Windows Search is supposed to be a powerful tool designed to help you find anything on your Windows 11 computer, kind of like Spotlight search in macOS, but it’s a feature that I’ve seen multiple people complain about due to it not working all that well. The good news is that as Windows Latest reports, it looks like Microsoft is trying to address Search’s drawbacks with artificial intelligence (AI).

The aim is to power up Windows 11’s Search using AI to enable you to search through audio and video files, and Windows Latest suggests this feature could be related to Microsoft's controversial Recall feature, which is also largely AI-powered. 

Windows Recall is designed to take snapshots of your activity on your device and make them searchable for specific content, compiling a timeline. So far, it’s been getting mixed reviews (and that’s putting it generously), but that apparently hasn’t put off Microsoft from trying to infuse Windows Search with “intelligent media search,” which is likely based on similar tech. This is term was discovered by X user @XenoPanther, in Windows 11 Preview Build 27695. 

AI-powered media search in Windows 11

In this early Windows 11 build, there are references to an AI feature that will search through the contents of your media files, which @XenoPanther observed will become available once your device downloads the necessary AI models to do this. This process will involve first transcribing whatever audio or video you want to search, and making those transcripts searchable - which could be useful if you’re looking for an audio clip that mentions a specific word, for example. These transcripts will then need to be indexed in a way as to make it possible to search through it.

There’s no mention of this feature in Microsoft’s blog post announcing the Windows 11 Preview Build, so I imagine it’s still very much a work in progress, but I do hope Windows Search is being improved. It could be a really useful feature that actually makes it easier to use your device. 

Given the privacy concerns associated with processing sensitive media files, this feature would likely rely on on-device AI to ensure that all transcriptions and searches are handled locally, rather than being sent to the cloud, making it both more secure and responsive. This means it will likely require a new Copilot+ PC with the necessary hardware such as an NPU. 

I am a little wary of how AI is applied and I hope it’s being meticulously thought out, but otherwise an improved Windows Search is something I’ve seen users asking for - and I hope they get it. 

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Windows 11 has finally done it and managed to overtake Windows 10 when it comes to market share with PC gamers.

As you might have guessed, this is the Steam Hardware Survey which is conducted every month and is a snapshot of the configurations of the various gaming PCs used on Valve’s platform.

The figures for August 2024 show that Windows 11 has gained 3.36% of Steam users, so now it has a total of 49.17%.

Windows 10 dropped by a proportionate amount, dipping by 3.07% to finish on 47.09% for the month – so there are now over 2% more gamers on Windows 11, than on its predecessor.

Other Windows versions are basically negligible on Steam, with Windows 7 being the only OS worth mentioning, but even that only has 0.37% adoption. Outside of Windows, Linux holds a 1.92% share of gamers, and macOS accounts for 1.3%.

Windows 11 represented 46.63% of gamers on Steam in June, and 47.45% in July, and was increasing in jumps of a percentage point, or half a percent or so, in recent times – so this is a pretty big growth spurt for August.

Analysis: Sudden surge

We weren’t expecting Windows 11 to outgun Windows 10 quite so quickly, in short. Is there any particular reason for the sudden surge? None that springs to mind, though it could just be that the need to move from Windows 10 is feeling a bit more pressing now there’s not much more than a year left before the older operating system reaches its End of Life (in October 2025).

If you look solely at Windows versions on Steam, Windows 11 now holds just a touch over 50% of that market now.

Sadly for Microsoft, this progress isn’t remotely reflected outside of the world of gaming. For overall users, according to Statcounter, Windows 11 is on 31.6% for August, compared to 64.1% for Windows 10, so the latter still has double the headcount of the former – it’s not even close.

Microsoft will be hoping that overall picture changes radically over the next year, that’s for sure – and AI will be a big part of that drive, wrapped up with Copilot+ PCs which are predicted to do big things in terms of shifting units.

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Windows 11 won’t offer an option to uninstall the divisive Recall feature after all, it seems, when clues in a preview build appeared to suggest it might – at least in some regions, anyway.

Deskmodder, a German tech site, recently flagged up the option in a new preview for Windows 11 24H2, the big update due to land later this year.

