Windows 11 is getting a new ability with the 24H2 update which means that more than just one app will be able to access the webcam without having to work around this with a fudge.

Yes, if you weren’t aware, it’s currently the case for Windows 11 that the OS (and other Windows versions, for that matter) only allows one app access to the camera at any one time.

As Windows Latest reports, currently the only way around this is that if there’s a second app that needs to use the webcam at the same time as an initial app which has grabbed the hardware, you can use a virtual camera setup to do so.

However, Windows 11 should be able to natively handle multiple apps tapping the webcam simultaneously with a new option in the 24H2 update, as leaker PhantomOfEarth highlighted with a post on X.

As you can see, the feature will be in the Camera settings, courtesy of an ‘Advanced camera configuration’ panel that’ll allow the user to enable multi-app camera, which allows multiple apps to simultaneously stream from the camera.

Note that this ability is just in testing right now, and it’s hidden in the latest Windows 11 preview in the Dev channel, in fact. Hopefully, it’ll be live soon enough though, and can be tested and run through its paces before full release.

Analysis: A throwback of a limitation

While multiple apps using the webcam may not be a common scenario for many Windows 11 users, it’s a useful ability that some folks want, and as Microsoft notes in the text for the feature, it’s “designed for the hard-of-hearing community” – so this is yet another useful step forward on the accessibility front, too. (We aren’t sure what scenarios this might be leveraged in, but hopefully when the feature actually goes live in testing, Microsoft will explain in more detail what this does in the usual blog post announcing all the new bits and pieces).

You might be wondering why Windows 11 (or previous versions of the OS) doesn’t support multiple webcams anyway? It doesn’t seem like a massive ask, after all. Well, seemingly this is a throwback to past times when hardware wasn’t as beefy as it is today, and sharing the camera between numerous apps could cause system slowdown for lesser PCs.

As Windows Latest observes, it seems Microsoft implemented a fundamental rule to prevent this – one app at a time working with the webcam – and just hasn’t changed that in ages. There’s no reason for the restriction now, so it’s (finally) being lifted – at least assuming this change progresses through Windows 11’s testing channels and onto release (and we can’t see why it wouldn’t).

There are other slight complications with multiple apps sharing the one webcam, such as image settings like brightness having different parameters demanded by the different apps using the camera. To get around this, Microsoft is having brightness and so forth controlled at a central point in Windows 11’s settings, which overrides any app settings, and that of course fully makes sense.

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Windows 11 has received some useful tweaks to enable laptop owners to get more battery life, although these changes are still in testing right now.

Microsoft implemented a couple of measures in the latest preview build (27686) in the Canary channel (the earliest testing channel).

The major change is actually under the hood here, and in its blog post for build 27686, Microsoft says that it has enacted various “optimizations to improve battery life” without going into any details of exactly what has been done.

More recently, as Tom’s Hardware spotted, Microsoft made another change with this build, as the company explains: “We’re beginning to roll out improvements to Settings > System > Power & battery including the ability to set your Power Mode for both when your PC is plugged in [and] when it’s on battery along with a few other UI improvements to the page.”

Actually, the ability to change your power preferences depending on whether your laptop is plugged in, or running on battery, has always been possible with Windows 11 – you just had to dig deeper into the settings for the OS to change these options.

Now, Microsoft is putting them in a more accessible place where Windows 11 users will be able to see and easily switch these options, right there in the Power & battery panel.

Analysis: On the cutting-edge of testing

Clearly, making the settings for changing your power mode in Windows 11 much easier to see and adjust is a good thing. We can’t imagine this change won’t make it through the various testing channels and on to the release version of Windows 11 before too long.

The other move here in the optimizations to extend battery life is a bit different. Microsoft sounds less sure of the impact here, as when asking for feedback on the change, the software giant notes: “Let us know what you think and if you are not seeing the battery life on your PC you are expecting, let us know via Feedback Hub.”

As we mentioned before, the Canary channel is the earliest testing avenue, and therefore the riskiest bet – this is the port of call for testers who want to be on the cutting-edge, where the dangers are higher than with other builds.

In other words, this early work on implemented power-saving changes might go awry, and your battery life could end up diminished, rather than extended. At least until any kinks are ironed out, anyway – and we expect they will be, in time, if there are major wrinkles present.

