What’s New and Familiar in Windows 11 Version 23H2

Microsoft describes Windows 11 as being “fresh and familiar,” and while that sounds paradoxical, it’s true. That is, Windows 11 offers a fresh new user experience that is simpler, prettier, and more modern than that of its predecessor, Windows 10. But it is also instantly familiar, providing all of the same basic interfaces that Windows users expect, know, and use.

For those who were using Windows 11 already, the latest version–called Windows 11 version 23H2–is largely consistent with its predecessors, though Microsoft has made hundreds of changes throughout the system by improving existing features and adding new features and apps.

We will dive into these topics in more detail throughout the book, but here is a quick breakdown of the major changes, improvements, and features available in Windows 11 version 23H2.

New design

The first thing you’ll notice when you boot into Windows 11 is its fresh new design. Microsoft has dramatically simplified the user interface in Windows 11 while retaining the basic look and feel of Windows 10. This means that familiar interfaces like the Desktop, Taskbar, and Start are all present as before, but they’re also more streamlined and prettier now. Even the system sounds have been completely overhauled to help create an overall sense of calm.

Where did it go?

One side-effect of Microsoft’s simplification work in Windows 11 is that some common interfaces in Windows 10 are now harder to find, require extra steps, or are simply missing. We will point out these stumbling blocks as needed and any workarounds when available.

At a high level, the new Windows 11 design consists of several key components. It’s simpler and more modern looking than Windows 10, and more naturally transitions between Light and Dark modes. Key interfaces like the Start menu and the icons on the Taskbar are now centered by default, and they resemble similar interfaces on mobile platforms like Android and iPhone. And windows and controls now display with curved instead of sharp-edged corners, which helps to make Windows 11 feel calmer and cleaner.

Lock screen and sign-in screen

The Lock screen appears When you power on or wake up your PC. The version you see in Windows 11 is very similar to that of Windows 10, but it’s been updated with the new Windows 11 font treatment.

Where did it go?

The Windows 11 Lock screen doesn’t have any new features, but it is missing one feature from Windows 10: You can no longer configure up to 7 apps that can display quick status alerts. (You can still configure a single app to display detailed status alerts.) There is no workaround for this regression.

When you click past the Lock screen, Windows 11 displays the Sign-in screen, where you authenticate your account and sign in to Windows. There are no functional changes to this screen when compared to Windows 10.

Desktop

The Windows 11 Desktop is largely unchanged from that of Windows 10, and you will find the same basic functionality, with the same default icons–Recycle Bin and Microsoft Edge–as before.

Like other top-level interfaces in Windows 11, the Desktop has, of course, been updated with new wallpapers and the new design. Context menus–which are accessed as before by right-clicking the Desktop or icons on the Desktop–are simplified, with fewer choices than before, graphically updated, and feature the same rounded corners seen in windows and other controls.

Where did it go?

The word “simplified” should act as a trigger for power users because in this case it means that some options that were previously available in the Desktop’s context menus are no longer available, at least by default, in Windows 11. To display the classic context-menus, hold down SHIFT when you right-click. Or, choose “Show more options” from the default context menu.

You can learn more about the Windows 11 Desktop in the Desktop chapter.

Taskbar

Windows 11 delivers an all-new Taskbar along the bottom of the screen. As before, it features a Start button and a row of icons representing pinned app shortcuts and running apps. And there is a system tray with small system icons and a clock and calendar display to the far right.

But the Windows 11 Taskbar also brings some changes. Those rows of app icons are now centered by default. And Microsoft places four new default items in the Taskbar: A Widgets icon with a weather display in the far left and then a Search bar and Task view and Copilot icons to the right of the Start button.

There are also other, less obvious changes: the Network, Volume, and Power system icons are now interconnected and launch the new Quick settings interface when selected. And the clock and date display launches two new interfaces, Notifications and Calendar, when selected.

In Windows 11 version 23H2, the Taskbar brings back the ability to configure whether Taskbar icons from the same app are combined into a single button without text labels.

