productivity

By 2025, artificial intelligence has moved from the edges of enterprise dreams into the center of the daily work routine, changing not just how tasks are completed but how organizations structure roles, measure value, and define productivity. Background / Overview AI’s penetration into the...

Windows ships with a respectable set of built‑in utilities, but for many users those apps feel like checkbox features: serviceable, occasionally sluggish, and often lacking the power or polish needed for real work. A compact set of community‑driven, lightweight replacements can dramatically...

Windows 11’s latest 25H2 preview builds polish many of the small, everyday interactions that shape how people work on Windows — from tidier context menus and smoother taskbar animations to Start menu reorganizations and File Explorer refinements — all delivered as part of an incremental...

Microsoft is quietly aligning Notepad’s right‑click experience with Windows 11’s modern context‑menu language, rolling a refreshed menu into the Windows Insider channels that places the most common editing actions up front while preserving Notepad’s growing set of AI and formatting features...

Microsoft has quietly rolled out a redesigned right‑click menu for Notepad in Windows 11, bringing the long-familiar text editor into alignment with the modern, streamlined context‑menu style that Microsoft has been applying across the OS. rty has long been defined by speed, simplicity, and...

Microsoft’s Windows Insider program delivered a compact but meaningful set of user-facing improvements during the first half of August 2025, focused squarely on UI consolidation, cross-device convenience, and tightening the long-running migration of legacy Control Panel functionality into the...

Microsoft has quietly rolled out a refreshed right‑click experience for Notepad in Windows 11, aligning the long‑running text editor with the redesigned, streamlined context menus Microsoft introduced across the OS — a change now appearing in Notepad builds shipping to Windows Insiders and...

I spend more hours than I care to count testing Windows laptops, and the single most underrated productivity habit I’ve picked up from that work is learning what the keyboard can do for you — not just the obvious Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V tricks, but the deeper, lesser-known shortcuts that shave minutes off...

Linuxfx is the most convincing Windows‑like Linux distribution I’ve seen: it ships a Windows‑style desktop, ships on an Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS base with a modern kernel, bundles Steam/Heroic and Wine, and aims to make moving off Windows painless for users worried about the October 2025 Windows 10...

OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now reach into your Gmail inbox, read your Google Calendar, and look up people in Google Contacts — all from inside a single chat — marking a clear escalation in the product’s push from a conversational assistant toward a full-fledged, context-aware workspace tool. The...

Microsoft has begun pushing three lightweight Microsoft 365 “companion” apps — People, File Search, and Calendar — directly into the Windows 11 taskbar for eligible Microsoft 365 business customers, delivering one‑click access to contacts, documents and meetings without opening full clients and...

Windhawk turns Windows 11 from a locked-down, opinionated UI into a modular playground you can tailor back toward productivity—and the four modules I reach for first (Classic Context Menu, Classic Navigation Bar, Vertical Taskbar, and Windows 11 Start Menu Styler) are small installs that deliver...

Microsoft’s Edge appears to be getting a radical rethink that puts Copilot — not tabs or bookmarks — at the center of the browsing experience, with early “Olympia” UI screenshots surfacing from Edge Canary and public reporting suggesting the redesign is being tested as a Copilot-first interface...

ZDNET’s hands‑on with the GEEKOM IT15 Mini PC shows a clear, practical win for power users willing to swap Windows 11 for Linux: the tiny system punches well above its weight for everyday workflows, but its AI and graphics claims need careful interpretation before you buy. Background The GEEKOM...

Microsoft has begun rolling out three new lightweight Microsoft 365 “companion” apps — People, File Search, and Calendar — that sit in the Windows 11 taskbar and promise to shave micro‑interruptions out of the modern workday by surfacing contacts, documents, and meetings in a compact, fast...

Microsoft’s latest push to blur the lines between the cloud and the desktop has landed: a trio of lightweight Microsoft 365 “companion” apps — People, File Search, and Calendar — are now appearing in the Windows 11 taskbar for business and enterprise Microsoft 365 customers, offering one-click...

Microsoft has quietly begun planting tiny, purpose-built Microsoft 365 “companion” apps directly into the Windows 11 taskbar — compact People, File Search, and Calendar helpers that promise to shave dozens of small context switches out of the modern knowledge worker’s day. These mini‑apps are...

Microsoft has quietly begun embedding three new Microsoft 365 “companion” apps into the Windows 11 taskbar — Calendar, File Search, and People — small, focused helpers designed to pull calendar events, corporate files, and contact details one click away from the desktop and reduce time lost to...

Microsoft has quietly begun embedding bite‑sized Microsoft 365 “companion” apps into the Windows 11 taskbar — compact People, File Search, and Calendar helpers designed to surface contacts, documents, and meeting controls without launching full Office or Teams windows — a shift that promises...

After more than twenty years of evolution, OneNote finally ships a simple — but genuinely consequential — productivity fix: a built‑in option to paste without formatting, accessible via the standard Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows) and Cmd+Shift+V (Mac) shortcuts, plus the familiar right‑click “Keep text...