This prompted Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc, who is Windows senior product manager, to contact The Verge with a statement to clarify: “We are aware of an issue where Recall is incorrectly listed as an option under the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ dialog in Control Panel. This will be fixed in an upcoming update.”

So, presumably the next build of 24H2 will have this option removed from the Control Panel.

Windows 11’s Recall feature is essentially an AI-powered search that takes regular screenshots of the activity on your PC, and uses them to find things, going way beyond the scope of a typical Windows search (and no, that isn’t difficult, we’d agree).

The trouble is Recall has been making serious waves and causing a whole bunch of concerns to be aired since it was first announced, to the point that Microsoft pulled plans to debut it (in preview) with Copilot+ PCs, and then yanked it from test builds of Windows 11. It is now coming back to testing, mind, in October – so ready your surfboards for more waves of controversy (no doubt).

We should also note that Recall is only for Copilot+ PCs, although down the line, it’s likely a lot more computers will have the requisite NPU (and security) in place to be classified as such a device.

Analysis: The option to remove has been removed

We found it difficult to believe Microsoft would include a choice to completely strip out Recall from Windows 11, when the software giant can simply offer an option to disable it (the scheme previously in place). Removing the entire workings of Recall from a Windows PC would mean it’s more of a hassle to turn it on, should any given user dump it, and then maybe change their mind at a later date – a niche scenario, perhaps, but still, why would Microsoft facilitate such an uninstall option?

It probably wouldn’t, but the company might have to do so in the EU, where data and privacy regulations may push back against Recall harder than in other regions. If this option is a bug, though, does that mean a choice will be present for European users somewhere else – or just that they won’t get Recall? Or might there be no difference for EU users at all? Possibly.

It has to be said that this is a bit of a strange bug, too (not that odd bugs being visited upon Windows is anything hugely new, of course). Whatever’s going on here, some folks were pleased to see the ability to strip out Recall, and now that Microsoft has clarified that this isn’t happening, they’ll probably be less than happy about the functionality even sitting in the background of their PC.

The worry for some is that the feature will eventually end up being turned on in the future – or rather that the concrete presence of Recall, embedded in Windows 11, is an indication of this being the direction Microsoft is heading in at some point, anyway.

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Windows 11’s Recall feature has had a short but distinctly tumultuous existence, and following recent news of the AI-powered supercharged search returning to Windows 11 (in testing), we’re now hearing that Recall might come with the option to uninstall it – albeit with a weighty caveat.

Deskmodder, a German tech site, discovered that the latest Windows 11 update (an optional one that comes with a huge boost for modern AMD Ryzen CPUs) includes a stealthily-introduced choice to uninstall Recall.

This would be a big change of direction from Microsoft, as when first announced, the idea was Recall was fully built-in to Windows 11 (on Copilot+ PCs, as it requires a powerful NPU), but users could disable it if they didn’t want AI poking around in their files and regularly taking screenshots of everything that happens on their PC (which is a crude way of putting how Recall works).

To be able to strip it out entirely would surely be a boon for those more paranoid about these kind of AI features. Not having the code kicking about in your Windows 11 installation anywhere at all is clearly a step up from disabling Recall.

However, there’s a bit of extra spin on this one, as Windows Central, which noticed this development points out, the rules of Windows can be quite different in the EU to elsewhere.

As Deskmodder is a German website, it could be the case that Windows 11 in EU countries will get this option to completely remove Recall, whereas other regions won’t. After all, this is already the case for a number of Microsoft apps and services, including Edge and Bing to pick a couple of notable examples.

Analysis: A not so hopeful outlook

Sadly, we feel that if this comes to anything – and it may not – this is likely to be part of Microsoft’s measures to deal with tighter EU privacy and data regulations, than any move to actually give users more choice over what they should have present in their Windows 11 installation. The truth is Microsoft will want people to use Recall – and all its shiny new AI features – to make Copilot+ PCs look more innovative and useful, and therefore more likely to sell (which they are certainly predicted to do).

If Recall is right there in the OS, this makes it more likely for folks to use it, quite simply. Microsoft won’t want a situation where the feature can be completely ripped out, so if a user happens to be mulling using it down the line – and they took it out before – it feels like an extra hassle to reinstall Recall, maybe leading to them not bothering.

