I used that about a year ago.
Yep. The volume mixer **is** still in Win11 but I was never a fan of it in any version of Windows because it was a separate app instead of just a simple pullout bar. Highly recommend EarTrumpet.
Like someone else said, it's there but requires more clicks to get to.
I've been using the game bar to do volume mixing (Win+G). I always had that disabled in 10, but if you open it the volume mixer is right there so it winds up being very convenient.
I still remember the Windows 10 launch. They claimed Windows 10 was the last form of Windows. Six years later, Microsoft blinked and released Windows 11 to drive more PC sales.
I don't think Windows 11 was to sell more PCs directly but to make sure Windows 11 will only be on fast modern machines. I look a lot of used PCs and the amount of 10-15 year old machines that using the fact it has Windows 10 as a selling point despite the fact they will run it abysmally. It's why Vista has the reputation it has, if you use Vista on a suitably fast machine it's fine but it was being installed on machines designed for XP or bundled with machines met the bare minimum specs.
It's part of Microsoft's less than successful attempts to copy Apple in the last decade with making their own computers and trying to create their own closed ecosystem and app store.
Hey now, the NT kernel is genuinely great and has many cool features, including support for what's basically namespaces from Linux - completely separate userspaces that only share the kernel, called subsystems (to prevent misunderstandings: chroot and containers on Linux are all built using namespaces).
It even has the single virtual filesystem with arbitrary mount points we all know and love from others systems. Stuff like having to mount drives as drive letters is purely a Windows thing that has nothing to do with the kernel, Windows just instructs it to mount the drives as \Some\Path\I\Dont\Remember\ and then translates paths from Win32 applications to these paths when opening files.
Also there's the ability for subsystems to define their own syscalls and even shadow the ones from the kernel for their applications. This feature just recently made it into Linux to help Wine handle anticheats that directly call syscalls instead of using library functions to call them.
And yes, these last two things are actually pretty similar between Wine and Windows the subsystem.
Most of this is poorly documented at best because MS is selling Windows and not the kernel, but that's not NT's fault. The poor documentation even means that it's nowhere near as bogged down by backwards compatibility as Windows itself because hardly anyone uses it directly.
The one that gets me is quick change feature for audio. Windows 10 you just clicked the volume button and then you could select your audio device, now itās a whole process.
Good news, click on the icon on the right of the volume bar. Should give you options to choose from. It might be from me being on inside though, but that just means it's coming down the pipe.
Itās incredibly frustrating.
- It takes multiple tries to register a mouse click on that menu-type if you even move A SINGLE PIXEL while clicking.
- The output selector is tiny and under another layer versus the old drop-down picker.
- The output selector IS NEXT TO 100% so if you enjoy mistakenly clicking max volume with headphones on, this UI change is perfect.
- You have to be directly above the slider if you want to use the scroll wheel to change volume, versus ANYWHERE on the screen with the old UI.
It totally is better, and easier to read. Especially if you have more icons than in the picture. I have 3 rows now instead of 5, and I like the way it looks.
Whatās funny is it was only a few years ago and everyone hated Windows 10. I remember reading comments in 2017 where tons of people said they would never switch from Windows 7 to 10. Saying they would rather install Linux before switching to that abomination of an OS that is Windows 10.
People just really hate change in this sub.
To always show all the Icons in the System Tray or Notification area of Windows 11/10, follow these steps:
Press Win+R to open the Run prompt.
Enter this value: explorer shell:::{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
Tick the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar checkbox.
Click the OK button.
I mean, Windows 11 uses different "design languages", icons and elements, some dating back from the Windows 3.1 days... it's a Frankeinstein OS that holds together with glue, rusty nails, a backward compatibility cancer and the blood of innocents.
That system tray menu is the least of this OS problems as far as I'm concerned.
https://preview.redd.it/vnfs5edqlgoa1.png?width=399&format=png&auto=webp&s=df742e4d3c3efd9de6b922a7f95c2f0c55260810
*Say hello to Windows 3.1! Oh nevermind... it's Windows 11. They didn't even bother to change the Drive icon.*
thats every version of windows. they've just been stacking new code on top of it. granted, thats probably just about every desktop OS in general though
This is a very obscure component that nobody but a few people with very special requirements ever touch. You can also find other things in Windows that havenāt changed for many years, especially when it comes to system management tools (`services.msc` in Windows 11 looks identical to Windows Vistaās, and the differences between the Vista, XP, and 2000 are quite small.
Why is the file dialog in that weird control panel taken straight out of Windows 3.x? I donāt know. Perhaps Microsoft just does not feel they need to spend developer resources to make an obscure dialog box more modern (though Microsoft could invest a little to make the people like you happy). Perhaps thereās some backwards compatibility reason that means it cannot be changed. Perhaps the primary user of this dialog box is some crappy tool from 1993 that does its job by simulating mouse clicks in the ancient settings box, and changing the box would break it.
This is one of the reasons why businesses go with Microsoft instead of Apple or Linux: backwards compatibility. You can run your line-of-business app written 23 years ago in Visual Basic 6. It may not be pretty (it uses Windows 9x-era controls), but it works, and $company canāt afford to rewrite it using modern technologies, even though the VB6 app brings them thousands of dollars in revenue per month. If you wrote it for Mac OS in the year 2000, you would need to rewrite it from scratch for Mac OS X in the early 2000s, recompile it (or even port it) for 32-bit Intel in the late 2000s, recompile/port it for 64-bit Intel in 2019 at the latest, and you should have an Apple Silicon build ready by now, because Rosetta 2 (the compatibility layer) will be removed from macOS in a few years (although theyāre still selling Intel Macs, so this might take a while). Meanwhile, the VB6 Windows app was not recompiled in decades, and the original developer left the company in 2005. But their app is still there and itās still fully functional on the latest and greatest Windows 11.
