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Windows 11 users are seeing a puzzling and persistent context‑menu entry — “Edit in Notepad” — appear for virtually every file type in File Explorer, from plain text to JPEGs and even .exe binaries, and a simple registry tweak can hide it; the fix works, but it also exposes broader design and maintenance issues with the modern Windows 11 File Explorer context menu and how system apps register themselves. Background Since Windows 11's launch, Microsoft redesigned File Explorer’s right‑click...

Microsoft is quietly redirecting the Phone Link app’s built‑in photo gallery to File Explorer, replacing the in‑app “Photos” surface with a File Explorer–based workflow that mounts your paired phone as a virtual device inside Windows 11. Background Phone Link (formerly “Your Phone”) has been Microsoft’s bridge between Windows and mobile devices for several years, surfacing notifications, messaging, calls, app mirroring (Android) — and until now — a lightweight photo gallery that aggregated...

Microsoft’s Canary-channel build has made one thing abundantly clear: Windows 11 version 26H1 is a platform branch, not the next mass‑market feature update, and most users—home consumers and enterprise fleets alike—do not need to change course today. The Windows Insider team pushed Build 28000 to the Canary Channel and explicitly updated the visible version to “Windows 11, version 26H1,” while adding a short but decisive clarification: “26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2 and only...

Microsoft released a new Insider Preview for Windows 11 today that refines the Widgets experience, eases Smart App Control management, streamlines Quick Machine Recovery, and reintroduces people activity indicators in File Explorer — all delivered under update KB5070300 which moves qualifying systems to Build 26220.7070. Background Windows 11’s ongoing evolution inside the Insider program continues to favor small, iterative improvements that target usability and manageability across consumer...

Microsoft has quietly opened the door to a new Windows 11 platform branch: Insider Preview Build 28000 has landed in the Canary Channel and updates the visible version string to Windows 11, version 26H1, but Microsoft stresses this is a platform-focused flight for specific silicon and not the next consumer feature release for 25H2. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Insider channels serve different engineering goals, and the Canary Channel is the earliest place Microsoft tests low‑level...

Microsoft’s latest Insider update for Windows 11, delivered as Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300) to the Dev and Beta channels, quietly undoes one of the most frustrating constraints of Smart App Control while also polishing the system’s recovery path and a handful of desktop conveniences. The change that will get the most attention is the new flexibility around Smart App Control (SAC): a feature that previously required a clean Windows install to enable or disable can now be toggled from inside...

Microsoft’s latest Insider package, delivered as Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300), is a concentrated, practical update rather than a headline-grabbing feature release — but it contains several small changes that materially affect how users and IT teams interact with File Explorer, security controls, Widgets, and recovery tools. The package re-enables the people icons in File Explorer’s Activity column for some testers, temporarily pulls back a set of cloud-integration...

In a striking snapshot of enterprise generative AI in late 2025, Wharton Human‑AI Research finds that roughly three in four companies report positive ROI from generative AI projects, and survey respondents name OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most widely used tool — while Anthropic’s Claude registers far lower enterprise usage than many observers expected. Background Wharton Human‑AI Research (WHAIR) has transitioned its questions to business leaders from curiosity-driven adoption to measured...

Microsoft Clarity’s new analysis shows AI assistants and large language models are still a tiny slice of referral traffic but are already producing materially higher conversion rates than traditional channels — a signal that discovery and attribution are shifting beneath publishers’ and advertisers’ feet. Background / Overview Microsoft Clarity’s November 6, 2025 study analyzed activity across more than 1,200 publisher and news domains and reported a dramatic growth trajectory for AI-driven...

MakeUseOf’s cheeky experiment—installing a Windows 11-style launcher on an Android phone—is more than a novelty: it’s a useful case study in how far Android’s customization model can push a mobile device’s identity, what it can convincingly emulate, and where the approach breaks down in the real world. Background / Overview Customization has long been Android’s signature strength: launchers, icon packs, widgets and deep system tweaks let users remap the feel of their phones. The MakeUseOf...

