Microsoft is quietly restoring a piece of the Windows 10 experience many users missed: a larger, in-your-face clock with seconds in the Notification Center — and it’s arriving alongside a set of AI shortcuts in File Explorer and new transparency controls for generative AI access in Windows 11’s...
ai actions
bing visual search
canary channel
clock display
data privacy
date time settings
developer flags
file explorer
image editing
insider program
notification center
privacy controls
privacy settings
seconds clock
text and image generation
third party apps
uiux
visual search
vivetool
windows 11
Microsoft is quietly turning Edge into a research assistant you can talk to: recent Canary builds are testing a multi‑tab summarization feature that lets Copilot read and synthesize content from several open tabs at once — a capability that shifts Copilot from a single‑page summarizer to a...
Google’s Chrome team is quietly testing a one-click option in Chrome’s Windows settings that not only sets Chrome as the default browser but will also pin it to the Windows 11 taskbar — a small UI change with outsized product and regulatory implications for how browsers compete on Windows. The...
browser competition
chrome
chromium
default apps
desktop productivity
digital markets act
dma
edge
enterprise it
first run ux
google chrome
microsoft edge
pin to taskbar
privacy
taskbar pin
telemetry
uiux
web browser ux
windows 11
windows settings
Microsoft appears to be closing one of Windows’ longest-running cosmetic grievances: preview builds released in August 2025 show legacy file‑operation dialogs and several system prompts finally obeying the system Dark theme, reducing the jarring white “flash” that has plagued Dark Mode since the...
Microsoft appears to be testing a new AI layer for Windows 11’s taskbar: references to a “Taskbar Companion” and “agentic companions” have been found in recent preview and server builds, suggesting Microsoft is experimenting with making the taskbar an entry point for proactive, context-aware AI...
agentic companions
ai extensibility
ambient ai
artificial intelligence
click to do
copilot
copilot plus
copilot runtime
device management
enterprise it
npu hardware
on-device ai
privacy and security
product design
software architecture
system-level ai
taskbar
uiux
windows 11
windows ai roadmap
I've been out of the PC market for a long time. Right now, I've got an old, assembled AMD/ASUS desktop from 2007, which my dad bought and helped me build for personal use. It's been running XP ever since and I've painfully upgraded the hardware over time. More recently, I've used Windows 7 at...
amd
asus
blue screen
corrupted hdd
desktop
drivers
hdd
laptops
oem
operating system
pc purchase
security
tech support
uiux
ultrabooks
upgrade
vanilla experience
warranty
windows 10
windows 8