WINDOWS 11 WHAT’S COMING NEXT

When Microsoft first launched Windows 11 a year ago, it said it would only launch one major update for the operating system every year instead of two. Well, a year on, it’s time for Windows 11’s first major makeover – and it doesn’t disappoint.

There’s no single new feature in Windows 11 that’s going to blow your mind or make any of the Windows 10 holdouts suffer enormous pangs of regret. However, there are plenty of worthwhile tweaks and new features that make Windows 11 feel much more like a grown-up OS and less like Windows 10 with a new shopfront.

The update, named 22H2 to signify that it will be released in the second half of 2022, covers a lot of ground. There are major updates to Windows 11’s accessibility features, significant changes to the way Windows Explorer works, new features designed specifically for developers, and concerted attempts to make our PCs consume less energy – something that many will welcome amidst the current energy crisis. As sure as night follows day, Microsoft has also tweaked the Start menu. Again.

We’ve put the latest beta build of Windows 11 22H2 through its paces, testing the phalanx of new features and changes to the OS that have been made at the time of writing. It’s possible Microsoft may squeeze in a few more amendments before the final release, which is expected in late September or early October, so be on guard for any late additions or omissions.

Windows 11 isn’t the only Microsoft operating system to be getting an autumn refresh, either. Check what’s coming to Windows 10 on p79 to discover what you can expect for the legacy OS.

HOW TO GET THE 22H2 UPDATE TODAY

The 22H2 update will soon start rolling out to the general public, but to get it early head to Windows Update and sign up to be a Windows Insider. When prompted to choose your Insider channel, select “Release Preview” and then follow the prompts.

When you restart your PC, Windows should automatically install the latest preview build – at the time of writing, the Windows 11 22H2 update. To check it’s happening, head to Windows Update once again, where you should see “Windows 11, version 22H2, is available”. If it isn’t there, click “Check for updates”. You may need to wait a few minutes.

We probably don’t need to say this, but we will anyway: while the Release Preview is known to be stable, it still comes with risks. Back up your data, don’t load it onto your one and only machine, and most of all don’t blame us if it goes wrong!

Prefer to download an ISO file? Our sister site tomsguide.com has a tutorial that steps you through that process, which you can follow by heading to tinyurl.com/APC512ISO.

Another new Start!

It simply wouldn’t be a Windows update without some fiddling around with the Start menu. Microsoft just can’t leave it alone. However, don’t despair. The changes made to the Start menu are all for the better, in our opinion.

The first version of Windows 11 saw the introduction of Recommended in the Start menu, a faintly useless feature where Microsoft was too clever for its own good and attempted to thrust newly installed apps or regularly accessed documents in your face. The suspicion was that Microsoft would eventually start using the space as advertising inventory.

Microsoft isn’t quite prepared to admit it was a daft idea just yet, but there are clear signs of a reverse ferret. The Start menu settings (Settings | Personalisation | Start) now provide three options: “More pins”, default (as you were) and “More recommendations” (for the clinically insane). More pins devotes more space to the stuff you actually want on the Start menu, while leaving only a couple of lonely Recommendations clinging to the foot of the menu.

You might want more space for those pinned apps, because Microsoft has revived another useful new feature in this space: folders. You can now drag pinned apps over one another to create Start menu folders, in a similar vein to Android, iOS and indeed Windows 10’s live tiles. Folders can be renamed with a right-click on their name, allowing you to put all the Office apps in the space of one icon, for example. Seasoned Windows users might, of course, prefer to open apps via the keyboard, and should you be among them then we highly recommend installing the free PowerToys Run ( docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ ), which is a blatant rip-off of macOS’s superb Spotlight search. Why this isn’t built into Window 11 is a mystery worthy of Columbo.

Right-clicking on the Start menu – also activated with Windows-X – presents a couple of new things worth noting. “Apps and Features” is now called Installed Apps, which is pretty much the same thing, but still provides a quick shortcut to getting shot of unwanted apps. Windows Terminal is now the default command line app.