Microsoft is pretty vague about this change, but with any luck, it’ll help Windows 11 laptops eke out more battery life – and surfacing the ability to tweak power modes, making this more visible to everyday users, won’t hurt either.

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Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs are set for booming sales if some fresh predictions from an analyst firm are correct – and these laptops could threaten Apple’s MacBooks in the future.

Obviously, these figures are just an estimation, involving a crystal ball as well as educated guesswork, and the fact that the boom in AI PC sales is already underway. In case you missed it, in Q2 of 2024, AI PCs – defined as any computer with an NPU (Neural Processing Unit to accelerate AI workloads), not a Copilot+ PC, which needs a more powerful NPU, we should clarify – hit sales of 8.8 million according to Canalys, another analyst outfit, doubling up on Q1.

As Wccftech reports, the new prediction from Omdia suggests Microsoft’s ARM-based Copilot+ PC sales will reach 800,000 units this year, and that will shoot up by over 500% to 5.2 million units in 2025. That’ll accelerate further to a total of 47.7 million units of these laptops in 2028, we’re told.

When considering all AI PCs, meaning ARM-based devices and Intel or AMD AI laptops, we’re looking at a rather staggering 34.2 million units shipped in 2025, which with the ARM-based machines on top, gives a total of 39.4 million units. By 2028, that total of ARM and Intel/AMD AI PCs will be 155.4 million units – if this educated guesswork pans out, of course.

Analysis: Smack-Book talk

The long and short of it is that Copilot+ PCs are expected to be very popular – to an eye-opening extent – going forward. Of course, after this year, most AI laptops of the Windows 11 variety are going to be Copilot+ PCs (as the majority of the chips with NPUs from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm will qualify for that designation, having a suitably powerful NPU).

Omdia gives us some reasons why we might see such an explosion in popularity, namely that AI will help people be creative, as AI can take on image or video creation tasks, giving anyone the ability to be a content creator. Whether that’s a good thing, or not, regarding a flood of AI-generated content and all the various worries therein, very much remains to be seen – but undeniably it should be a major selling point for Copilot+ PCs, we’d agree.

AI PCs are also expected to make a big impact in the field of education, in terms of helping not just students, but teachers in preparing materials for their pupils (all kinds of coursework media will be a snap to create, of course).

Omdia further points out that if Microsoft equips ARM-based Copilot+ PCs with a peppy discrete GPU, these devices could be a major problem for Apple’s MacBooks.

The analyst firm observes: “If Microsoft introduces an AI gaming or AI creator laptop with a 45-80 watt thermal design power (ARM) chip with a discrete graphics card (Discrete-GPU), and compresses the thickness of the laptop to close to the institutional thickness of Apple’s MacBook Pro (within 16 mm) through the thin and light function of OLED displays, it will cause a crisis in Apple’s MacBook Pro sales.”

AI on the rise

Microsoft going this route wouldn’t be a surprise. In fact, it was a stated goal when Microsoft first launched Copilot+ PCs, when the company told us: “We will bring new Copilot+ PC experiences at a later date. In the future we expect to see devices with this silicon [meaning Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM-based chips, plus Intel and AMD CPUs] paired with powerful graphics cards like Nvidia GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon, bringing Copilot+ PC experiences to reach even broader audiences like advanced gamers and creators.”

Well, fair enough – Microsoft is doubtless planning more powerhouse ARM-based Copilot+ PCs (and x86 models, meaning Intel and AMD silicon) down the line, and they will surely be a challenge to the MacBook Pro. However, Apple is not going to stand still with the MacBook Pro either, and in a few years’ time, we’ll have even thinner (OLED-toting) models of the Pro too – maybe with their own equally highly performant graphics solutions (we certainly wouldn’t bet against it).

This isn’t just about the hardware, though, and a lot depends on exactly how well Microsoft does with pushing the software side of the equation, and getting Windows on ARM working seamlessly with emulation – given that most apps aren’t natively coded for ARM (but x86 instead). Microsoft’s Prism emulation layer is the key to achieving this – and the firm will need to progress with software compatibility, and smooth running, as we’re not quite there yet with Prism.

It's still very early days for Prism, and Copilot+ PCs in general, though – and attention-grabbing predictions like Omdia’s are kind of par for the course. However, major growth in AI PCs isn’t something that can be ruled out, and indeed it feels like a distinct possibility – but a lot of that may also be wrapped up in what AI features Microsoft can grace Copilot+ PCs with. On that front, things aren’t off to a great start with the Recall debacle, of course, and lately, everything has gone very quiet with that particular feature – perhaps ominously so.