We can’t see it any other way but Microsoft wanting to have Recall in the background, with it disabled, rather than any other route. We may, of course, be wrong – and we hope so – because it wouldn’t hurt for the particularly cautious to get a way of completely removing Recall.

Microsoft will, however, be very careful about how it treads with the way Recall is implemented now it’s heading back to testing. When Recall was first announced, there was a storm of controversy immediately, which only worsened as people fudged their Windows 11 installations to play with the feature early – opening cans of security and privacy-related worms left, right and center.

It was supposed to be released in preview on Copilot+ PCs, but Recall was dropped from the launch of these AI laptops, and shuttled off to Windows 11 preview builds instead – except that soon after, Microsoft dropped the idea of testing Recall with Windows Insiders, even, essentially going back to the drawing board with the feature.

In all honesty, we felt that was necessary – a thorough revamp for the feature, as Recall clearly hadn’t been thought through well enough – but Microsoft then stayed silent on the functionality for a long time, leading some to speculate about whether it might even be dead in the water perhaps. That’s not the case, of course, as Microsoft broke that lengthy silence just last week with the announcement that Recall is coming back to preview builds of Windows 11 in October.

To say its return will be watched with great interest would be an understatement – but whatever Microsoft has done with Recall, it better be very clear to the user what the feature is doing when offering the choice to enable it. (Recall will be off by default, by the way – another change Microsoft was forced into making).

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Windows 11 has a new preview build, and it comes with a few notable changes to the interface – for the better, thankfully, with no new adverts or promos anywhere to be seen.

Microsoft just introduced Windows 11 build 22635 (KB5041876) in the Beta channel, and the most interesting change is a hidden one, as flagged up by regular leaker PhantomOfEarth on X (who regularly uncovers features that aren’t live in testing yet by enabling them via a Windows configuration tool).

As you can see in the above post, the Start menu’s (hidden) ‘All apps’ category view now has not just icons representing all the apps shown in each category, but tooltips for their names when you hover the cursor over them.

The categories are mentioned in a follow-up tweet, as they have now been changed to mirror the same categories used in the Microsoft Store, the leaker observes based on a clue unearthed when rifling through Windows 11’s Start menu assets.

Elsewhere in build 22635, as Microsoft explains in the usual blog post, there’s been some work on the lock screen, whereby media controls are now shown at the bottom of the screen when audio content is being played. This comes complete with a blur effect on the visuals that’s a nice touch, PhantomOfEarth notes elsewhere.

On top of that, Microsoft has modified another tweak made in testing in the past, namely the introduction of notification suggestions, whereby Windows 11 will suggest turning off notification toasts from any given app if you don’t interact with them for some time. This preview build witnesses the ability to turn off those suggestions (as opposed to the notifications themselves, we should clarify).

There’s the usual bunch of fixes here too, including resolutions for crashes with File Explorer and the Start menu.

Analysis: More choice is always good

It’s good to see that work is progressing nicely on the new category view in the All apps panel. As we’ve discussed before, this is a refreshing change of layout from the default list of apps in the Start menu, a clunky affair that’s simply presented in alphabetical order (leaving you with a lot of scrolling to do, potentially, if you have lots of software installed).

Those who feel the category layout is perhaps more cluttered to look at, and prefer the list view as they feel it’s more streamlined, will be able to stick with it, by the way. A choice is set to be offered including the default list, this new category view, and another grid view which is also in preview (if the latter two options ever emerge from testing, that is – they may not, only time will tell).

For us, we feel that pinpointing apps using organized categories could be pretty handy, though it’s not surprising to see Microsoft adopt the categories used in its store here -hopefully, that’s not a sign that the store is going to be promoted somehow in this fresh take on the interface.

The way things are going, we assume this functionality will be live in a preview build before too long, but it’s probably too late to make the cut for Windows 11 24H2 at this stage.

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Windows 11 and Windows 10 aren’t on the brink of seeing the Control Panel shuffling off into the sunset, Microsoft has clarified.

As Ars Technica reports, this follows a string of articles last week that popped up around the Control Panel – which is nearly 40-years-old and plays host to a bunch of settings and options not catered for in Windows 11’s Settings app, many of which are legacy affairs – insisting Microsoft was in the process of killing it off, finally.