Supercharged accessibility

As Jon Honeyball wrote in a recent column (see issue 509, p18), an accessible OS isn’t just a box-ticking exercise, it makes a better operating system for everyone. The new accessibility options in 22H2 are evidence of that.

Let’s start with Live Captions, which are now built into the OS – just search for the app from the Start menu. Live Captions provide a live transcription of any spoken audio playing on your PC. That might be a Teams meeting, a YouTube video or a podcast. Even if you’re lucky enough to enjoy perfect hearing, Live Captions could be a huge help in environments where you can’t listen to audio (train carriages, say) and you don’t have headphones with you. Or if you’re trying to juggle multiple calls simultaneously.

By default, the transcription appears at the top of the screen, and in our tests it was pretty accurate. That’s even more impressive, given the audio is being transcribed locally, not in the cloud, which means the Live Captions can be used even when you’re offline. Bear in mind, however, that Windows needs to download a language pack the first time you use Live Captions, and that it’s currently in US English only.

Voice Access is even more impressive. This newcomer enables you to control the entire operating system by voice, and it’s remarkably easy to get to grips with. Aside from opening and closing apps by name, being able to click on specific buttons (by saying “click Submit”, for example) and speaking text into Word and other apps is phenomenal. You may be reading this with a cynical frown, but trust us: the manner in which it lets you do stuff that would seemingly be impossible by voice is a triumph.

For example, you can tell Windows to put a grid over the screen, with each square given a number between 1 and 9. Each square within that grid can then be broken down into a smaller grid, until you reach the point where the targeted icon is the only one in that grid square and you tell Windows to click that square’s number.

Alternatively, you can tell Windows to “Show numbers” and it tries to attach a number to any clickable item on screen, be that an icon, a web link or an app in the Taskbar. It’s a long way from perfect, and it works better with Microsoft’s own browser and apps than it does with third-party ones, but it’s truly possible to get stuff done with voice alone.

Finally on the accessibility front, Microsoft continues to make improvements to Narrator, which reads what’s happening on the screen for the visually impaired. There’s a new selection of “natural” voices to choose from, although again these are currently restricted to voices with a US accent. Microsoft also claims to have improved the scan mode navigation, so that items on the page are less likely to be read out time and again.

Revamped Task Manager with Efficiency mode

Task Manager has been given a new look for 22H2. The most obvious visual change is that the tabs that let you access Processes, Performance monitor, App history and so on have been moved to the left of the window, instead of running along the top.

The bigger deal, however, is the advent of Efficiency mode, which is part of the operating system’s wider focus on reducing energy consumption. It’s the successor to the Eco mode that was previously available, but works differently.

Efficiency mode limits the CPU resources available to selected processes, ensuring they don’t get in the way of the apps that you want maximum performance from. Microsoft claims you can get up to four times the responsiveness on a CPU-contended system when Efficiency mode is deployed.

The awkward bit here is that Efficiency mode is deployed on individual processes, not entire apps. So to put a process in Efficiency mode, you have to open Task Manager, then the individual app’s tree group, and then right-click on a process you wish to put the brakes on. You wonder how many people will go to this effort, unless their system really is on its knees.

Some apps can automatically put processes in Efficiency mode. “Microsoft Edge and Chrome [are] experimenting with lowering base priority and applying power efficiency APIs to improve efficiency, which is similar to what Task Manager is doing to identify ‘Efficiency mode’ apps,” said Microsoft in a blog post explaining the new feature. “You may see other apps with ‘Efficiency mode’ if they adapt to similar techniques to improve efficiency.”

Developer settings

The new Privacy & security section of the Settings menu contains a section specifically aimed at devs. Here you’ll find options to put the device into Developer Mode, which allows you to install apps from any source without Windows’ built-in security getting shirty.

Also here is Device Portal, which switches on remote diagnostics for other Windows devices on the LAN. The Device discovery setting, meanwhile, makes your device visible to USB connections and other PCs on the local network.

The developer settings also let you make File Explorer nerdier than the average Windows dweller would desire. Here you can make Explorer show file extensions, hidden/system files, the full path in the title bar and empty drives.

