R.I.P. … Chat? (Premium)

Windows enthusiasts have spent the better part of two years complaining about the many functional regressions in Windows 11. But there are things to like about it too, including most obviously the prettier, more modern user interface. Oddly, those two extremes are often linked. That is, those functional regressions were literally caused by Microsoft moving to a simpler new user interface. It’s a paradox.

But the simpler new UI isn’t the only example of this uniquely Microsoft problem. In writing and updating the Windows 11 Field Guide over the past several months, I’ve come across similar issues throughout the system. And one of them was problematic enough that I did what I so often do and procrastinated by not writing about it.

That feature is Chat, which is a Taskbar-based front-end for the consumer version of Microsoft Teams that Microsoft also bundles with Windows 11. Like the new UI, Chat is also a paradox. And Chat is now going away, as we noted in passing in our post about a new Windows 11 Insider Preview build for the Dev channel. Chances are you think that that’s all the attention this silly little app deserves. But let’s pause for a moment to reconsider. While there’s still time.

Chat fits into a small bucket of Windows features that evolved from similar Windows 10 features that were renamed or otherwise changed. Widgets is another example: Widgets in Windows 11 is an evolution of a Windows 10 feature called News and Interests, and in the new system it is more prominent and finally starting to expand past the feature set offered by its predecessor. Chat in Windows 11, likewise, is an evolution of a Windows 10 feature called Meet Now. As with Widgets, it is more prominent than its predecessor—it’s a Taskbar item that’s pinned and available by default instead of a tiny system tray icon—and it has evolved to be more functional than its predecessor over time as well.

Chat is also a lot more nuanced than Widgets. A lot more.

Meet Now was a well-intentioned pandemic-era attempt by Microsoft to put Skype’s free video calling functionality front and center on the PCs we were suddenly using all day long so we could work from home. But it arrived about six months too late—early 2021 instead of mid-2020—and Microsoft by that time was already dropping Skype like a bad habit so it could focus on Microsoft Teams. I won’t claim that any of that contributed to the rise of Zoom during the pandemic, but it didn’t help.

Anyway, when Windows 11 was first announced in mid-2021, Chat was one of its marquee new features. Like Meet Now, it would let users engage in free video calls right from the Windows Taskbar, plus text chats and audio calls, of course. But this time it would not be powered by Skype. No, Chat would be powered by Teams.

Well, not really: Chat is powered by a special consumer version of Teams that is not the same thing as the Teams everyone uses for work. It has exactly the same name, which is beyond confusing, and each has similar icons and user interfaces, which is likewise confusing. So that was a problem, and it still is. (Adding to the confusion, the mobile versions of Teams support both consumer and work profiles that you can switch between in a single app instead of requiring you to use two different apps as you do on the desktop.)

But Teams consumer, as I’ll call it, has an even bigger problem on the desktop, if you can believe that. Teams consumer is meant to replace Skype, which makes sense on some level. But it does not actually replace Skype. That is, the two don’t interoperate. If you upgrade to Windows 11 and launch Chat or Teams consumer, you cannot just connect with others using Skype on Windows 10, Mac, mobile, or web. Why Microsoft would even release a consumer Teams client without Skype interoperability is unclear. How this situation remains unchanged almost two years later is criminally stupid and unforgivable.

Given all this, Teams consumer—and its Taskbar-based front-end, Chat—sounds like a real non-starter. And while most Windows 11 users probably don’t understand the issues I explain above, I strongly suspect that most either completely ignore Chat or remove it from the Taskbar. And that’s where the real paradox lies. Because for all of its faults, Chat—like the Teams consumer client behind it—is actually pretty fricking excellent.

When you click on Chat on the Taskbar, a window appears showing you via your webcam, and it has big and obvious Meet now, Start call, and Chat buttons so you can jump right into a call with virtually anyone. If you search for someone who is not using Teams (consumer), you can send them a link (via text messaging) instead and they can join the call from the mobile client on their phone, or the web. Yes, this is how Meet Now worked in Windows 10, too. But the UI in Windows 11, with the webcam preview, is nicer, and its placement in the center of the Taskbar is more prominent.

Some actions in Chat will open the full Teams consumer app, of course, like meetings and chats. But you can just make calls from the Taskbar, and come on, that’s pretty cool. Or it would be, if anyone used it.

Part of the problem is that there’s a tiered experience here. Worst case scenario, the person you’re contacting doesn’t use Teams at all and so they must use a mobile web browser. But it does work, and if they have the Teams mobile client, it’s a very good experience. And if they have Teams consumer running on their Windows 11 PC, you both get the full experience. But again, no one does that.

And so in some coming update to or new version of Windows 11, Chat is going away. What Microsoft is going to do instead is pin the icon for Teams consumer to the Taskbar. You will still be able to unpin it—if anything, this should be easier—and I suspect many will do just that. But there is an inherent loss here. Chat, that Taskbar-based front-end, worked well whether you or anyone else ever intended to use Teams consumer. The Teams consumer app, by itself, is just Teams consumer, a more complex full app experience that, unfortunately, looks a little too much like full Teams. (Real Teams, one might say.)

Yes, there’s still a Meet Now button you can use. But it’s a tiny icon in a big app window. There’s no webcam preview, no obvious way to enter a phone number and send someone a link that will always work. Instead, you can share the link via email. So it’s not as seamless. Not as nice. It’s … less good. It’s just less.

And so it may seem odd to you that I am mourning its loss, given my many complaints about Windows 11. And to be fair, I’ve never used Chat, even once, other than to test it. I would have eventually used it a bit to document it for the book. But I guess now I don’t need to. Curiously, I’m not all that happy about it.

Chat doesn’t rate highly in the long list of once-great Microsoft products and services that are now gone but not forgotten. It’s no Windows Phone, no Zune, no Windows Media Center. But I feel bad about Chat regardless, because Chat was a good idea. It was just implemented badly—meaning no Skype integration—and ignored almost completely. In other words, Chat will be both gone and forgotten. After all, it barely registered with the user base when it was here.

It’s too bad.