The new Windows 11 Taskbar is described in more detail in the Taskbar chapter.

You can learn more about Quick settings in, wait for it, the Quick Settings chapter.

Where did it go?

The Windows 11 Taskbar can be configured to display its icons–and the Start menu–on the left side of the screen, but it is missing many key features that you may be used to from Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the Taskbar to the top, left, or right edge of the screen, and it no longer supports a small icon mode.

As bad, where the Windows 10 Taskbar displayed a large context menu with many useful choices when right-clicked, the Windows 11 Taskbar displays just two choices, “Task Manager” and “Taskbar settings.”

We explain available workarounds to missing Taskbar functionality in the Taskbar chapter.

Start

Like the Taskbar, the Start menu in Windows 11 is all-new, and a major departure from its predecessors.

The basics are the same, of course: You can still use the Start menu to find and launch apps, and access Search and shortcuts to options related to user accounts and power.

But the Windows 11 Start menu features a simpler new design with two major areas, Pinned, for app shortcuts, and Recommended, which commingles recently installed apps and recently accessed documents and files.

Start also offers basic customization capabilities. You can add, remove, and reposition icons as desired, and even arrange them in folders. And you can choose between three different layouts.

The new Windows 11 Start menu is described in more detail in the Start chapter.

Where did it go?

As with the Taskbar, the new Start menu missing some expected functionality, including some features that were present in Windows 10. The most obvious is live tiles, but the new Start menu also can’t be resized, and there are no options for removing the Pinned or Recommended areas. These regressions are explored further in the Start chapter.

To toggle the Start menu with the keyboard, type WINKEY or CTRL + ESC.

Widgets

Windows 11 includes a new web-based interface called Widgets that is accessible via a new icon that sits at the left end of the Taskbar.

Widgets displays a customizable board of widgets, which are small cards that display dynamic data from apps and online services. It is pre-configured to display personal information like weather, photos, local news and sports, traffic, and the like at the top left and then a scrolling list of mostly low-quality news and other web-based articles.

Widgets replaces a Windows 10 feature called News and interests, and it looks and works similarly despite being located in a different place in the Taskbar.

You can learn more about Widgets in the Widgets chapter.

To toggle Widgets with the keyboard, type WINKEY + W.

Search

As with previous Windows versions, Windows 11 features multiple entry points to Search, or what was previously called Start search. One of the more discoverable is the prominent Search box on the Taskbar, which can be configured to display as a Search icon and label (informally called the “Search pill”) or just an icon instead. Or, you can remove it from the Taskbar altogether.

To configure how Search appears in the Taskbar, right-click an empty area of the Taskbar and choose “Taskbar settings” from the context menu that appears.

You can also access Search from Start. When you select the Start box in the Start menu, the Search pane appears (and replaces Start), offering a search box, recent items from Start, and a feature called Search highlights that displays interesting links related to the current day along with trending web searches.

As with the Search interface in Windows 10, you will find a more traditional Start search-like experience when you open Start and begin typing a search term without selecting the search box first. And as before, you can filter the results to display only apps, documents, web results, or other items.

We examine Search in more detail in the Search chapter.

You can also launch Search by typing WINKEY + S or WINKEY + Q.

Copilot

With hundreds of millions of users, it’s no wonder that Windows 11 is a major component of Microsoft’s strategy for infusing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities across its ecosystem. And while there are dozens of AI-based features popping up in the apps that come with Windows 11, none are as prominent or broadly powerful as Copilot, the “everyday AI companion” that appears as a sidebar on the Windows 11 Desktop when invoked.

Copilot brings the same Microsoft Copilot-based backend AI assistance technologies used by Bing Chat, Bing Image Creator, and the Microsoft Edge sidebar directly to the Windows 11 Desktop. So you can get answers to simple or complex questions, ask it to rewrite, summarize, or explain content, and get help creating new content using simple Internet search-like prompts. And unique to Windows 11, Copilot can help you access and configure Windows features and settings too.