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Windows 10 users are getting an expanded ‘News and interests’ panel whether they like the idea or not, it seems (something of a familiar theme these days, we might add).

This was spotted by Windows Latest which notes that News and interests, which is an icon on the Windows 10 taskbar – that expands to a large panel when hovered over or clicked, depending on your settings – is now much bigger. We’re talking around 50% larger, or even more, apparently.

This started as an experiment tested with a small number of Windows 10 users early in 2024, the tech site explains, but is now rolling out to everyone on the older of Microsoft’s two supported desktop operating systems.

The News panel covers around half the screen now, or even more like 60% of the display, Windows Latest notes – perhaps depending on the resolution and desktop configuration that you use with Windows 10. The site observes that with a laptop that has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600, and 150% scaling of the desktop, the panel took up close to two-thirds of the screen.

This panel mostly pushes news stories from the MSN feed, but also packs widgets on the side for the weather, stocks, traffic info, and so forth (which open further details in – you guessed it – Microsoft’s Edge browser and Bing).

Analysis: Breaking news – Windows 10 user switches off sprawling MSN panel

The first thing we did was turn News and interests back on with our Windows 10 PC (we’ll come back to how to switch it on, or indeed off, shortly) and observed that Windows Latest is correct. At least about the panel expanding to 50% of the desktop when summoned – whereas before, it took up more like 20% (if we recall correctly).

Certainly, it has been supersized, but not quite to take up more than half the screen, at least not on our desktop anyway (at 1440p resolution). Windows Latest does provide a screenshot of the panel where it is indeed eating around 60% of the screen real-estate available – which seems rather ridiculous.

The bad news is that there’s no way to tweak the size of the News panel – you’re stuck with it being as big as Microsoft wants. The good news is that, as we already touched upon, you can turn off the feature.

It’s easy to do this: just right-click on a blank part of the taskbar (or the News icon itself) and in the menu that pops up you’ll see a ‘News and interests’ option. If you hover over that, a flyout menu will appear with the option to Turn off and you just select that – the News icon will then disappear. You can also make the icon smaller (choose Show icon only), and disable it appearing when you hover over it (untick Open on hover), if you want to keep the News option, but make it a bit less intrusive on the desktop.

The choice is yours, and as long as there is a choice, then it’s not so bad, no matter how Microsoft changes said panel.

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One of Microsoft’s most ambitious – and controversial – new artificial intelligence (AI) features for Windows 11, called Recall, is still missing in action, over two months since it was supposed to launch alongside a swathe of new Copilot+ PCs.

The progression of Recall, going from a flagship feature to a controversy, to a growing embarrassment, for Microsoft has certainly been interesting to witness.

If you’re having trouble – ahem – recalling Recall, essentially, it was pitched by Microsoft as one of the key selling features of Copilot+ PC devices, which are Windows 11 laptops built with special hardware (NPUs) that allow them to run complex AI tasks on device, rather than having to be connected to the internet.

Recall, Microsoft told us, would act like a photographic memory. All you’d need to do is give it a vague description of a website, or ask where you’d saved a document, and it should find it for you.

Sounds kind of useful, but concerns were raised about how Recall was doing this. It was taking a screenshot of your screen every few seconds, and then saving that screenshot. It would then comb through those saved images to find files, images, or text that fit your descriptions.

The idea that Microsoft was taking snaps of everything you’re doing on your PC, and saving it, didn’t go down well with people who were concerned about their privacy. Microsoft hasn’t got the greatest reputation when it comes to securing its users' data, and if hackers were to get access to the screenshots, there could be major security implications.

The outcry was enough that when Copilot+ PCs launched in June, Recall was not included, with Microsoft explaining that it will become available to Windows Insiders to test first, before being rolled out at a later date.

This was a welcome move, though it was no doubt highly embarrassing as well. Due to the last-minute pulling of Recall, makers of Copilot+ PCs had to awkwardly talk about a key feature that was no longer available at launch. It also showed that some of the concerns raised by people over Recall weren’t initially considered by Microsoft.

Microsoft has been vague about when Recall will finally arrive – and as Windows Latest reports, the company has gone completely silent about a feature it was once all too happy to claim would change the way we use our computer in the future.