PCMag UK’s 2025 business-laptop roundup crystallizes a clear trend: modern work machines are no longer mere office tools — they’re purpose-built platforms for hybrid work, on-device AI, and creative workloads, with OLED and AMOLED displays, NPUs (neural processing units) for local AI, and 16 GB of RAM as the new practical floor for most business users. The headline picks in the roundup (from ultraportables to mini‑workstations and Chromebooks) reflect that shift, and they make an important...

Microsoft's WinUI team has quietly handed developers the first real tool to address one of Windows 11’s most persistent annoyances: the bloated, hard-to-scan right‑click context menu—by prototyping a split, hybrid menu control that groups related actions under a single, smarter line item. Background Since Windows 11 launched, the context (right‑click) menu has been a poster child for design tradeoffs between minimalism and productivity. The OS introduced a trimmed, icon‑rich top layer and...

Microsoft has shipped Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7070 (packaged as KB5070300) to the Dev and Beta channels, an incremental but meaningful update that tightens recovery workflows, refines the Widgets user interface, and removes a handful of practical friction points for testers and IT teams while leaving several features staged behind server-side and hardware gates. Background Microsoft’s servicing strategy for recent Windows 11 releases increasingly uses small enablement packages...

Microsoft has quietly confirmed a new, unconventional Windows 11 release: Windows 11, version 26H1, now appearing in the Canary Channel as Build 28000 and labeled by Microsoft as a platform-only update intended to support specific new silicon. Insiders running the Canary Channel will see the version string change in Settings and winver, and Microsoft says this release is not a conventional feature update for version 25H2 — instead it contains targeted platform changes to enable upcoming...

Microsoft has begun rolling out the very first Windows 11 build carrying the 26H1 version label to Insiders in the Canary Channel, but this release is not the feature-packed consumer update many readers expect — it’s a platform-only, silicon-focused flight intended to validate low-level support for new ARM-based processors. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Insider channels serve distinct purposes: Canary is the earliest testbed for low-level platform changes and experimental plumbing, Dev...

Microsoft has quietly introduced Windows 11 version 26H1 — but it isn’t the broad consumer feature update many readers expect; instead, 26H1 is a platform-only branch designed to bring up support for next‑generation silicon, and Microsoft says it will not be pushed as a general feature update to existing Windows 11 PCs. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Windows 11 update strategy has evolved into a mix of annual feature releases and targeted platform branches. The company has used...

The latest corporate snapshot of generative AI is both reassuring and revealing: most companies report measurable gains, but the market for the tools they use is sharply uneven — with OpenAI’s ChatGPT dominating usage, Microsoft’s Copilot punching above its weight thanks to office integration, Google’s Gemini trailing in enterprise reach, and Anthropic’s Claude underperforming relative to expectations. Background In late 2025 a widely circulated Wharton Human‑AI Research survey of business...

Infosys has unveiled a domain‑specific AI Agent for the energy industry that combines the company’s Topaz agent fabric and Infosys Cobalt cloud blueprints with Microsoft’s Copilot Studio and Azure OpenAI Foundry-hosted models (including GPT‑family multimodal models) to deliver conversational, multimodal operational assistance for well operations, field maintenance and control‑room workflows. Background / Overview Infosys presented the offering as an industry‑tailored productivity and safety...

Short, sharp, and sometimes brittle: a hands‑on recheck of free AI coding assistants in 2025 shows the market settling into two clear tiers — capable free tools that are safe for everyday use, and a larger group of impressive but error‑prone free offerings that still demand heavy human oversight. Background / Overview The last three years pushed AI from autocomplete into agentic workflows that can edit multiple files, open pull requests, run tests, and operate from IDEs or the terminal. That...

Microsoft’s security team has published a troubling technical disclosure showing that encrypted conversations with streaming language models can leak topic-level information to a passive network observer by analyzing encrypted packet sizes and timings — a novel side-channel the researchers call “Whisper Leak.” Background / Overview Language models (LLMs) deployed as remote services often stream responses token-by-token to improve perceived latency. That streaming behaviour creates observable...