The Microsoft Copilot functionality in Copilot is impressive enough in this initial version of the product to warrant its colorful icon’s prominent placement in the Taskbar. (And you can expect Copilot to get even more powerful and useful in the months and years ahead.) You can use this icon as a toggle to display and hide the Copilot sidebar.

You can also launch Copilot by typing WINKEY + C.

Where did it go?

In the first two versions of Windows 11, there was a purple Chat icon in the Taskbar instead of Copilot. Chat was a front-end to what’s now called Microsoft Teams – Free, which is still included in Windows 11. In fact, a shortcut to the Microsoft Teams – Free app is now pinned to the Taskbar by default instead.

You can learn more about Copilot in the Copilot chapter.

Task view

Like Windows 10, Windows 11 supports a Task view interface that lets you select from a list of running apps and other open windows, and do so across multiple virtual desktops. This interface can also be used to manage desktops: you can create new desktops, close existing desktops, and move apps and windows between different desktops.

In addition to sporting a new layout and visual style, Task view in Windows 11 differs from that in its predecessor in another notable way: It no longer supports the Timeline feature from Windows 10.

Task view is described in more detail in the Task View chapter.

You can also display Task view by typing WINKEY + TAB.

Quick settings

As its name implies, Quick settings provides quick access to commonly needed system settings. It appears as a small pane when you select the Network, Volume, or Power icons in the system tray.

In Windows 11 version 23H2, Quick settings has been updated with the ability to display more quick settings buttons and an integrated volume mixer.

The quick settings buttons at the top of the Quick Settings pane replace the quick actions tiles found in the Windows 10 Action Center.

You can learn more about this new interface in the Quick Settings chapter.

You can also display Quick settings by typing WINKEY + A.

Notifications and Calendar

When you select the time/date display in the system tray, the Notifications and Calendar panes appear.

Notifications is Windows 11’s notifications manager, and it displays app and system notifications you previously ignored or missed. It also has a “Do not disturb” button for muting notifications so you can focus on your work.

You can learn more about Do not disturb in the Do Not Disturb and Focus chapter.

The Notifications pane replaces the notifications functionality that was previously available in the Windows 10 Action Center.

Calendar provides a read-only view of the current month with the current day highlighted. You can also use its Focus button–and related focus timer–to start a focus session.

You can learn more about focus sessions in the Do Not Disturb and Focus chapter.

Where did it go?

The Calendar pane in Windows 11 is an unsatisfactory replacement for the Clock/calendar pane that appeared when you selected the time/date in the Taskbar in Windows 10. This calendar is not interactive, and it does not let you add events and meetings as did the Clock/calendar pane in Windows 10. There are no workarounds for these shortcomings, sorry.

You can also display the Notifications and Calendar panes by typing WINKEY + N.

Quick access menu

The Quick access menu in Windows 11 provides links to advanced legacy system tools like Device Manager, Disk Management, and Power Options. This tool existed in Windows 10 and it continues forward with just minor changes.

To display the Quick Access menu, right-click the Start button.

You can also type WINKEY + X to display this menu.

File Explorer

File Explorer is a file management app and it’s been extensively redesigned for Windows 11, with a simpler and prettier new look and feel.

In Windows 11 version 23H2, this crucial system app received updates to its home page, address bar, and Details pane, plus a pretty new Gallery view that displays your photo collection and even deeper OneDrive integration. And while File Explorer has long offered integrated support for ZIP files, it now supports other archive file formats like 7Z and TAR.GZ.

You can learn more about this important application in the File Explorer chapter.

Fans of keyboard shortcuts can type WINKEY + E to open a new File Explorer window.

Multitasking

Windows 11 provides the same basic multitasking features that you are familiar with from previous Windows versions. But each has been visually updated, and there is some useful new functionality as well.

ALT + TAB

ALT + TAB is the original multitasking keyboard shortcut in Windows–as you would expect, it’s triggered by typing ALT + TAB–and it lets you switch between any open apps, windows, and, by default, the five most recently accessed tabs in the Microsoft Edge web browser. ALT + TAB appears as a floating pane centered on-screen, and only while you continue to hold down the ALT key.