All quiet on the Recall front

As Windows Latest’s Mayank Parmar reports, since Microsoft delayed the launch of Recall in June, he’s reached out to the company to find out when Recall might be coming, only to be told that Microsoft has nothing to share. He was pointed to a blog post last updated on June 13, which just says that, “Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot+ PCs on June 18, 2024, to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks”, after which it will be rolled out to all users.

The problem is that there’s still no sign of Recall coming to the Windows Insider Program, and it’ll take a while for people signed up to the program to be able to fully test Recall, feedback to Microsoft and Microsoft then implement any changes based on that feedback before rolling it out to all users. 

None of the recent test builds of Windows 11 that have been made available to Windows Insiders have any reference to Recall, so Microsoft’s timeframe of, “the coming weeks,” vague as it was, isn’t aging well.

While Parmar doesn’t believe that Recall has been ditched, and I agree, I’d actually like to be proved wrong, and hope that Recall gets dumped in the same shallow grave as Clippy, Zune and other underbaked Microsoft products.

Analysis: A solution looking for a problem

Ever since Microsoft announced Recall, I’ve felt that the feature is emblematic of many of AI’s problems.

My biggest issue is that Microsoft was asking for a lot (privacy and resources on our devices – storage space to keep all the images and processing power to record and log all the screenshots) without giving a solid enough reason for why we’d find the feature useful.

The examples I’ve been given by Microsoft spokespeople include, using it to find a website, or a folder location of a misplaced file. To start, those ‘problems’ (forgetting a website or where you put a file) are more inconveniences than world ending issues, and they already have perfectly serviceable solutions. 

When it comes to websites, I can use the browsing history of Chrome with a search function to find a website I’ve visited, and while it means I can’t find something by just typing in a vague description, as long as I know a keyword used on the website, I can usually find it that way. Even better, my browsing history is synced across devices including multiple laptops and a smartphone – so even if I looked at the website on my phone, I can still find it on my laptop. Recall will only work on the device it has stored the screenshots on.

And I can’t remember the last time I lost a file. Can you? I’ve got a decent file system going where things are saved by category, and apps, including the File Explorer, often show recent files and where they are saved, making it easy to find, even if I wasn’t paying attention.

Crucially, the solutions Recall offers just aren’t good enough to justify using such an intrusive feature. It seems to overcomplicate things whilst also compromising on privacy and feels like a solution looking for a problem, which is something I’ve been feeling about a lot of these new AI features being forced upon us.

Microsoft’s silence on when Recall might finally arrive suggests that the company is having trouble addressing the privacy concerns of the feature, while also struggling to come up with reasons why we should use the feature.

If it doesn’t do that soon, people are going to stop asking where Recall is – it’ll just be forgotten about. Ironically, I think that would be best for a feature that nobody can remember asking for.

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Microsoft is testing a new Compact Mode to hopefully make using Game Bar in Windows 11 (and 10) easier and improve navigation on smaller screens, Windows handheld devices such as the Asus ROG Ally X, and while using a controller. As well as a simplified Game Bar layout, it includes a redesigned Home widget, displaying any games currently running on your device and games you’ve recently played. 

The Game Bar is a centralized place in Windows 11 where you can easily control your gaming setup, including audio settings and capturing gameplay for streaming. If you’re an Xbox Insider (which is similar to the Windows Insiders program, allowing users to test and provide feedback on upcoming features, but focusing specifically on Xbox console updates and gaming experiences) - you can enroll to try Compact Mode. Once you have, you can turn it on by opening Game Bar and going to the Settings widget. Here, in the General section, you can turn on the ‘Compact Mode’ option by switching its toggle. 

Better navigation, more control with Compact Mode

Once Compact Mode is switched on, you can interact with widgets (interactive tools that provide real-time information and quick access to gaming-related features) and navigate content more easily and quickly - for example, you can use a controller to switch between widgets using the left and right bumpers (LB/RB). The upgraded Home widget will display games currently running and recently played games, and enable you to quickly open common game launchers such as Xbox, Steam, and EA Play.

You’ll be able to quit games from the Home widget, allowing you to select the game and click to close it instead of having to quit from within the game or navigate out to your desktop. Other new menu items like the Resource widget will enable you to check what applications are using your device’s resources and swiftly close them to help boost performance. You can also explore and open any installed widgets directly from the Widget Store by accessing the widgets menu.