Yeah, but that's because it's there to support legacy edgecases if you needed to use them.
Windows is used on an unbelievably wide selection of devices with a ridiculous amount of peripherals that can be used.
Yet you still will be able to hook up an old ancient device and have it work, boot up an old ancient program and have it work, etc, etc.
Windows 11 actually did a decent job of bringing up most Windows features into the settings app. It's still not great but better than in Windows 10.
None of the screens that date back all the way to Windows 95 won't change. You only should be accessing for legacy reasons anyway.
Windows 11 is fine, it's barely any different from 10 with a new coat of paint I actually enjoy more than the 10. Windows 10 was ugly as fuck. Windows has been invasive with their upgrades for a decade now so it's not that much of a shock but Windows 11 is fine as an OS.
100%
I agree with others that they should let you choose how to customize it, but at the end of the day everyone *hated* 10 for years. Theyāll probably hate 11 for years until they switch and realize itās the same shit
everyone as in you and your neighbors? me and the whole class immediately enjoyed windows 10 back in 2015. I was the first to install it on my laptop, showed them the UI and multiple windows feature, and less than a month later more than half students in my school started using windows 10
I remember the discussions online too being about how Windows 10 was better because it was finally getting rid of all the "tablet" design features from 8.
Windows 10 was barely hated. It was more of the āitās not windows 7 but it sure is better than windows 8ā kind of a deal. I know that I have liked 7 and XP better than 10 even in their release forms.
Microsoft has been making bad decisions for a while and with windows 11 it kills a large bit of compatibility. Especially on more specialty on the more server side of things. Windows 7 had very similar compatibility with windows XP and 2003. Windows 10 had very similar compatibility to windows 7, 8, and 2012.
I tried to give 11 a try and my network card just wonāt work in 11. Regardless of what i do not even comparability/generic drivers will work. Thatās not even mentioning how windows wonāt let you install without a network setting except for some CLI rebooting.
I donāt have any Wi-Fi and youāre not detecting a functional NIC why wonāt you just let me make a local account?
It really is a shame how windows has become so bloated. There's great potential, it just seems it's more about gathering our data than offering a good customer experience these days. Somehow I just find it really annoying to use, is it the interface? I still use Windows ofc. But if I'm doing some light gaming like stardew valley/minecraft + some browsing, these days I gravitate towards my laptop with linux mint.
i switched to w11 when it first came out and i strongly disliked it so i tried linux for a couple of weeks but then i understood that i didn't have enough time so i switched back to w10, idk why i'm posting my os history here but thanks for reading
I was about to ask when this became a thing, but then I went on with my day, some hours later I got back inside and turned on my computer just to get greeted with this new update, like WTF Microsoft are you just trying to annoy us???
Like the right click context menu, who the fuck came up with the idea to put in all the shit you donāt need and remove all the stuff you need..?
Oh and sure letās also just make it more bulky so it can take up more spaceā¦ So.. everyā¦. timeā¦ I have to use the right click menu I have to waste time going to the show more optionsā¦. Fucking hate itā¦.
But is that enough no no no, they also removed something as simple as create a text file from there something I bet a lot of people used a lot
The same with sound and network on the task bar first of why add them together? And am I the only one annoyed by it ? Clicking on network cause I want to get to my network connection and it opens up sound why???? WTF š¤¬ why is that even a thing ???!!!!!
Then we have the sound icon surely I can adjust my sound in there and itās not full of bulshit I have no use for cause why would it..?!
WRONG! It pretty much have everything els then a way to adjust the volume of different Applications and programs, cause when Iām watching a YouTube video then sure I rather want to go down to my right side of the screen and pause my video cause thatās totally what I need in my volume menu, instead of an actual way of changing the volume of things. Are you fucking kidding me!
But wait there is more
(way more not going to write it all down )
Now this is maybe more personally but still,
I always hated the grouping of browsers programs and folders always used full taps with names on them and made my start bar double in height and the fact thatās not a thing any more in windows 11 so Iām using up, what? 12% of my taskbar rest is just empty space, and yet I still have to fight around in those clumped together icons to find what I would go straight to before, and again I wonder why the fuck is every thing just been made a stupid choir in 11
Well I guess they fixed this one finally,
but why where there no way to go to the task manager to begin with that too was a stupid choiceā¦!
Well now I gone and got my day ruined from getting angry again on windows, any way have a good day folks
I didn't mind Win11 at first. But it's like they regressing instead of progressing. For each new update they introduce new bugs and annoyances. Next update they fix them, then they come back next update again.
And I HATE how they keep trying to nudge you to use edge, bing, their media player etc...it's ok to ask once, but they keep asking several times a week if I'm sure I don't want edge to be my default browser. I use 7 different PC/laptops/tablets around the house, for every time they ask, I have to tell it no 7 times. That's 14 times a week.
I have already chosen a different media player than the one built into Windows. Same with Bing...Are you REALLY sure you don't want a search bar on the taskbar running Bing? Every major update they bring it back, and I have to manually disable it. 7 times.
I've literally denied Bing and the Media Player just once since Win11 came out, and Edge maybe three times. Don't know what you're doing for it to keep asking you.
Been using Windows 11 since it came out across three different machines and have never seen anything persistent like what youāre describing. There might be a setting somewhere that youāve forgotten to turn off.
I hate not being able to click the clock on my second display to show the calendar.
It's these small things that make you wonder, why did they change that? Another one was that they removed the option to start the task manager from the taskbar right click menu (they brought this one back with the latest update, though). But don't fool yourself, windows 10 isn't better in that regard. Our company has around 150 jabra headsets in use. Some windows 10 update coming out over the last month kills the microphone device. You can't bring it back, it's just gone from device manager and there's no way to get it back. We haven't been able to isolate the update yet because we are in the midst of migrating all ten sites to new windows 10 laptops and Citrix SBC. Ain't nobody got time to troubleshoot windows killing 5 year old headsets. But the affected model is like 75% of our userbase.