That conclusion was mainly based on a sentence in a support article about system tools in Windows that said: “The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”

This official announcement of the deprecation – meaning the feature is frozen, and marked for removal (but still present in Windows) – was the first time we’d heard Microsoft formally talk about pushing the Control Panel out of the exit door. Even if it’s been clear enough that this is the process the software giant is engaged in, and has been for a long time now – it’s just a very slow, drawn out death for the panel.

However, Microsoft has changed the language in that document, and the Control Panel section now reads: “Many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”

The ghost of Windows past

The change in emphasis is clear, then, moving away from any talk of deprecation or marking the Control Panel for removal, and letting us know that the lifting and shifting of features from the panel to the Settings app is still very much an ongoing process.

As Ars Technica points out, though, we don’t know the reasoning behind the change of wording. Was this a formal decision Microsoft has reversed based on the reports that flooded out last week (and perhaps some negative feedback from some quarters)? Or has Microsoft not made any decision at all, and just badly worded the update to the support document, and had to clarify what it meant – or rather, didn’t mean – as a result?

We strongly suspect the latter, because the Control Panel has never been on Microsoft’s official list of deprecated features for Windows 11 (or 10) – and you’d think it would show up there first, rather than an announcement like this leaking out via a Windows support page.

Besides, we can’t quite see why Microsoft would have to reverse the decision, if it was made, anyway – who doesn’t want to see the back of the Control Panel, if its demise was really happening? Taking a stroll through the Control Panel’s various sections is a bit like being haunted by old versions of Windows, with features and interface graphics that date back to the nineties. (Although, to be fair, there are some niche functions in here which some users really would miss).

At any rate, to sum up: the Control Panel will probably be with us for quite some time yet, and at least until the next version of Windows, whether that’s Windows 12 or something entirely different. And likely it’ll remain in place for a while even in that new OS, while those more important niche features are shuffled across to Settings.

Do note that in the mentioned support document, Microsoft is still encouraging folks to use the Settings app, rather than the Control Panel, wherever possible.

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We’ve heard before that Windows 11 could be getting a ‘hot-patching’ feature with version 24H2, arriving later this year, whereby (some) future cumulative updates won’t require a reboot – and we’ve just been treated to another clue that this might come to fruition.

Windows Latest reports that PhantomOfEarth on X flagged up a new support article for hot-patching in Windows 11, though there’s a twist here in that it was evidently accidentally published – and swiftly yanked down by Microsoft.

The post can still be viewed using the Wayback Machine but as you’ll see if you take a look, the article is just a copy-and-paste of guidelines for crafting a support document (which, as mentioned, has clearly been mistakenly published).

The key part here is that Microsoft beavering away in the background with content relating to hot-patching for Windows Ge or Germanium – which is Windows 11 24H2, with Germanium being the codename of the new platform it’s built on – is a heavy hint that this is indeed inbound. If not, why be working on any material pertaining to hot-patching at all, at this point?

A seamless way of updating Windows 11

Given the date mentioned in the now-retracted article, which is 2024.08, this suggests we might see some kind of update from Microsoft on hot-patching functionality incoming for Windows 11 before the end of August.

Of course, all this could still come to nothing – but this does seem to be a feature Microsoft is planning, according to previous info from Zac Bowden, a reliable leaker on all things Windows.

Indeed, Bowden claimed that it’s planned for the 24H2 update, and he explained a bit more about how hot-patching would work in an info dump early this year. The long and short of it is that only some cumulative updates (the monthly patches that arrive for Windows 11) would be applied without a reboot – two in a row – before the third baseline cumulative update is pushed out that does need a reboot. Meaning two-thirds of updates would be hot-patched, but do note that the big annual updates for Windows 11 – like 24H2 – always necessitate a reboot, as these are far larger in scope, naturally.

It’d be pretty cool to have some of Windows 11’s monthly patches downloaded and installed on your PC seamlessly, with no need to reboot, so you can just keep on working (or gaming, or whatever you’re doing).

It’ll also remove that small amount of danger involved every time you reboot for an update on a desktop PC, where you pray that a power cut won’t strike. As if your PC is switched off during an update of any kind, that might be bad news, and could result in corrupted files – and maybe the OS not booting up at all, if you’re really unlucky.

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Windows 10 might get an unpopular change to the Start menu which Microsoft recently implemented in Windows 11, going by a new leak.