A major handheld gaming push from Microsoft

This update shows some desire from Microsoft to improving Windows 11’s performance on non-traditional PC devices, such as the growing number of PC gaming handhelds, and it looks like it could be a substantial improvement to the Xbox app on Windows.

Devices like the ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go use Windows 11 as their operating system, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Windows 11 isn’t ideal for these devices. 

The operating system has been designed to work on laptops and PCs with larger screens, and mice and keyboard controls. On handhelds that have smaller screens and only gamepad controls, Windows 11 can feel clunky and frustrating, especially compared to the likes of SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that was built specifically to be used on the Steam Deck handheld. These improvements to Windows 11’s Game Bar could make the OS a much better fit for handheld devices - which is especially important considering there are rumors that Valve will allow SteamOS to be installed on non-Steam Deck devices.

If you want to try Compact Mode sooner rather than later, you’ll need to join the Xbox Insider Program (which you can do for free), which will give you access to new features and updates early, and allow you to share your opinion and feedback to help improve the user experience. You’ll need to download and install the Xbox Insider Hub app from the Microsoft Store, and then log in with your Microsoft account. 

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Microsoft’s latest update for Windows 11 has arrived, and the August patch fixes a pretty glaring BitLocker bug while adding some neat new twists for the interface on the desktop, including a nifty ability relating to the Start menu.

Cumulative update KB5041585 resolves the mentioned BitLocker bug which was actually introduced as part of July’s update last month. This glitch caused the BitLocker recovery page to appear for no reason after the user rebooted their PC, giving them something of a fright, no doubt, and requiring them to enter their recovery details.

While this problem mainly affected business users, BitLocker is a drive encryption tool that’s also provided with Windows 11 Pro, so some consumers may have been holding off installing the July update if they’re running that OS. Now, however, they can go ahead with the August update, given that the fix is in place. (Windows 11 Home users weren’t affected here, as it doesn’t have BitLocker). 

Useful tweaks and fixes in the August update

The resolution of the BitLocker issue aside, what about those interface changes applied in the KB5041585 update?

We mentioned a new Start menu feature at the outset, and this enables you to pin apps straight to the taskbar - you can simply drag an app from the former to the latter, where it’ll remain pinned. Yes, this is an obvious piece of functionality, and we’re not sure why it wasn’t in Windows 11 in the first place - but at least it’s present now.

Windows Latest further observes that File Explorer tabs can be easily duplicated now - you can simply right-click on a tab, and select the ‘Duplicate tab’ option to do exactly that.

On top of that, the performance of File Explorer has been improved in a number of ways. Problems where search would fail have been rectified, as well as a memory leak bug that could see everything grinding to a halt when opening archive files (like ZIPs) and browsing them. There’s a bunch of bugs affecting File Explorer that have been smoothed over here, in fact - another one is Gallery search falling over, and images flashing when they’re viewed.

As ever, there are security fixes bundled in this month’s patch, too. You should get the August update piped through on your Windows 11 PC automatically, but if you haven’t yet, you can manually check for it: in the Start menu, select Settings, then Windows Update. 

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Are you a Windows 11 (or 10) user who’s jealous of Mac owners with iPhones who can use AirDrop to seamlessly transfer files? AirDrop’s slickness is hard to deny, even for the most hardened Apple dissenters, but Windows users with Android smartphones should soon get similarly smart file sharing powers, with any luck.

The new file sharing system for Microsoft’s OS was spotted by Windows Central, and it’s now present in testing in the Release Preview Channel (the final stage of testing before release, as the name suggests). It works via the Phone Link app (on PC) and the Link to Windows app (on your Android), and Microsoft explains all the details in a support document that was recently updated.

As mentioned, the feature will work in a similar way to AirDrop in Apple’s ecosystem, and it’ll be hosted in the built-in Share menu of the device you’re sharing from, whether that’s your Android phone or Windows PC. All you’ll need to do is tap on, or right-click, the file you want to share, then choose to ‘Share’ and then find the relevant app (Phone Link, if you’re sharing from a PC, or Link to Windows if the file is on your phone).

A long-awaited arrival that could really impress

This feature will be available for PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 11. You’ll need Windows 10 May 2019 or later, or any version of Windows 11 - and your mobile device will have to be running Android 9.0 or later. Also, your phone will need to run the Link to Windows app version 1.24032.518.0 or better, and your PC needs Phone Link version 1.24032.156.0 or later.