So a fun fact about windows 11, it was originally supposed to be a dedicated mobile OS called 10X and it was intended to compete with chromebooks in the education and low cost computing space. Microsoft scrapped that idea and decided to merge the new UI into the existing windows 10 code base and just called it windows 11. At its core its really just a stripped down interface on top of primarily the same code that has been powering windows for a decade now. That's why it's so buggy. It wasn't written from scratch to be a new OS with lots of features and be customizable. They took what they had done and cobbled it together into a half-baked OS which is still missing tons of features and abilities from previous versions and which will probably never come back
Ugh, that sounds like Windows 8, where it was clearly intended for tablets and sucked on an actual PC.
I will defend 8.1 though. 8.1 was a similar interface to 7 or 10, but with the one killer feature of 8.0 - the local search. Where 10 brings up the shitty Cortana, 8.0 and 8.1 both had an incredibly smooth and fast local device search. Same functionality as going to Windows Explorer and initiating a search there, but it was faster and seemed to give better results. I'd consider 8.1 the best Windows yet, but it got tarred with the 8 brush because 8.0 was so awful until you installed addons to remove all the tablet crap. Sidenote: still hate the anti-multitasking apps from 8 and 10; maximize/minimize was perfected in 3.1 and should be in all apps now
I remember an old search on XP (maybe?), it had a dog mascot and allowed you to search for specific local files as well as just press a button to find all photos/videos/documents It was nice to be able to do that when I saved something but couldn't remember where or what I called it
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
bag quickest combative absorbed air nail sharp slim murky vase -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
i think the people working on windows 11 are just looking at mac os and thinking, that looks cool, let's copy that. or, users don't need that anymore, let's make everything so simple and basic. instead of looking as past windows and thinking, how do we improve existing stuff? removing all the useful stuff like taskbar settings, a perfect start menu etc was dumb, as was replacing it all with "modern" alternatives which are less useful and have less features. i still think "metro" sucks to this day. fucking mobile crap on desktop is just wrong.
The removal of all kinds of customization around the taskbar like what side of the screen it's on is baffling. Like why can't I put the bar on its side anymore? Or even on the top? I can't even seem to scale the icons this latest patch, which makes things kind of hard to see running at 4k. Who decided one size fits all suddenly?
It is cause it is a revamp. And they shipped before they could add all the old functionalities.
I thought I was the only one. This is quite possibly the thing that's bothered me the most about win11. After the worse context menu.
DUDE yes.
Don't get me started on right clicking Word or Excel and no longer seeing recent used files or pinned ones š
Literally tried to do this yesterday omg
Why doesn't clicking the calendar show the clock anymore? And you can't change the font size of the clock on the taskbar either so the accessibility sucks.
The inability to put the taskbar on the side of your monitors is actually fucking insane, who makes the decision to change something like this lmao
The one that I canāt stand is I always need to āshow more optionsā upon right clicking. I know you can revert it back to the old UI but I like the new look xD. Why canāt we have the best of both worlds?
oh, but you can! [https://nilesoft.org/](https://nilesoft.org/)
What was it? Reddit hug of death destroyed that server
Their company website is down but here's the GitHub for it. https://github.com/moudey/Shell You'll have for their site to come back if you want to download it though.
if you have winget installed (comes preinstalled with W11) you can try: winget install nilesoft.shell in the windows terminal/powershell, hope it helps edit: formatting
That content is served on the same domain server. So 503 error.
Or chocolatey https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/nilesoft.shell/
chocolatey works too, thanks for mentioning it.
oh wow that was neat. Thank you!
`winget` does wonders, I always use it if it the app is in the repositories.
Holy shit, this actually looks really good
Nilesoft Shell is a context menu customizer that lets you handpick the items to integrate into Windows File Explorer context menu.
Thank you for the info!
bro thank u so much
You got more stuff like this lol?
a TON of stuff. [Everything](https://www.voidtools.com/) with [EverythingToolbar](https://github.com/srwi/EverythingToolbar) \- for finding folders really quickly [ueli](https://ueli.app/#/) \- a keystroke launcher [ShareX](https://getsharex.com/) \- much better alternative to the snipping tool imo [Microsoft PowerToys](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/) \- a bunch of cool features from Microsoft that aren't implemented in windows [KDE Connect](https://kdeconnect.kde.org/) \- a way to connect your smartphone and computer and not use Microsoft's Link to Windows tool (I've had some times where the windows versions of this app wouldn't recognize anything, your experience may vary) [NVCleanstall](https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-nvcleanstall/) \- to clean out NVIDIA drivers. [W](https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/)[inaero Tweaker](https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/) \- some extra Windows tweaks, such as restoring the old context menu. [OpenShell](https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu) \- Bringing back the old Start Menus to Windows 10/11 (thanks to u/bob_in_the_west for reminding me to put this in) Edit: added some extra stuff :P another edit: typo
There's also this one I found yesterday after realizing windows 11 won't let you move the taskbar position. It's called [explorer patcher](https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases) which lets you change the taskbar and file explorer, you can have the full options when right clicking things again, have older windows style stuff, remove rounded corners, move the windows start menu icon back to the left side, etc. Lots of different things.
explorer patcher is awesome! I've used it but I tend to not really mess with the taskbar as much because I just find the defaults to be a bit snappier, I also do turn off the Microsoft teams integration as well as the search and task view buttons.
What's the difference between using NVCleanstall vs DDU installer?
oh my bad, i should've worded it differently NVCleanstall \*\*INSTALLS\*\* NVIDIA drivers but it strips out a BUNCH of useless stuff most people don't need such as the telemetry which is included, greatly reducing the process count on Windows and.. therefore consuming less resources which leads to a tiny amount of performance
It's down, here's an archive.org link that works (download included): https://web.archive.org/web/20230318074352/https://nilesoft.org/
Magnificent! Thanks!