This is the addition of an account manager section, and that piece of extra clutter in the Start menu could well be coming to Windows 10, as the functionality is currently in test builds – though it isn’t yet live.

Leaker PhantomOfEarth on X made the discovery by poking around in a Windows 10 preview (build 19045.4842) and enabling the feature with a Windows configuration utility.

If this change comes to Windows 10 in the same form as Windows 11, it means that when you click your profile picture (bottom-left of the Start menu), instead of useful shortcuts to lock your PC, or sign out of your account, you’ll instead get reminders (and promotional bits) for your Microsoft Account (or other services, potentially).

The mentioned shortcuts haven’t been ditched, but instead they’re hidden away in the new panel, accessed via a three-dot menu. Mind you, that three-dot menu doesn’t do anything yet in Windows 10, underlining that this feature isn’t complete yet, it’s just kicking about in the background for now.

Analysis: The unfortunate downside of Windows 10’s feature thaw

We do have to remember that this isn’t even present in testing yet, but with the works in place under the hood, and the fact that it’s already live in Windows 11 – and also given Microsoft’s general push to get more promotional-verging-on-advertising stuff into both operating systems – it seems pretty likely this will happen. We mustn’t count our interface aberrations before they hatch, though.

This is a particularly annoying one as it buries useful functionality – or at least shortcuts that some Windows users avail themselves of – behind an extra click (on that three-dot menu). It’s a permanent inconvenience for those affected, while offering nothing really useful in the way of an addition, and the feedback around this has been quite bitter as a result.

To see Microsoft apparently pushing forward with the move in Windows 10 is a bit surprising in this light, perhaps, but again – we can’t be sure the change will be implemented in the older OS.

At one point last year, Microsoft froze work on Windows 10, and we thought the operating system was going to get nothing but security updates until it reached End of Life. Then the software giant reversed course and kept features coming for Windows 10, but here we see the (possible) downside of that continued development – where rubbish ‘features’ no one really wants are also getting backported from Windows 11.

That said, we wouldn’t wish for a halt on Windows 10 development to avoid this kind of thing, although Microsoft will stop work on the older OS before too long, no doubt – support for Windows 10 runs out in not much more than a year, after all.

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Windows 11 can be installed on PCs that don’t meet the hardware requirements of the OS by using a few different workarounds, but one of those fudges no longer works – or at least Microsoft appears to have closed this loophole in testing.

The Register reports that as highlighted by Bob Pony on X, the bypass that Microsoft apparently intends to block, known as the ‘setup.exe /product server’ workaround, has indeed been vanquished in preview build 27686 in the Canary channel (released a week ago).

What this particular requirement-dodging measure does is to trick the installer into thinking it is setting up Windows Server, when it is in fact installing Windows 11. As Windows Server doesn’t have the same stricter requirements – for example, you don’t need TPM 2.0 – this sneaky installation method will work on a PC that doesn’t officially qualify for Windows 11.

Whether it will run properly on such a PC is entirely another matter, and that’s why we wouldn’t recommend using a trick along these lines.

That said, people do use this, and other fudges, to install Windows 11 on hardware that is older and not officially compatible, and they manage to run it okay – but it’s a risk, obviously.

Analysis: A bug, maybe? It seems unlikely…

As The Register points out, it is possible that this is just a bug in the Windows 11 preview build. After all, this is the Canary channel, the earliest testing platform which is more bug-ridden than other builds.

However, it’s more probable that this is an intentional move by Microsoft, we’d guess. That being the case, folks do still have time to use the above fudge to install Windows 11, because as Bob Pony makes clear, it still works fine with Windows 11 24H2 (the incoming update expected to land later in the year). This is seemingly a change for Windows 11 in 2025 – but we don’t know for sure, and Microsoft could still be planning on incorporating it in the 24H2 update (it just isn’t in the mix yet).

Another well-known workaround to fudge an installation of Windows 11 on an unsupported PC is to use the utility Rufus. So, there are still options out there, although Microsoft is seemingly looking to close these kind of tricks down – perhaps due to the fact that Windows 10 comes to its End of Life next year.

Whatever the case, we should underline that we wouldn’t recommend installing any operating system on a device that doesn’t officially support it – at least not for the average user out there, anyway.

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