Smart App Control

Smart App Control is yet another Microsoft effort to keep crapware off the platform. (Note to Satya: a clean-up of the Microsoft Store wouldn’t go amiss.)

According to Microsoft: “When you try to run an app on Windows, Smart App Control will check to see if our intelligent cloud-powered security service can make a confident prediction about its safety. If the service believes the app to be safe, Smart App Control will let it run. If the app is believed to be malicious or potentially unwanted then Smart App Control will block it.” Interestingly, Smart App Control won’t let through any unsigned apps.

However, the way Smart App Control is implemented is odd, to say the least. It only works on fresh installs of Windows 11 and it’s not switched on immediately. Your box-fresh PC is put into what’s called Evaluation mode, “during which Windows tries to determine if you’re a good candidate for Smart App Control. If you are a good candidate for Smart App Control, then it will automatically be turned on. If not, it will be turned off.”

If Windows decides you’re not a good candidate, that’s it. You can’t switch on Smart App Control manually. To even get another stab at Evaluation mode, you’ll need to clean install Windows!

If you do pass Microsoft’s mystery test, there’s no means to override Smart App Control. If it decides an app is persona non grata, you can’t tell Windows to let it through. All you can do is switch the entire system off or “contact the developer of the app and encourage them to sign their app with a valid signature”. Good luck with the latter.

DO NOT DISTURB AND FOCUS

No other company ties itself in as many branding knots as Microsoft. Exhibit 3,564A: the new Do Not Disturb and Focus sessions.

What was known as Focus Assist is now being renamed Do Not Disturb. This can be turned on from the top of the Notification Centre and works pretty much as before. All notifications will be shunted directly to the Notification Centre without bleeps, blangs or pop-ups, except for those assigned as priority notifications. You can adjust these in Settings.

Then we come to Focus sessions. These can be started by clicking the clock in the bottom-right corner of the screen and pressing the Focus button. By default, they are set for half an hour and are designed to let you concentrate on a specific task (such as writing a feature about Windows 11’s new features) without distractions. A Focus session turns Do Not Disturb on, and it also disables notification badges on Taskbar shortcuts and notification flashing on Taskbar shortcuts.

A little clock icon appears on the desktop, showing how much of the Focus session remains. You can press the stop button on the clock if you get the job done early and want to dive back into your social media flame wars.

TASKBAR TWEAKS

The Taskbar gets a couple of minor alterations in this release. The first is the return of the Taskbar overflow. If you manage to open more apps than there’s space for on the Taskbar – and that was quite a challenge in our tests – then an overflow section is created, where you can access icons that are hidden from the main view.

Microsoft is also making a fresh attempt to make Widgets relevant, by putting so-called Dynamic Widgets on the far left of the Taskbar, where the Start button used to reside. In our test of the beta OS, that comprised nothing more than a weather forecast widget, which is barely eyebrow raising. As we’ve said before, if Microsoft opens up Widgets to third parties, the entire concept could be transformed. It may happen before we’re all pushing up daisies, but don’t bet your funeral fund on it.

TEAMS ON THE TASKBAR

Microsoft is finding yet more cunning ways to ensure you don’t neglect Teams for your business meetings, with two new Taskbar-related features.

The first is the option to easily share an open window with a colleague when you’re on a Teams call. When you hover over an app’s icon on the Taskbar, just below the app preview thumbnail a button to “Share this window” in Teams should appear. It didn’t in our tests with the beta OS, but it may be a work in progress.

Microsoft is also making it a tad simpler to mute yourself on Teams calls. As soon as you start a call, the mic icon appears in the System Tray, making it easy to mute yourself even if Teams isn’t the active window. You are paying attention on your Teams calls, aren’t you?

NEW “OPEN WITH” DIALOG

File this one under “ah-ha”, but the Open With dialog has been given a revamp, making it slightly easier to choose alternative apps to open a certain type of file.

Of course, Microsoft is trying the gentle nudge towards its own apps, but it’s interesting to see a third-party app (the Vivaldi web browser) as a “suggested” app on this list. Although also presenting Media Player as an option for PDFs is one for the bug reports.