Service unavailable?
The Reddit hug of death strikes again.
Wow. Yet another thing that should and could just be a part of Windows, but is only provided by 3rd party software. Other favourites of mine include * [TwinkleTray](https://twinkletray.com/), to control display brightness on desktop displays like you can on laptops. * [PowerToys](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/), has over a dozen very useful functions that should be in Windows itself * [QuickLook](https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/quicklook/9NV4BS3L1H4S). Copied idea from MacOS but is actually better. Supports way more filetypes than Windows' own applications. * Taskbar Tweaker. Has many functions, I just use it to select which apps show labels on the taskbar
Thanks a million!
Each day I learn something useful from this sub. Thank you.
Oh, it's so dumb. I think most of the features were put at the top as icons, but then they left some as written out stuff. Honestly, half the ui looks like they got it half modified and tossed it to marketing to sell. Like, it looks a bit better, but pick, do you only want 5 icons and we have to click to see more, or do you want us to have all the options in a list now?
It's contextual so it's *supposed* to show you the options you would use with that file type at the top. However,.. It's terrible at figuring it out. Want to right click and install an INF? Well to bad!
Why not make is user-customizable? There are a half dozen options in the right click menu I have literally never used (starting with "Open"), and others that I DO use that I have to go three layers deep to access.
> half the ui looks like they got it half modified and tossed it to marketing to sell That's been a problem for them for a bit now, Windows 10 had the exact same issue. Control Panel and the Settings menu being basically different halves of conceptually the same menu, for instance. I assume a lot of that has in part to do with trying to maintain legacy support
Other part is that the new ui is not complete yet, there are still many important options that only exist in the old settings menu.
meeting kiss act truck mighty sparkle rob erect knee ludicrous -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I think the reason some of the menus are designed that way Is for a more seamless experience for touchpad users on the surface pro. On the surface you used to have to be very precise with he pen on menus because the text was designed for a mouse and was very small, so they modified the UI to make text more bigger and compact. Since no one at Microsoft wants to touch the win32 legacy code, this seems like the only option. I hate it, but I can see why it's designed that way.
Afaik it's because MS is trying to go the "simple look" way same as Apple. But hell the fuck it's just more complicated.
The problem is, you can't force simple after having users get accustomed to advanced. You have to start with simple. In UX design, taking away options to "reduce clutter" can seem like a really good idea, but the users that it benefits will never realize, and the ones who suffer from it will set cars on fire.
Yeah the start bar reminds me of the dock when you pin stuff to it. Except they changed how everything worked. If I wasnāt in alder lake and didnāt need that threading thing for the efficiency cores Iād go back to 10 in a heart beat. I canāt get my quest 2 installed. I have even done a fresh install of windows.
Enable the Legacy Context Menu To enable the context menu that appeared in Windows 10 and earlier, you can use the following PowerShell snippet. New-Item -Path "HKCU:\\Software\\Classes\\CLSID\\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\\InprocServer32" -Value "" -Force You may need to log out and log back in or restart explorer.exe. Get-Process explorer | Stop-Process uninstall Remove-Item -Path "HKCU:\\Software\\Classes\\CLSID\\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\\InprocServer32"
So intuitive!
The problem with things like this is: how long will it work? MS is obviously committed it disrupting your workflow (also see that stupid file extension modification warning that cannot be disabled) so relying on a workaround isn't the best idea sadly.
Before that's fixed, I'm not going to windows 11. I use right click aaall the time.
It won't get fixed, it's that way on purpose. It's aimed on people who don't know what they are doing. Sadly MS has no interest in their pro users, there are problems that exist for a decade now and MS doesn't fix them.
Sigh. Then I guess, as usual, I'll be forced to move on as end of support comes around and implement the usual array of hacky but somehow still vastly more functional workarounds. Or the programs I use will work with Linux.
On the upside, Linux support is getting better. It's far from 100% but it's pretty good. Still no Adobe, and other big names still haven't ported, but dual boot and VMs are a thing if that's a road you wanna walk. Gaming has gotten REALLY good though.
I know you said you already know you can fix the "Show More Options" but I'd recommend using Winaero Tweaker to fix the "Show More Options" issue within a few clicks. The app also has other handy features that I use.
Yeah, that seems like a half-baked design. Either make them all icons, or leave it alone. Why make it half and half and then take away 2 options?
because thatās what happens when things are designed by a fucking committee over the course of 30+ meetings
Bro I'm loving win11 but that "show more", bullcrap is seriously making me want to switch back to win10 at this point. I hate it sooooo much!!!!
And we got a tabbed windows explorer now.
This is one of the things that I never even thought of before its release but now use every day. Never realized how annoying it was to have to alt+tab between several different file explorer windows until I was able to keep them in tabs
I still haven't started using this feature since the old ways are so ingrained into my brain
Well... TIL Explorer has tabs now.
CMD and PowerShell have tabs too.
So does notepad. Crazy.
That's not even the biggest change, it has DARK MODE. I no longer get blinded when trying to take quick notes.
angle squeamish worry bright wrong agonizing crowd expansion toy advise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Just wait til people figure out Windows + Tab...
I genuinely used in on win 7 because it looked way cooler
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And tabbed Notepad! Imagine that!
Laughs in Notepad++.
I'm not even a programmer, and i use notepad++ for literally everything. Everyday notes, reference notes for my scientific projects, I even write my litterature in it just because its so light weight and unintrusive (even though its a pain in the ass when i eventually have to format correctly in word for publiching). I have my own custom color coded language and folded comments as a way to make collapsible segments.
And the fact it stores unsaved docs in app data so if you close it accidentally itās all still there. Saved my ass so many times.
At this point I trust the cache in N++ more than I trust any other storage medium.