You can learn more about ALT + TAB in the ALT + TAB chapter.

Task view

As noted earlier in this chapter, Task view works similarly to ALT + TAB, while adding additional functionality. First, the interface is full-screen and persistent, so you don’t need to hold down the TAB key to keep it on screen. Second, Windows 11 provides a Taskbar icon for Task view by default so you can easily discover it and access this feature via mouse, touchpad, or touch. And Task view also provides access to Desktops, the virtual desktop feature described below.

You can learn more about Task view in the Task View chapter.

Shake

It’s disabled by default, but Windows 11 still includes the fun Shake feature, which lets you “shake” an app or other window by its title bar to minimize all other windows. Then, you can shake it again to restore the previously minimized windows.

You can learn more about Shake in the Shake chapter.

Snap

Windows has long included a feature called Snap that lets you arrange two or more apps or other open windows on-screen so that they can all be seen at the same time. But in Windows 11, Snap has been dramatically improved with two new features, Snap layouts and Snap groups.

Snap layouts provides a visual display of the available layouts by which you can place the current window exactly where you want it and then use the preexisting Snap assist feature to place other windows in the remaining space.

Snap groups lets you recreate a previous Snap layout. Just mouse over one of the apps that was in the group you wish to reuse and then select the group, instead of the app, from the pop-up that appears.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds, but you can learn more about Snap, Snap Layouts, and Snap Groups in the Snap chapter.

Task Manager

Functionally, Task Manager works as before: it provides various system management features, the two most commonly used of which are processes (tasks) and startup apps management. And as before, it provides several views, including Processes (the default), Performance, App history, Startup apps, Users, Details, and Services.

Task Manager receives a significant visual update in Windows 11 that, among other things, supports both Light and Dark modes. And it offers a new features like Process search and Efficiency mode, the latter of which helps you fix app processes that are over-stressing your computer’s CPU.

You can learn more about Task Manager in the Task Manager chapter.

You can also launch Task Manager by typing CTRL + SHIFT + ESC. Or, right-click the Taskbar and choose “Task Manager” from the context menu that appears.

Desktops

Windows 11 includes a virtual desktops feature called Desktops that lets you logically organize your work into different desktops. For example, you may wish to display only those apps needed for a specific project on one desktop and keep your gaming-related windows on another. Desktops isn’t new to Windows 11, but it has new features. For example, you can now name desktops and persist them across reboots.

You can learn more about Desktops in the the Desktops chapter.

Do not disturb and Focus assist

Microsoft has been evolving its approach to interruption-free productivity in Windows for several years, And in Windows 11, we see the latest rendition of this functionality via two related features, Do not disturb and Focus assist.

Do not disturb is a toggle that prevents notifications from interrupting you while you work. You can configure it to disable all notifications or to allow specific important notifications through. When Do not disturb is enabled, notifications are silently sent to the Notifications pane, where they can be reviewed later.

Do not disturb was called Focus assist in Windows 10.

Focus sessions is a new Windows 11 feature that allows you to set up and configure a block of time for deep work. In addition to enabling Do not disturb, which blocks notifications, Focus sessions also disable Taskbar icon interruptions (via badges and flashing) and display a focus timer via the Clock app onscreen. Focus sessions can also optionally integrate with Microsoft To Do (a task management service) and Spotify (for calming background music).

You can learn more about both of these features in the Do Not Disturb and Focus assist chapter.

Windows Backup

Windows 11 version 23H2 includes a new Windows Backup app that provides a centralized front-end to several related but separate features—OneDrive Folder Backup, installed Microsoft Store apps and their settings, system settings, and passwords and other credentials—that Windows has had for years. This app lets you save a backup of these items at any time, and if you buy a new computer or reset your current PC, you can restore these items during Windows 11 Setup.

Like so many Windows 11 features, Windows Backup requires a Microsoft account (or, for business users, a Microsoft Work or School account), and it assumes that you sign into Windows with that account.