The dialog now makes it easier to set a default app for such files, to save you having to go through the fandango again.

ACCESSIBLE BLUETOOTH SETTINGS

Bluetooth headphones are now pretty much the default option, not to mention all the other Bluetooth devices we connect to our PCs. So it makes no sense to hide the Bluetooth settings away.

Version 22H2 sees Bluetooth settings added to the Quick Settings menu, which is opened by clicking on the icons directly to the left of the clock. Here you can select or add Bluetooth devices without having to dive into the Settings app. A small but considerate time saving.

TABS AND MORE IN FILE EXPLORER

It’s a close-run thing between the Start menu and File Explorer for most fiddled with part of the Windows furniture in recent years. Continued next page...

This update certainly gives File Explorer a proper makeover.

The most obvious change is the introduction of tabs. Like a browser window, you can now have different File Explorer tabs open simultaneously, making it easier to navigate between different parts of your system without opening multiple windows. You can still right-click to open in a new File Explorer window, which might make dragging-and-dropping exercises easier.

That said, moving files between tabs is simple. Select the file/folder, drag it to the tab you want to copy it to, and the focus will switch to that tab, where you can drop it. It’s neatly implemented.

If you’ve got a file that you make constant reference to, that can now be pinned to Favourites in File Explorer, so it always appears front and centre when you open an Explorer window. That’s distinct from the Quick Access folders in the Explorer sidebar, which remain in place.

Thumbnails are also back for File Explorer folders, giving you a little peek at the contents you can expect to find in that folder.

Finally, Microsoft has improved OneDrive integration in File Explorer. A little OneDrive icon sits on the right of the window, and you can click that to get an instant glance at your sync status and how much of your personal storage allowance remains. We hope Microsoft doesn’t use this as an upsell opportunity when you’re creeping close to your OneDrive storage limit; then again, we hope to sell a million copies of APC next month…

COPY PATH TO SELECTED FILE

A small tip for power users – File Explorer includes a new feature that allows you to copy the file path to a selected file or folder. Select the file/folder and then press Ctrl-Shift-C to copy its file path.

BETTER SNAP LAYOUTS

If there’s one area where Windows 11 is streets ahead of macOS, it’s Snap Layouts. The ease with which you can “snap” windows to certain parts of the screen shames Apple, which needs third-party plugins to achieve the same effect.

Snap Layouts are even better in 22H2. Now you can pick up a window and drag it to the top of the screen, where you’ll be given the option to snap that window into one of the preset layouts. It’s far, far easier than the previous method of using the full-screen icon.

There’s another new keyboard shortcut method to access those Snap Layouts, too. Press Windows-Z and a pop-up will appear in the top right of the window, with each of the different layouts numbered. You choose your chosen layout by pressing the relevant number and then select the position of the window with the arrow keys. That sounds more complicated than it is in actual use. Trust us, it works brilliantly.

SCROLL THE NEW VOLUME SLIDER

The Windows 11 volume controls have a new look, with the volume slider now appearing just above the Taskbar. Not a big deal, and neither is the ability to control the volume by scrolling your mouse wheel over it, but both are delicate little touches that make the OS feel more grown-up.

MORE AGGRESSIVE SCREEN AND SLEEP SETTINGS

We told you Microsoft was on an eco-drive. That extends to the new screen and sleep settings, which kick in more quickly to prevent you wasting battery on unattended devices. The screen will now turn off and sleep mode activated after only three minutes when a laptop is running on batteries, rising to five minutes if the device is plugged in.

That’s a significant energy saving from the previous defaults, which when on battery power turned the screen off after five minutes and waited a whole 15 minutes to put the device to sleep. With power, it was ten and 30 minutes respectively. You can, of course, adjust the defaults if you have a genuine reason not to put the device to sleep so quickly, but in one stroke Microsoft could save a chunk of energy.

In addition to this, the Power & battery settings also benefit from a link to find more information about power consumption and carbon emissions. That link wasn’t active in the beta version, but might be worth a look when the OS is released.