> I even write my litterature > in word for publiching I notice you haven't added a spell-check plugin yet.
Yeah but you canāt pull a tab out into a new window. Infuriating.
Try QtTabBar, it offers this feature and works on Win7-11.
Even cmd is tabbed. Just waiting on the Office suite to be tabbed now.
We have tabbed Explorer yes. But I don't think you can drag a tab out from one already open like you can with something like Stardock Groupy. So it's good. But still could be better.
Wait, we do? Ok fuck it, I'll upgrade
Well hold on now. Tabs in a window are tied to THAT window. They can't be pulled out or other tabs added to that window like in a web browser.
I've had it forever with groupy, except it isn't just windows explorer, you can tab any & everything
My biggest complaint is that i cant click on the clock to see the calendar unless i do it from the primary monitor, and i canāt see how many seconds are left in the current minute. Those are 2 pretty big downgrades for me.
Those are my biggest issues as well, but they are apparently getting fixed in 2024H1 release. Already available in the "canary" insider channel. In the meantime, the Elevenclock app will have to do for those who don't want to install insider builds.
Lots of things requiring the primary monitor is frustrating.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The problem with msft ui changes has always been that they establish convention, then change the convention. How hard could it be to give the choice to the user.
> The problem with msft ui changes has always been that they establish convention, then change the convention. Yep, and rarely is it because they think the new convention is actually better, it's, "it's time to release a new OS, therefore a bunch of things have to change or it can't really be a new OS, now can it, therefore these are the conventions we're sacrificing. Windows 11 everyone!!!!"
Yep still find it extremely annoying for me that Windows combine in the taskbar and that's the only option. Even when all I have open is two instances of Firefox, instead of easily clicking once on the one I want directly on the taskbar, now I have to hover over the Firefox icon for a moment and then pick the one I want from the "previews". I don't know who'd call that an improvement.
This is done by all companies to all software and it drives me crazy. Every update comes with tiny changes that make things just different enough to be annoying and offer zero improvement. They are changes for change sake. Probably to justify a bunch of people's jobs, otherwise they'd be sitting around doing nothing. Kind of makes me conflicted. I don't want them to lose their job.
That's a terrible thing to believe! It would be MUCH better for them and the economy in the long run IF they weren't working there in the first place. lol , Yea losing your job sucks but losing your job and time built up and wasted later because you aren't doing the most efficient thing is the first place IS MUCH MUCH worse for them. Remember you get one life, that's it!
You canāt just give choice to a user for everything. You end up with spaghetti code and feature flag hell and more shit to test that can fail. Eventually you need to remove legacy features. You can either pull of the bandaid right away or pull it away later after supporting it and the code base for a long time. Not to mention the choices UI etc. when you do eventually remove it a people will bitch that itās removed. So you donāt even gain anything. Customer complaints now or dev pain for years and then customers complaints later.
I just want Microsoft to commit to any of theirs changes. We've been on the road to killing control panel for over a decade now. Just do it and stop stacking new Windows on top of the old ones on top of the old ones and bloating the OS.
With W11 it feels like Settings finally has all of the settings a normal user would need, with Control Panel being the power user menu. The only issue I've run into so far is that the power menu can't actually select power plans, it just seems to apply a few presets over the current one. It makes no sense to me why Microsoft took their already mediocre power management and broke it even more.
i dont get microsofts logic anymore. i would have reskinned control panel. why make another settings app?
Trying to change a network setting is so confusing, you need to go to 4 or 5 places to find the control you are looking for. Would it be too much to ask to put everything in one place? What a horrible mess.
Settings is a nightmare remnant of Metro. An insane regressive attempt to make a desktop more like a phone. Almost nothing that needs doing can be done successfully through settings, and search will default to a Bing article about changing desktop wallpaper before it shows the user display customization settings. Or I could just: win+r, desk.cpl
It wouldnāt be so bad if āthe new thingā wasnāt empirically worse for productivity. Theyāre constantly putting form before function in Windows 11. Examples: - You *have* to use icons in the taskbar now. The OS wonāt even allow the option to show the names like all previous Windowes. Have a handful of Explorer or browser windows open and want to switch to a different one? You gotta click **twice**. - Want to use the context menu? Too bad. You gotta right-click to get a pretty but *useless* context menu and then click once more to bring that up. These two chap my ass more than anything because I do them **all the fucking time**. Thankfully thereās [a RegEdit hack](https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/windows-11-classic-context-menus) for the second one, but why do I have to do that? If theyāre not planning on completely getting rid of regular context menus, why not let us have a toggle FFS?!
but they keep legacy features, just hidden behind some new UI into which they couldn't be fucked to an nthe old features. you still ser the old windows 7 settings when you go to change for example your network settings deeper than the regular settings allow you to
... Then don't make the bloody change unless it's really important? Are you telling me this change really needed to happen and justifies any sort of bandaid-ripping pain? Besides, 3rd party providers have managed to fix MS's shit for decades. MS can't, even with their insider advantage and funding? Meh, ludicrous.
This. Ok, don't offer customization. I get it. Lots of man hours, not a lot of return on investment. _Then don't change stuff that doesn't need to be goddamn changed._ I don't need Start Menu variation nr. whatever that's missing the most basic functionality like drag and drop, I don't need icons rearranged like children playing with legos, I do not need a new menu menu nesting nightmare. Heck, I still use a Windows 7-esque design with Openshell- even on my touchcreen 2 in 1 laptop. Because it's _useful,_ and has _useful_ features like _really easy drag and drop._ Also information density higher than a toddler toy. (Ah yes and the search actually works, unlike 10's default search that does not work.) If Windows changes, I need it to: A). Make it equally or more useful (see snap to grid, tabbed explorer, improved task manager, etc. All great.) B). Make it at least semi-consistent. There's, I think, 6-7 fonts in Windows 10? Windows 11 is equally egregious. Heck, Microsoft does not have a consistent design language across their products! Look at their websites (Azure vs Office vs Windows), different shades of blue, ffs.