You can learn more about Windows Backup–and backup and restore in general–in the Windows Backup chapter.

Tablet experience

Windows 11 offers a more integrated tablet experience than its predecessor, Windows 10m, which provided a discrete tablet mode when you removed the keyboard from a tablet or 2-in-1 PC. But with Windows 11, tablet mode is gone and the PC just automatically optimizes itself for touch when you remove the keyboard. In the default view, the Taskbar minimizes and displays only a handful of notification icons and, in its middle, a drag handle.

But if you swipe up on the drag handle in the middle of the minimized Taskbar, a taller version of the traditional Taskbar appears with larger and more spread-out icons that are more finger-friendly.

Additionally, Windows 11 supports new multi-touch gestures related to accessing key user interfaces like Start, Quick settings, Snap layouts, and Widgets by swiping in from a screen edge.

You can learn how to use those gestures in the Touch, Pen, and Tablet chapter.

Video games

Microsoft is positioning Windows 11 as the future of PC gaming, with built-in support for key foundational gaming technologies like DirectX 12 Ultimate, DirectStorage, and Auto HDR. But gamers will interact more commonly with two key gaming features, the Xbox app and the Game Bar.

The Xbox app lets Xbox users and subscribers interact with their friends, browse and buy Xbox-capable PC games, access, install, and manage game titles from their purchased and subscription-based libraries, and, if available, stream cloud-hosted games via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

You can learn more about the Xbox app in the Xbox App chapter.

When invoked, the Game Bar appears as a set of overlays over the game you’re playing and let you take screenshots, record videos, broadcast live game play footage, interact with your friends, and more.

You can learn more about this feature in the Game Bar chapter.

Microsoft Store

The Microsoft Store has been completely redesigned in Windows 11 with a new look and feel and improved navigation. As before, it offers PC apps and games and a selection of movies and TV shows to buy (and, with movies, to rent). There’s even a shiny new AI Hub that highlights AI-capable apps.

You can learn more about the Microsoft Store in the Microsoft Store chapter.

Microsoft Edge

Like Windows 10, Windows ships with Microsoft Edge as its default web browser. And while the functionality and system integration are basically the same, Microsoft Edge now adopts the Windows 11 design, with softer curved corners, for a more native look and feel.

Microsoft Edge is important enough that we devote several chapters to this web browser. You can get started in the Microsoft Edge Basics chapter.

New and improved apps

Microsoft has updated many of the apps that it includes with Windows to adopt the new Windows 11 design. But it has also introduced new apps and it updated many existing apps with new features.

For example, Windows 11 arrived with new apps like Clipchamp (a surprisingly powerful video editor), Media Player, Microsoft Family, Microsoft Teams – Free, Quick Assist, and others. And in Windows 11 version 23H2, it finally replaced the out-of-date Mail and Calendar apps with a powerful new Outlook app.

Media Player replaced the music-focused Groove Music app from Windows 10 and added video playback and management capabilities.

Windows 11 version 23H2 also brought a variety of new features to familiar apps from the past, many of which are AI-powered. Among them are Notepad, which now automatically saves your session state, Microsoft Paint with new background removal, transparency support, and Cocreator capabilities, Photos with its background blur (shown below) and other AI editing features, Snipping Tool’s text extraction feature, and much more.

We examine these apps and features as needed throughout the book.

Amazon Appstore and Android apps

Windows 11 users can optionally install the Amazon Appstore, which lets them browse for, buy, and manage a growing list of popular Android apps and games. (And more than a little crapware, unfortunately.)

You can learn more about the Amazon Appstore in the Android Apps chapter.

Settings

Like the Microsoft Store and other apps in Windows 11, Settings has been completely redesigned for Windows 11 with a new look and feel and improved navigation. And in Windows 11 version 23H2, it received a new Home view that provides a dashboard-like experience that surfaces commonly-needed user and system settings, plus several other small updates.

You can also launch Settings by typing WINKEY + I.

The Settings app comes up again and again as needed throughout the book.

