Windows 11’s Taskbar is Getting a New Option to Force Quit Apps

At its Build developer conference this week, Microsoft announced that it’s adding a new option to force quit apps on the Windows 11 taskbar. This new feature will allow Windows 11 users to easily kill an unresponsive app without having to open Task Manager.

The company demoed the new feature during its Windows 11 keynote yesterday (via The Verge). Users will be able to force quit an app by doing a right-click on its icon on the taskbar and then clicking on “Force quit” in the flyout menu.

Microsoft announced other upcoming Windows 11 features this week, including native support for rar, 7-zip, gz, and other archive formats. The company will be leveraging the libarchive open-source project to deliver this new archive functionality on Windows 11.

Lastly, the company will also add the option to disable the Microsoft News feed in the Windows 11 widgets board later this year (via Windows Central). As the company is now pushing app developers to create widgets for their Microsoft Store apps, having a selection of usually low-quality articles in the Widgets Board can actually be quite distracting.

If Microsoft’s Build conference is still ongoing, the biggest news regarding Windows 11 have already been announced. Windows Copilot, the new AI assistant that will soon be built into the OS will be available for Windows Insiders starting May 11, Microsoft announced yesterday. The Windows 11 Insider Build 23466 was also released on the Canary Channel yesterday, and it brings a new Dev Drive feature for developers and a Windows Backup app that will simplify restoring user settings on a new Windows 11 PC.