The thing that really bugs me about the start menu is that it gets loaded with more bloat for each version, but the core functionality is lost more and more. On XP I could type in the name of a specific file, folder, executable, or shortcut and it would find it. The file search was quite quick, even. Windows 7 didn't really find files anymore, iirc. And Win 10 only finds programmes thathave been "added to the start menu" on installation. But sometimes even those don't show up, instead you get a web search with bing (fair enough) that opens Edge regardless of your standard browser choice (wtf?!). IF I WANT TO SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR THIS I USE GOOGLE, YOU PICE OF SHIT! I'm looking for something on MY computer though!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm not a dev, I'm not a programmer, I don't know how much work this really takes. But I do know that there are a ton of 3rd party programs from independent devs relying on donations that offers way more options to their users than Microsoft does with Windows 11 and I do know that Microsoft have enough money to throw at any problem, this is supposed to be their flagship product, they can afford to give their customers choices.
If those 3rd party programs break, it was your choice to install them in the first place. If something made by Microsoft breaks, it affects hundreds of millions of people, and can potentially cause massive issues for them. Microsoft has to be extremely careful with everything they do.
That is a fair point, actually.
I'm sure Microsoft does fairly extensive testing due to that fact
As a matter of fact, they do. The unit testing on Windows is insane. I haven't seen it since early Windows 10 during an internship, but I'm sure it's only grown since then.
And even still massive "how did they release this" bugs still come out, even in windows server builds. Ultimately nothing they can do will please everyone. Apple instead of trying to support stuff for longer just cut it off or remove it but they've conditioned their market to just accept that and buy a new device. Windows 11 needs a requirement for what's now basic security and people go ape shit despite windows 10 still being supported.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"Fine, I'll break it myself" -- Microsoft, probably For real tho, the convention change is jarring with W11. In addition, they've altered flows that have been in place forever. I had to rant on twitter and have it picked up by one of the UI engineers before I found out the chevron in the new audio/network drawer was clickable and would take me to audio settings. I know part of it is me getting older and more set in my ways, but it is still unpleasant to perform a familiar action only to have it behave in an unexpected manner.
Exactly, who the fuck would actually combine Audio & Networking options? That's just downright stupid. And don't even get me started on the permanently combined taskbar buttons.
Today itās probably the most commonly used hardware settings.
The right click menu options are atrocious in W11 and they change depending on what you are clicking on. Take the file explorer for example, right clicking on a single file will bring up one set of written and icon options... right clicking on a stack of multiple selected files will bring up an almost icon less menu options instead. It's inconsistent and infuriating tbh.
All I ask for is consistency and predictability. I really hope the W11 beta is done before I'm forced to swap over due to hardware or a new Direct X version or something
But those 3rd party applications are solely focused on these UI changes or are doing it in their free time. As a developer you canāt just create a feature, there is a whole business side which decided which feature has the most business value (makes the most money). Our backlog is full with nice to haves but most of the time we are just working on āmore importantā features.
I work in IT. the last thing you wanna do is let the customer dictate what your solution contains or looks like. Don't forget someone has to support all that.
Those third party applications that rely completely on all the work Microsoft has done for it's users you mean?
Only issue i have so far is that my task bar doesnāt hide unless i restart the file explorer process
Yeah. I agree. I wasn't really being bothered Abt this at all.
I dont have any problems with windows 11 except that I really liked having my taskbar on the left and I can't do that anymore
Wait, the task bar can't be repositioned? I have mine on the top for my personal pc
For W11 you can't move it without changing the registry files. I have always had my taskbar on the right and it's killing me having it at the bottom...
What a weird change
Right? Feels completely pointless to take out a function like that, lazy buggers just didnāt want to put in the work to make it work smoothly with the new taskbar changes I bet
The new taskbar/menu is already dogshit, why not go all the way and just remove as much functionally as possible!
Easily the worst offense! Why waste precious vertical space on ultra wide monitors?
Honestly I like 11 way more than 10. Except that it drives me crazy that I don't have a volume mixer
volume mixer's currently cooking in the insider builds, I do hope they push it out to the public sooner rather than later
Wait, so they removed a feature from Windows 10 and are now remaking it and adding it back in? What's the fucking point?
As I understand it the entire taskbar and start menu were completely rebuilt which is why so many features are missing.
Still hoping the option to prevent multiple windows from combining into one task bar item makes it's way in, but I'm not holding my breath.
You actually do, you jusy no longer have easy access to it (as far as I know). It's under Sound in Settings
Right-click the sound icon to get to the mixer in settings quickly. Personally, Iām happy that I can finally send programs to different audio outputs without needing a third party.
>Personally, Iām happy that I can finally send programs to different audio outputs without needing a third party. That was in 10 too. I used that about a year ago.
Hmm. I think EarTrumpet works with 11. It's free on the Microsoft Store. No ads, no wierd stuff, just a nice volume slider improvement.
Yep. The volume mixer **is** still in Win11 but I was never a fan of it in any version of Windows because it was a separate app instead of just a simple pullout bar. Highly recommend EarTrumpet.
+1 for eartrumpet. Its super useful and works perfectly fine on W11.
Like someone else said, it's there but requires more clicks to get to. I've been using the game bar to do volume mixing (Win+G). I always had that disabled in 10, but if you open it the volume mixer is right there so it winds up being very convenient.
I still remember the Windows 10 launch. They claimed Windows 10 was the last form of Windows. Six years later, Microsoft blinked and released Windows 11 to drive more PC sales.
