New Start Menu and Other Important Updates Coming to Windows 11
In addition to a couple of new Surface devices , Microsoft also announced a number of notable updates for Windows 11, including the Start menu, Copilot AI, and core Windows utilities such as Paint and Snipping Tool.
The changes to the Start menu are significant, and I wrote about them last month when they were first discovered in hidden code. The menu becomes larger, more customizable and convenient, with the ability to immediately view all applications and several options for placing those applications on the screen.
If you don’t want to see recommended shortcuts (for example, for recent files), you can hide them. You can also increase the size of the pinned apps panel. Another change is the addition of a “phone companion” (essentially a Phone Link app) to the right of the Start menu.
According to Microsoft, this update will appear on the Windows Insider channel next month, and there are several more updates on the same schedule. One is AI Actions in File Explorer, which will give you access to AI features from the context menu: summarize documents and edit images.
Another feature coming soon to Windows Insiders is AI-powered text generation and summarization in Notepad, as well as simplified formatting options. For the first time, you’ll be able to bold and italicize text in Notepad, as well as enter lists and headings. There will also be support for the Markdown formatting language.
We have Copilot Vision, which is already available to Windows Insiders and will be available to everyone else soon. This means you can talk to artificial intelligence about everything that happens on the screen – whether you want shopping advice or help with image editing – and Microsoft has previously given us a good idea of how it works .
PC features Copilot+
Some of the newly announced features will first appear on Copilot+ PCs (those that meet certain performance criteria) with Snapdragon chipsets. Again, these updates appear first on the Windows Insider channel before they become available to everyone else on Copilot+ PCs. Microsoft has hinted that they will eventually come to PCs based on AMD or Intel processors.
First, Microsoft puts an AI agent in Settings so you can get help finding the toggle switch you need or how to do something. One example shown in Microsoft’s demo is typing “my text is too small” to find the font size option. The AI agent can even change the settings for you if you give it permission.
We’re also getting more actions for the Tap to Do feature (essentially an AI-powered context-sensitive menu), including the ability to schedule meetings in Teams or trigger immersive reading mode for text. Windows Search is also getting a boost, now covering more photos, settings and the Microsoft Store.
The Photos app built into Windows is slowly getting better and better , and will soon have an update feature for dynamic lighting control. You can configure up to three lighting sources, as well as adjust brightness and intensity, while observing changes in the image in real time.
As for Paint, it gets the ability to create custom stickers from text prompts and a new object picker that will use artificial intelligence to select objects with one click. If you need to move or delete something in an image, this should make the selection process faster and easier.
The Windows Snipping Tool also gets more features: smart screenshot cropping, the ability to extract text from screenshots, and a color picker. Finally, Narrator on Copilot+ PC is being updated to offer rich image descriptions so it can describe charts, photos, and other visuals displayed on the screen.