Accessibility

Windows 11 builds on the already impressive accessibility capabilities of its predecessor. It brings forward existing tools like Closed captions, Magnifier, Narrator, and Windows Speech Recognition, often with many improvements.

But there are other differences. Ease of Access has been renamed to the more obvious Accessibility in Settings. And Windows 11 arrived with two incredible new accessibility features: Live captions and Voice access.
Live captions, shown below, provides captioning in real-time to any audio or video source, including online meetings.

And Voice access builds on the other voice control capabilities in Windows–voice typing and Windows Speech Recognition–and lets you control Windows using just your voice.

In Windows 11 version 23H2, Narrator was updated with more natural voices and new text authoring experiences.

Security

Windows 11 soldiers forward with all of the security features from Windows 10. But it also includes some enhancements.

At a low level, Windows 11-based PCs must support Secure Boot and have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chipset available and enabled, for example, raising the security baseline for the entire ecosystem. And Smart App Control takes the browser-based SmartScreen technologies from the past, improves them with AI-based application trust prediction capabilities, and integrates it directly into the operating system, ensuring that unsafe apps won’t run.

That said, most users will interact with Windows 11’s security features through system features like Windows Hello and via apps like Windows Security (shown below), Windows Defender, and Windows Update. Each of these topics gets its own chapter, of course.

Command-line improvements

Like its predecessor, Windows 11 ships with two command-line shells, the MS-DOS-like Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell. But you can optionally install one or more Linux command-line shells via the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) as well.

Windows 11 also includes a new application called Terminal that lets you access these command-line environments–plus the Azure Cloud Shell–from a single, tab-based interface.

You can learn more about Windows Terminal in the Terminal chapter. Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, and WSL also have separate dedicated chapters for the budding power user.

Developer improvements

Windows 11 version 23H2 offers a new experience for developers called Dev Home that helps install and configure developer tools like Visual Studio Code using the Windows Package Manager (Winget), configure a faster and more secure Dev Drive on your PC for software projects, connect to your GitHub repositories, and access Microsoft cloud-based developer services like Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces.

If all of that reads like gibberish, no worries: This solution is designed for developers, not mainstream Windows users.

Windows 11 also ships with Microsoft’s Power Automate for desktop, a so-called “low-code” automation solution that helps you optimize workflows and automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks visually.

Servicing and updating

In 2015, Microsoft introduced Windows as a service (Waas), a system by which it updated Windows 10 as if it were an online service, with two major version upgrades, called feature updates, every year and one or more quality updates with security and bug fixes and other changes every month. The software giant also worked to ensure that updates would be less risky and more reliable than they had been in the past, and it created more efficient ways that it could update key system components outside of feature updates.

Windows 11 inherits those underlying changes, but it brings some new improvements of its own as well.

In Windows 11, feature updates–again, version upgrades–arrive only once per year, in the second half of each year.

This explains Windows 11’s version-based naming scheme. The first release of this system was called Windows 11 version 21H2 because it was released in the second half (H2) of 2021 (21), while the second release was Windows 11 version 22H2. The current version is Windows 11 version 23H2.

But this doesn’t mean that Microsoft waits for one year before adding new features to Windows. Instead, it uses a variety of technologies to deploy new features as frequently as once every month via a new system it calls continuous innovation. Generally speaking, these monthly quality updates are much smaller than the annual feature updates. But there have been exceptions: Microsoft likes to keep its users on their toes.

Thanks to new packaging efficiencies, quality updates are, on average, about 40 percent smaller than their Windows 10 counterparts.

Most Windows 11 updates are delivered via a service called Windows Update, which is accessible via the Settings app, as shown below. You won’t normally need to access Windows Update directly, as updates will install automatically in time and Windows will prompt you reboot—or do so overnight regardless—automatically.

Some Windows 11 system components are updated through the Microsoft Store. But you don’t need to worry about that, as those updates will install automatically and never require a reboot.

Of course, most of these changes will be invisible to users aside from the occasional reboot. The theory here is that users today are accustomed to frequent small updates thanks to how mobile platforms like Android and the iPhone work.