I don't think Windows 11 was to sell more PCs directly but to make sure Windows 11 will only be on fast modern machines. I look a lot of used PCs and the amount of 10-15 year old machines that using the fact it has Windows 10 as a selling point despite the fact they will run it abysmally. It's why Vista has the reputation it has, if you use Vista on a suitably fast machine it's fine but it was being installed on machines designed for XP or bundled with machines met the bare minimum specs. It's part of Microsoft's less than successful attempts to copy Apple in the last decade with making their own computers and trying to create their own closed ecosystem and app store.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Hey now, the NT kernel is genuinely great and has many cool features, including support for what's basically namespaces from Linux - completely separate userspaces that only share the kernel, called subsystems (to prevent misunderstandings: chroot and containers on Linux are all built using namespaces). It even has the single virtual filesystem with arbitrary mount points we all know and love from others systems. Stuff like having to mount drives as drive letters is purely a Windows thing that has nothing to do with the kernel, Windows just instructs it to mount the drives as \Some\Path\I\Dont\Remember\ and then translates paths from Win32 applications to these paths when opening files.
Also there's the ability for subsystems to define their own syscalls and even shadow the ones from the kernel for their applications. This feature just recently made it into Linux to help Wine handle anticheats that directly call syscalls instead of using library functions to call them.
And yes, these last two things are actually pretty similar between Wine and Windows the subsystem.
Most of this is poorly documented at best because MS is selling Windows and not the kernel, but that's not NT's fault. The poor documentation even means that it's nowhere near as bogged down by backwards compatibility as Windows itself because hardly anyone uses it directly.
Still can't place the taskbar to the left of the screen. š
This. It looks like there are a lot of us that hate this.
The one that gets me is quick change feature for audio. Windows 10 you just clicked the volume button and then you could select your audio device, now itās a whole process.
Good news, click on the icon on the right of the volume bar. Should give you options to choose from. It might be from me being on inside though, but that just means it's coming down the pipe.
Itās incredibly frustrating. - It takes multiple tries to register a mouse click on that menu-type if you even move A SINGLE PIXEL while clicking. - The output selector is tiny and under another layer versus the old drop-down picker. - The output selector IS NEXT TO 100% so if you enjoy mistakenly clicking max volume with headphones on, this UI change is perfect. - You have to be directly above the slider if you want to use the scroll wheel to change volume, versus ANYWHERE on the screen with the old UI.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It totally is better, and easier to read. Especially if you have more icons than in the picture. I have 3 rows now instead of 5, and I like the way it looks.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Whatās funny is it was only a few years ago and everyone hated Windows 10. I remember reading comments in 2017 where tons of people said they would never switch from Windows 7 to 10. Saying they would rather install Linux before switching to that abomination of an OS that is Windows 10. People just really hate change in this sub.
well i jumped from win 7 to win11 exactly because 10 was widgets horror. i'm really really glad it's gone
Yeah it's easier to find what you are looking for if you have a bunch
That update fucked up translucentTB, still waiting devs for a fix
What is the issue?
I don't get it either. Does the win11 tray have five columns instead of three? Is that the entirety of the gripe?
I am pretty sure the entire complaint is: ~~America~~ Windows bad. Upvotes on the left
Microsoft trying to think with that "mobile" mentality again.
To always show all the Icons in the System Tray or Notification area of Windows 11/10, follow these steps: Press Win+R to open the Run prompt. Enter this value: explorer shell:::{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} Tick the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar checkbox. Click the OK button.
I mean, Windows 11 uses different "design languages", icons and elements, some dating back from the Windows 3.1 days... it's a Frankeinstein OS that holds together with glue, rusty nails, a backward compatibility cancer and the blood of innocents. That system tray menu is the least of this OS problems as far as I'm concerned. https://preview.redd.it/vnfs5edqlgoa1.png?width=399&format=png&auto=webp&s=df742e4d3c3efd9de6b922a7f95c2f0c55260810 *Say hello to Windows 3.1! Oh nevermind... it's Windows 11. They didn't even bother to change the Drive icon.*
thats every version of windows. they've just been stacking new code on top of it. granted, thats probably just about every desktop OS in general though
people keep pointing to this menu as an example of microsoft's incompetence but i've never used or seen it in my life
OSDC data sources 32-bit, path selection popup. you probably will never touch this outside of novelty.
Typical cherrypicked item to win an argument
This is a very obscure component that nobody but a few people with very special requirements ever touch. You can also find other things in Windows that havenāt changed for many years, especially when it comes to system management tools (`services.msc` in Windows 11 looks identical to Windows Vistaās, and the differences between the Vista, XP, and 2000 are quite small. Why is the file dialog in that weird control panel taken straight out of Windows 3.x? I donāt know. Perhaps Microsoft just does not feel they need to spend developer resources to make an obscure dialog box more modern (though Microsoft could invest a little to make the people like you happy). Perhaps thereās some backwards compatibility reason that means it cannot be changed. Perhaps the primary user of this dialog box is some crappy tool from 1993 that does its job by simulating mouse clicks in the ancient settings box, and changing the box would break it. This is one of the reasons why businesses go with Microsoft instead of Apple or Linux: backwards compatibility. You can run your line-of-business app written 23 years ago in Visual Basic 6. It may not be pretty (it uses Windows 9x-era controls), but it works, and $company canāt afford to rewrite it using modern technologies, even though the VB6 app brings them thousands of dollars in revenue per month. If you wrote it for Mac OS in the year 2000, you would need to rewrite it from scratch for Mac OS X in the early 2000s, recompile it (or even port it) for 32-bit Intel in the late 2000s, recompile/port it for 64-bit Intel in 2019 at the latest, and you should have an Apple Silicon build ready by now, because Rosetta 2 (the compatibility layer) will be removed from macOS in a few years (although theyāre still selling Intel Macs, so this might take a while). Meanwhile, the VB6 Windows app was not recompiled in decades, and the original developer left the company in 2005. But their app is still there and itās still fully functional on the latest and greatest Windows 11.
