Microsoft is constantly making changes to Windows 11, and this past week is no exception. Here’s everything Microsoft started testing in Windows this week.
You can join the Windows Insider program to try out experimental features, but some changes are on a gradual rollout and not yet available to all Insider program members. You should not install Windows Insider builds on an important computer.
Resume Apps From Android Phone on PC
As we covered previously, Microsoft is working on a new resume feature when you use a Windows PC with an Android phone. If you were listening to a song or episode in Spotify, and switch to your PC, a notification will appear to resume your playback. If you click it, the desktop Spotify app will open and continue whatever was playing.
This functionality is also open to other applications, but it remains to be seen how many developers will implement it. Apple has had a similar Handoff feature across its platforms for a few years now.
This feature is live now in the Dev and Beta channels.
Lock Screen
You might remember those new taskbar battery icons that Microsoft started testing in January, with colors to indicate charging status and optional battery percentages. Now, Microsoft is bringing them to the lock screen.
Starting in the Dev and Beta Channels, you’ll see the same updated battery icons at the bottom-right corner of the Windows lock screen. Handy.
Input
I’m a big fan of the emdash (—) character, but inserting an emdash or endash ( – ) has usually required memorizing an Alt keyboard code or opening the Windows emoji panel. At long last, Microsoft is adding a more convienent keyboard shortcut to Windows.
In the Beta Channel, you can now press the Windows and Minus (-) keys at the same time to insert an endash, or Win+Shift+Minus to insert an emdash. That’s similar to Mac’s keyboard shortcuts for those characters. Hopefully, this comes to the stable Windows 11 releases soon.
The emdash has had a rough time lately, as it has become closely associated with generative AI writing output. If you’re an emdash enjoyer, keep using them and simply ignore the people who think it’s a giveaway for AI slop writing. To quote Michael Bolton from the 1999 movie Office Space, “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
Windows Share
Windows is adding the ability to pin items in the Share menu, giving you faster access to the apps you use the most. Just hover over an app in the Share panel and click the pin button, and it will appear at the start of the list every time the menu is activated. This is currently being tested in the Dev and Beta Channels.
Performance
Microsoft says it has made some improvements to game performance in recent Beta Channel builds. A blog post explained, “Did some underlying work to help improve performance when gaming with game bar or other overlays on top of your game. This may particularly help those with multiple monitors which have different refresh rates.”
Meanwhile, an issue that could cause “the taskbar being slow to load when unlocking your PC after coming out of sleep” has been fixed in the Canary Channel. It’s not clear if this ever affected stable Windows 11 PCs or the other release channels.
Copilot on Windows
The Copilot app on Windows 11 has gone through many design changes, and now Microsoft is working on another one. As we covered previously, the Copilot app is getting a new home page with shortcuts to relevant apps, recent conversations, and files ready to use in Copilot chats. Integrated semantic file search is also in the works, as long as you’re using a Copilot+ PC—it’s just like the feature already in File Explorer.
These changes are rolling out to PCs with Copilot version 1.25082.132.0 and higher through the Microsoft Store. The update is currently limited to Insider Channels, but it should appear for everyone after any bugs are fixed.
Source: Windows Insider Blog (1, 2, 3, 4)
