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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Microsoft finally acknowledged complaints about Windows 11.
- The company is promising sweeping changes to a slew of features.
- Windows Insiders will have a greater voice in upcoming releases.
Microsoft’s customers have been grumbling about Windows 11 since the day it shipped, and lately, those complaints have gotten louder and angrier.
They’ve complained about the “glitchy mess” of Windows Update, the push to cram Copilot-branded AI features into every nook and cranny of Windows, upsells and ads, and inconsistent system performance.
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And finally — finally! — someone in Redmond noticed.
In a long post titled “Our commitment to Windows quality,” published on Microsoft’s website and sent via email to millions of members of the Windows Insider Program, Windows boss Pavan Davuluri laid out a laundry list of changes Microsoft plans to make in Windows 11, starting this month.
What’s most remarkable about this post is what it doesn’t contain. Here’s how Davuluri kicked things off:
Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows. And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better.
That paragraph belongs in the non-apology Hall of Fame, with a cross-reference to “Friday news dump” — a classic PR technique that aims to minimize media coverage of the awkward news being released.
Here’s what’s on the list of changes coming to Windows, along with my own translation of what some of those changes really mean. Note that these changes will roll out in preview builds starting this month and continuing through the rest of the year. There’s no announcement on when they will reach public releases.
More taskbar customization
You couldn’t ask for a more perfect example of how Microsoft finally caught up to what Insiders have been griping about for years.
When Microsoft released the first preview of Windows 11, nearly five years ago, the new taskbar lacked a feature that had been a favorite of power users for decades: the ability to move the taskbar from its default location at the bottom of the display and snap it to the side or top.
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On the Feedback Hub app, where Microsoft collects bug reports and comments from Windows users, one feature request has been at or near the top of the list since day 1: “Bring back the ability to move the taskbar to the top and sides of the screen on Windows 11.”
As of this morning, that suggestion had been upvoted more than 24,000 times and had received more than 2,100 comments, with their tone growing increasingly angry as the years passed with no sign that this feature was on the roadmap.
This entry has been at or near the top of the most-requested feedback items for five years.
Screenshot by Ed Bott/ZDNET
So it’s fitting that this item is at the very top of today’s list: “More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions … We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace.”
About time.
Less AI slop
As I noted earlier this year, Microsoft has been relentlessly shoehorning AI features into places where they absolutely don’t belong. I follow feedback in forums carefully, and I would estimate that roughly 99% of the comments about AI features boil down to a simple request: Please stop.
In a blog post welcoming 2026, CEO Satya Nadella argued that “we need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs. sophistication.” In response, the internet made “Microslop” the most popular meme of the new year.
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In response, Microsoft now says it is backing off. “You will see us be more intentional about how and where Copilot integrates across Windows, focusing on experiences that are genuinely useful and well‑crafted,” Davuluri says. Specifically: “We are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets, and Notepad.”
More control over updates
The Patch Tuesday schedule was supposed to make Windows updates predictable, but that hasn’t worked out in practice, judging by the volume of complaints I hear every month about an unwanted Windows update suddenly interrupting an important online meeting or wiping out hours’ worth of work.
The response? “We’re giving you more control” over updates, Microsoft says, “while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications.” When those changes roll out, it should be easier to skip updates during device setup, restart or shut down without installing updates, and pause updates for longer when needed.
Those are all welcome changes, and long overdue.
Better performance
I regularly hear complaints about File Explorer being painfully slow to load and also slow in performing everyday tasks. Today’s announcement promises “launch time reductions” in File Explorer, with “substantially lower latency for search, navigation, and context menus,” along with an end to the annoying flickering that some users have reported.
Also on the roadmap is “improved memory efficiency, lowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows … and more consistent performance, even under load.”
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Key to the overall performance improvement plan is a push to move core parts of the Windows UX to WinUI3. Given that WinUI3 has been around longer than Windows 11, it’s surprising that this change is only happening now.
Greater attention to reliability
Today’s post contains a long discussion of reliability, starting with this promise: “Across the operating system, we will focus on improving … baseline reliability [and] strengthening the Windows foundation by reducing OS level crashes, improving driver quality and app stability across our ecosystem so PCs run smoothly and reliably every day.”
That sounds great, but isn’t that what they were already supposed to be focusing on every day already?
I’m especially interested to see a renewed emphasis on the Windows Insider Program. As I wrote almost a year ago, that once-groundbreaking program has become a “confusing mess.”
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Pavuluri says the company plans to “[raise] the quality bar for builds and [offer] clearer visibility into what features are included in each Insider build.”
The entire Insider leadership team left the program last year, and I haven’t seen a public announcement of any new personnel changes.
And more
The list goes on and on, with improvements promised in Bluetooth and USB connections, printer support, Windows Hello, and search. There’s even a promise to make widgets less annoying. (Good luck.)
The post closes with a pretty sweeping promise:
As part of this effort, we are evolving how Windows is built behind the scenes to raise the quality bar and deliver innovation where it matters most, shaped by the feedback we are hearing from you.
This includes deeper validation and broader testing across real-world hardware and usage scenarios before new experiences reach Windows Insiders, and a more intentional approach to where and how new capabilities are introduced. The result will be higher quality builds, more meaningful innovation and greater flexibility in choosing what you want to try. This is how we will continue to build and ship Windows 11, so we can deliver better experiences with greater confidence, month after month.
That sounds to me like an admission that the entire process for building Windows has been broken for some time. If you need to raise the quality bar, doesn’t that imply that you’ve been shipping products that don’t meet your customers’ quality standards? If you’re planning broader testing across real-world hardware, doesn’t that imply that the testing regime for the past few years has been insufficient?
Meanwhile, a simple “We’re sorry” wouldn’t hurt.