It’s worth noting that this new feature is not the same as the existing cross-device copy and paste feature in Phone Link, which enables you to have a shared clipboard between two devices where items that are copied are stored, able to be pasted into a suitable app on either device.

All in all, this will be a very useful addition to Windows 11 (and Windows 10) for those of you with Android smartphones, facilitating sharing files more seamlessly and potentially speeding up your workflow. Let’s hope it progresses to the release version of Windows 11 (and 10) soon enough.

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I was alarmed to learn that Microsoft’s ditching one of its Paint apps in Windows 11 (and 10) - until I discovered that the application on the chopping block was Paint 3D.

In case you didn’t realize, there are two Paint apps for Windows 11: Paint, a modernized version of the classic app, and Paint 3D which was served up as its replacement way back in 2016, the idea being that it enabled you to use 3D features in your creations.

However, Microsoft never managed to fully get behind Paint 3D, and it fell by the wayside - in fact, the software was dropped from the roster of default apps in Windows 10 early in 2021. While you can still download Paint 3D from the Microsoft Store in Windows 11 (or 10) today, soon, that won’t be the case.

As leaker PhantomOfEarth on X noticed - along with Windows Latest - there’s a new warning banner that has appeared informing Windows 11 users of Paint 3D’s imminent removal from the store.

The warning notification reads: “Paint 3D won’t be available in the Microsoft Store or receive future updates starting on November 4, 2024.” 

This is followed by a ‘Learn more’ link which leads to a web page where Microsoft provides more information and confirms the date that Paint 3D will no longer be available on both Windows 11 and Windows 10. 

Paint 3D is looking rather shabby these days

At this point, there’s doubtless only a small niche of Windows users who are Paint 3D fans - although they will no doubt be upset by the news of the app’s demise.

That said, Microsoft has not been giving Paint 3D any attention for a long time going by some of the reviews on the Microsoft Store, which complain about the poor maintenance of the app. One common beef with Paint 3D is the app no longer appearing in the flyout menu when right-clicking on an image and going to the ‘Open with…’ option, meaning that opening an image is a much clunkier process.

If you’re interested in dipping your toes into 3D image editing, and have been mulling over using Paint 3D, then you better download and install the app from the Microsoft Store while you still can. Despite the mentioned complaints, the overall rating of the app is pretty high. Indeed, you never know, if Microsoft hears enough noise being made about Paint 3D being totally canned, maybe it’ll change its mind - and bring Paint 3D back as an optional app in the Microsoft Store.

After all, Microsoft pretty rapidly reversed course with its predecessor and my personal favorite childhood app, Paint.

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Many of the recent changes to Windows 11’s Start menu that we’ve seen tested by Microsoft have been getting hot and cold reactions, but this hasn’t deterred the software giant from continuing to experiment with the menu, and it’s currently trialing a new ‘Category’ layout that we learned about last month. 

This layout is an alternative to the standard presentation of the ‘All apps’ section of the Start menu, alongside a new grid-based layout that Microsoft has also been testing. We’ve already seen a hint of this new Category view, and that sneak peek featured solid-colored squares arranged in blocks of four (reflecting the fact that it was an early working version of the layout).

However, since a new build arrived in the Windows 11 Beta channel, the Category layout now works, or it’s at least somewhat functional, as Windows Latest reports. (Although note that the layout still remains hidden in Windows 11 - testers will need to dig to find it).

Getting neater and more organized with apps

This more finished-looking version of the Category layout now shows some app icons instead of just colored blocks as was the case before. Each themed category - such as entertainment, music, or news and weather - shows up to four icons of installed applications in a 2 x 2 grid. However, this grid can show more than just four apps by bundling up to four together as mini-icons - as you can see in the above screenshot, in the ‘other’ category - giving a total of 16 apps that can be listed in any category (in theory, as it stands in testing).

That said, none of this is fully functional in the beta build yet - those mini-icons should expand when clicked on, presumably, but don’t yet - and Microsoft could change things (or even scrap this idea) as testing progresses.

Both the Category and Grid layouts would be better options than the default Windows 11 layout for the Start menu to the present one, which shows a long list of apps you have to scroll through in a painful manner. The Grid view bundles up apps alphabetically in a grid, meaning less scrolling, and the Category layout refines things even further with themed groups to make sifting through your apps easier.

