Microsoft Details Deprecated Features in Windows 11 Version 23H2

As it does for each feature update, Microsoft has documented the features it’s deprecated in Windows 11 version 23H2. If often documents features it’s removed as well, but that page has not been updated (yet?).

“Each version of Windows client adds new features and functionality,” the Deprecated features for Windows client page on Microsoft Learn notes. “Occasionally, new versions also remove features and functionality, often because they’ve added a newer option.”

Deprecated features are features that meet two criteria: Microsoft is no longer updating the feature, and that feature is earmarked for removal in a future version of Windows. I was curious to see whether the Windows Maps and Movies & TV app would be on this list, given the recent news (though it’s not clear if Microsoft would document app changes like that here). But they’re not. Instead, only three low-level features have been deprecated.

They are:

Computer Browser. This antiquated service and its associated driver date back to Windows NT and have been included in subsequent Windows versions for backward compatibility reasons. They were disabled by default in Windows 10 when Microsoft removed support for the SMB1 protocol (and it was belatedly removed from Windows 11 as well).

Webclient (WebDAV) Service. WebDAV was a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol used on the web that allowed users to mount folders on remote Windows PCs and servers on their PC as mapped network drives. It dates back to Windows Vista, is no longer started by default, and has been superseded by more modern ways of sharing files between PCs on a network.

Remote Mailslots. This one I’d not heard of, but Microsoft says it is a “dated, simple, unreliable, and insecure IPC [interprocess communications]” protocol that was first introduced in MS-DOS (!). It was first disabled by default in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25314 (part of the Canary channel) back in March. (And that linked post claims it first appeared in Windows NT, so Microsoft’s communications clarity hasn’t changed.)

Not much to see here, I guess.