Finally on the power front, you can now hover over the battery indicator in the System Tray and get a tooltip showing the estimated remaining life of the battery.

THE LITTLE THINGS

So end the bigger updates, but there are numerous little items that come with the Windows 11 22H2 update, too. Here’s a quick summary.

APPLE AIRPOD IMPROVEMENTS

Good news if you’re a user of Apple’s earbuds – Windows 11 22H2 improves AirPod compatibility, specifically with support for wideband speech. So if you’re using AirPods to make calls on your computer, you should sound a lot better to the people on the other end of the line.

SMARTER FLIGHT MODE SETTINGS

By default, banging Windows 11 into Flight Mode flicks off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. However, that’s no good if you’ve got a pair of noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones to make the flight bearable. Microsoft hears you despite the low rumble of the engines, and so if you switch Bluetooth back on when you put the laptop in Flight Mode, it will leave Bluetooth running the next time you use Flight Mode, too. Sensible, although stroppy air stewards may quibble.

TASK VIEW SHOWS SNAP GROUPS

Welcome back to branding by Microsoft™. Remember those windows you moved into Snap Layouts earlier? Well, they’re called Snap Groups. And now, when you Alt-Tab or enter Task View (Windows-Tab), those Snap Groups will be shown there too. The preview of the Snap Group even shows a bit of the background wallpaper to make them easier to distinguish.

NO-INSTALLATION NETWORK PRINTERS

The Print Queue dialog has been given a lick of paint, but there’s a change to printing that’s more than cosmetic fluffiness. If there’s a network printer that you haven’t previously used, you don’t need to go back to the Printer settings to get everything set up. When you hit Ctrl-P you should find any network printer available in the drop-down menu. When selected, it will be automatically installed. It worked perfectly in our tests with the beta.

MICROSOFT 365 STATUS IN SETTINGS

We’re not saying Microsoft’s gagging to make Windows a subscription service, but under Accounts in Settings, you’ll find an update on your Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It tells you when your subscription expires, lets you manage family members and provides another reminder of your available OneDrive storage, among other things.

The direction of travel is obvious. It’s now just a question of which company will blink first: Microsoft or Apple?

WHAT’S NEW FOR WINDOWS 10?

Windows 11 isn’t the only operating system getting a 22H2 release. Windows 10 is still in active support, and Microsoft is lining up an update for that operating system too, although quite what it will contain remains something of a mystery.

At the time of writing, Microsoft was inviting business customers to test Windows 10 22H2, although the build that was released in late July was described by Microsoft as “focused on validating the servicing technology”.

However, somewhat enigmatically, Windows chief Brandon LeBlanc’s blog post also stated: “Windows 10, version 22H2 has a scoped set of features and Microsoft will share more details on this update later this year.”

Quite what’s meant by a “scoped set of features” isn’t clear, but it seems highly likely that some of the new Windows 11 features mentioned in this feature are going to be added to Windows 10, too. Microsoft has form here. Several of the features that were initially announced for the launch of Windows 11 were later ported to Windows 10, including DirectStorage for the fast loading of games, cloud gaming via the Xbox app and the redesigned Windows Store.

It’s hard to predict which bones will be thrown at Windows 10 users this time. It’s likely new features will be rolled out as an enablement package to Windows 10 Insiders. Until they are, there seems little point in wasting effort validating Windows 10 22H2 in your business.

AND FINALLY…

ANDROID APPS AT LAST

It’s not a confirmed feature yet, but more than a year after they should have arrived as part of the initial Windows 11 launch, it looks like Android apps will finally make the cut for 22H2.

Microsoft has been testing Android app support with Windows Insiders, although only those with Microsoft accounts registered in the US have been able to take part at the time of going to press.

The Android apps are, somewhat curiously, being supplied via the Amazon Appstore, which suggests that Google isn’t entirely happy about this arrangement. The Amazon Appstore apps are already a subset of the total Android app market, and developers will have to specifically choose to make their apps available to Windows, which will make them a subset of a subset. In short, if you’re banking on your favourite Android app being available on Windows 11, don’t get your hopes up.

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