Just reading about these updates to the Start menu has made me nostalgic for older Start menu designs where you could instantly see all your apps in curated categories.

Windows Latest believes that the new Category layout will be functional soon enough, and maybe even implemented in the next major Windows 11 update, version 24H2 - although given how early the feature seems to be in testing right now, I’m not sure how realistic that expectation is.

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Windows 11 has a new preview build in the Dev channel - one of the earlier testing channels - and it brings some worthwhile improvements for voice functionality and power-saving, plus some other tweaks besides.

This is preview build 26120 and as mentioned, one of the bigger changes is with Voice Access. According to Microsoft’s blog post for the build, there’s an improved “spelling and corrections experience” for the feature. This is used during dictation when you notice that Voice Access has misspelt a word, and it allows you to run a correction - saying the correct spelling out loud, letter by letter, for said word.

Specifically, the change means you can now dictate characters at a faster speaking speed when spelling out a correction for a word, and Voice Access will keep up (or should do, hopefully). Also, you can now use dictation commands here, to select or delete something, for example.

Useful moves to help save power

Some other nifty tweaks are applied in this preview build to help with power saving, including a change for Energy Saver mode (which is due to replace Battery Saver, the existing mode for Windows 11). With build 26120, when you’re running a laptop on battery - and Energy Saver is set to ‘Always On’ and you will get a notification urging you to plug in your laptop if its charge goes down to 20%.

Another power-saving measure is a new recommendation that suggests turning off HDR on your display to conserve energy (assuming it supports HDR, naturally - which allows for improved contrast and more vivid colors). This will appear as part of the recommendations provided in Settings > Power & battery > Energy recommendations.

Other improvements implemented by Microsoft here include a new option to turn off ‘enhanced mouse pointer precision’ if you’re not keen on it, and the ability to change the mouse wheel scrolling direction (in Settings > Bluetooth & Device > Mouse).

Overall, it’s not the most dynamic Windows preview build I’ve ever seen, and some of these changes have been sighted elsewhere previously, but I appreciate that Microsoft is continually working to genuinely improve the Windows 11 experience in various ways, including accessibility and energy saving - two very important areas for the OS.

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As the Windows 11 24H2 update draws nearer we’re learning more details about the upgrade, and some fresh info has popped up regarding a power-saving feature.

This is Energy Saver, which is a new, more potent version of the existing Battery Saver, although the idea is naturally the same - to conserve power.

We’ve seen Energy Saver previously in testing, where it became clear that one major benefit over and above Battery Saver is that you can use the former when your PC is plugged in. (That means even with a desktop PC, you can choose to save some Watts - as long as you’re happy with reduced performance - to knock a bit of money off your power bill).

The new details about Energy Saver were spotted by Windows Latest, and they come courtesy of a support document that Microsoft recently updated to show us exactly what Energy Saver will do when it arrives with Windows 11 24H2.

Like Battery Saver - which has been a Windows staple for some time and is also available for Windows 10 - Energy Saver is a mode that can kick in when your laptop’s battery charge gets down to a specified low level, to help the battery last a bit longer (or you can switch it on manually).

How Energy Saver outdoes Battery Saver

Windows Latest distilled the support document published by Microsoft into a handy table laying out all of the differences between Battery Saver and Energy Saver.

One notable change is that when you turn on Energy Saver, you won’t be able to toggle the power mode of your device and adjust it for, say, the best performance or best battery life (presumably because Energy Saver is overriding whatever you choose here). If you want to adjust the power mode, you’ll have to turn off Energy Saver first - otherwise, the power mode slider will be greyed out, according to Windows Latest.

Another difference is that Energy Saver will also turn off transparency effects in windows (Battery Saver doesn’t), and the new feature will curtail more in the way of background app syncing (including switching off OneNote, OneDrive, and Phone Link syncing).

All of these measures help to preserve even more in the way of battery longevity than the past Battery Saver capability - although, in other respects, these two takes on power-saving features are the same (except for the already mentioned ability to use Energy Saver when you're plugged in to the mains).

As someone who likes to challenge my laptops (sometimes unintentionally) in terms of their longevity, I welcome this change as it certainly seems to give users more control over how their devices use up their battery charge.

We should see exactly how Energy Saver works when the 24H2 update debuts, which may not be too far away - though some recent rumors have suggested the upgrade might turn up a bit later than earlier chatter from the grapevine indicated.

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