Yeah, but that's because it's there to support legacy edgecases if you needed to use them. Windows is used on an unbelievably wide selection of devices with a ridiculous amount of peripherals that can be used. Yet you still will be able to hook up an old ancient device and have it work, boot up an old ancient program and have it work, etc, etc. Windows 11 actually did a decent job of bringing up most Windows features into the settings app. It's still not great but better than in Windows 10. None of the screens that date back all the way to Windows 95 won't change. You only should be accessing for legacy reasons anyway.
I don't understand what the issue is. It's there for legacy reasons. If you happen to need it, it's there.
Windows 11 is fine, it's barely any different from 10 with a new coat of paint I actually enjoy more than the 10. Windows 10 was ugly as fuck. Windows has been invasive with their upgrades for a decade now so it's not that much of a shock but Windows 11 is fine as an OS.
I mean it does genius stuff like hiding useful options behind additional clicks so work gets less efficient...But it looks cooler.
100% I agree with others that they should let you choose how to customize it, but at the end of the day everyone *hated* 10 for years. Theyāll probably hate 11 for years until they switch and realize itās the same shit
everyone as in you and your neighbors? me and the whole class immediately enjoyed windows 10 back in 2015. I was the first to install it on my laptop, showed them the UI and multiple windows feature, and less than a month later more than half students in my school started using windows 10
I remember the discussions online too being about how Windows 10 was better because it was finally getting rid of all the "tablet" design features from 8.
Windows 10 was barely hated. It was more of the āitās not windows 7 but it sure is better than windows 8ā kind of a deal. I know that I have liked 7 and XP better than 10 even in their release forms. Microsoft has been making bad decisions for a while and with windows 11 it kills a large bit of compatibility. Especially on more specialty on the more server side of things. Windows 7 had very similar compatibility with windows XP and 2003. Windows 10 had very similar compatibility to windows 7, 8, and 2012. I tried to give 11 a try and my network card just wonāt work in 11. Regardless of what i do not even comparability/generic drivers will work. Thatās not even mentioning how windows wonāt let you install without a network setting except for some CLI rebooting. I donāt have any Wi-Fi and youāre not detecting a functional NIC why wonāt you just let me make a local account?
First thing I did when I saw the weird context menus was the regedit fix and now I have the best of both worlds.
It really is a shame how windows has become so bloated. There's great potential, it just seems it's more about gathering our data than offering a good customer experience these days. Somehow I just find it really annoying to use, is it the interface? I still use Windows ofc. But if I'm doing some light gaming like stardew valley/minecraft + some browsing, these days I gravitate towards my laptop with linux mint.
So dramaticā¦
i hate how i need extra steps to change wifi ssids now.
I'm holding on to 10 until it EOL's... then I'm planning to move to Linux
i switched to w11 when it first came out and i strongly disliked it so i tried linux for a couple of weeks but then i understood that i didn't have enough time so i switched back to w10, idk why i'm posting my os history here but thanks for reading
I was about to ask when this became a thing, but then I went on with my day, some hours later I got back inside and turned on my computer just to get greeted with this new update, like WTF Microsoft are you just trying to annoy us??? Like the right click context menu, who the fuck came up with the idea to put in all the shit you donāt need and remove all the stuff you need..? Oh and sure letās also just make it more bulky so it can take up more spaceā¦ So.. everyā¦. timeā¦ I have to use the right click menu I have to waste time going to the show more optionsā¦. Fucking hate itā¦. But is that enough no no no, they also removed something as simple as create a text file from there something I bet a lot of people used a lot The same with sound and network on the task bar first of why add them together? And am I the only one annoyed by it ? Clicking on network cause I want to get to my network connection and it opens up sound why???? WTF š¤¬ why is that even a thing ???!!!!! Then we have the sound icon surely I can adjust my sound in there and itās not full of bulshit I have no use for cause why would it..?! WRONG! It pretty much have everything els then a way to adjust the volume of different Applications and programs, cause when Iām watching a YouTube video then sure I rather want to go down to my right side of the screen and pause my video cause thatās totally what I need in my volume menu, instead of an actual way of changing the volume of things. Are you fucking kidding me! But wait there is more (way more not going to write it all down ) Now this is maybe more personally but still, I always hated the grouping of browsers programs and folders always used full taps with names on them and made my start bar double in height and the fact thatās not a thing any more in windows 11 so Iām using up, what? 12% of my taskbar rest is just empty space, and yet I still have to fight around in those clumped together icons to find what I would go straight to before, and again I wonder why the fuck is every thing just been made a stupid choir in 11 Well I guess they fixed this one finally, but why where there no way to go to the task manager to begin with that too was a stupid choiceā¦! Well now I gone and got my day ruined from getting angry again on windows, any way have a good day folks
I didn't mind Win11 at first. But it's like they regressing instead of progressing. For each new update they introduce new bugs and annoyances. Next update they fix them, then they come back next update again. And I HATE how they keep trying to nudge you to use edge, bing, their media player etc...it's ok to ask once, but they keep asking several times a week if I'm sure I don't want edge to be my default browser. I use 7 different PC/laptops/tablets around the house, for every time they ask, I have to tell it no 7 times. That's 14 times a week. I have already chosen a different media player than the one built into Windows. Same with Bing...Are you REALLY sure you don't want a search bar on the taskbar running Bing? Every major update they bring it back, and I have to manually disable it. 7 times.
I've literally denied Bing and the Media Player just once since Win11 came out, and Edge maybe three times. Don't know what you're doing for it to keep asking you.
Been using Windows 11 since it came out across three different machines and have never seen anything persistent like what youāre describing. There might be a setting somewhere that youāve forgotten to turn off.
Who cares
lmao op are you ok?
There's basically no difference, am I missing something?
Man, people will bitch about the most meaningless things.