Energized ⭐

In a “paint points” status update, Windows lead Pavan Davuluri said he was “energized” by the improvements to Windows 11. I know how he feels: As a decades-long Windows watcher and documenter, I’ve felt beaten down by the enshittification in Windows 11 in recent years, and it’s nice to see Microsoft give this capable platform the love it needs. But as I pointed out at the start of this effort, there’s still a big gap between what’s being done and what needs to be done. And for all the interaction with the community we’ve seen this year, Davuluri and his team still aren’t being as transparent as I’d like.

This isn’t going to devolve into a screed of any kind: A step forward is a step forward, and while we can debate intent or motivation, if the result is a win for those who use Windows, no one will cheer louder than me. And this is a win. The Windows team has methodically moved to implement the changes Davuluri promised back in March, and some of those changes have already made their way into stable. Some but not all, and not the biggest and most important changes. Which is where my comments about transparency come in.

Last night, after Microsoft released five new pre-release Windows 11 builds through the Windows Insider Program, Davuluri published an end of the month wrap-up post to provide a status update about the work his team’s been doing this year. There’s nothing particularly notable about it, but re-reading it again this morning, I’m struck by the same feeling of déjà vu I get each week on Windows Weekly when I recap whatever builds the Windows Insider Program (WIP), or in stable, the Windows team released since the last show. Which is to say, these past few months have seen a reasonably predictable progression of new features and fixes through WIP and then into the preview and general releases in stable.

Compare and contrast this predictability with the situation last year and beyond when new features would appear randomly in some WIP channel or even in stable and not work their way logically through the system. That is, in an ideal world of 2025, a new feature would appear first in Canary, then hit Dev, Beta, and Release Preview in turn, receiving whatever testing and feedback at each stage before landing in a Week D preview update and then being made available to everyone in stable on the next Patch Tuesday. That wasn’t rare last year and beyond, it never happened.

2026 has been different. Not perfect, mind you, there are still a few exceptions, and Experimental (Future Platforms), which we can view as the new Canary, is still often the last channel to get new features, not the first. But better. Much better.

Objectively, WIP is more predictable than it’s been in many years. But that doesn’t mean it’s predictable full stop. And it’s still not clear when most of the many new features Davuluri’s Windows team is working on through WIP will actually land in stable. And that is very much like the old WIP, the old Windows team.

To be fair, there are some factors that render this concern are bit less important. Key among them is that new features are no longer tied to specific Windows 11 versions, so waiting on the release of the next of those versions, Windows 11 version 26H2, doesn’t appear to be a factor: Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 26H1 will get all the changes Microsoft is testing right now, no matter what. And this is Windows, not some standalone app. It’s a massive codebase of interlinking functionality and technologies, and you can’t just compile new code and ship it out into the world. These things really do need to be tested, and ideally tested well, first.

But none of that explains the lack of communication related to the schedule. To my knowledge, the WIP team has never once attached a release date to any feature it’s testing, and it’s still not clear when features like the new Start menu, the new Taskbar, and others will land in stable.

I will use the new Taskbar as an example because this was part of yesterday’s fleet of new builds.

• On February 12, we discovered that Microsoft was going to improve the Taskbar dramatically.
• On March 20, Microsoft revealed that it would finally improve the Taskbar in Windows 11 so that it could be used on any side of the screen, a feature available in all previous Windows versions dating back to the initial implementation of this user interface in Windows 11.
• On May 16, Microsoft released a WIP build to the Experimental channel that included the new Taskbar.
• I wrote a hands-on article about the new Taskbar on June 2.
• On June 17, I updated the Taskbar chapter in the Windows 11 Field Guide.
• Yesterday, July 31, the new Taskbar made its way into the Beta channel.

Excluding my work in there and ignoring months of work happening internally in the past, there was a two-month gap between the announcement and the first public release. Then there were some minor changes to how the settings interface works, but the gap between that first release and the next, in Experimental, was over two months. It’s reasonable to expect the timeframes to go down as this feature moves into Release Preview and then Week D and stable, but … will it? If it is two months, then the new Taskbar will hit Release Preview in September. Which, when you think about it, makes sense in terms of the annual Windows 11 version release that shouldn’t matter anymore: It could then hit Week D in September and then stable in October, right on schedule.

So, yes, it makes sense. But Microsoft has never said a thing about the schedule for this or any of the other “pain points” updates. And it’s unclear why. There’s no need to be secretive. Or vague. And yet, that’s what we get here. In his post last night, Davuluri pointed out that Microsoft began “previewing changes to [the] Taskbar” in May, and that was that. He announced the feature. Microsoft is previewing the feature. It’s over four months later, and that’s all we know.

I get it. This is not a big deal. But if you go back to my Trust But Verify ⭐️ post from March, the same issues remain.

• For all the positive work going into Windows 11 this year, Davuluri, the Windows team, and Microsoft have never said a thing about giving us a way to completely turn off telemetry tracking and we’ve since learned about a secret new way that Windows has been tracking all PCs for years.
• Windows still ships with bundled crapware and Microsoft will never prevent PC makers, given their low margins, from shipping their own crapware in Windows.
• We can pause updates indefinitely, sort of, but you have to babysit it to do so, and given all the AI-related issues these days, we will have to reboot PCs for important security updates anyway.
• Windows 11 still forces you to sign in with a Microsoft consumer or commercial online account.
• Windows 11 still forces you to use Microsoft Edge even when you configure another default browser, and Edge still harasses you to make configuration changes whether you use it or not.
• Despite the component shortage and the somewhat arbitrary nature of some Windows 11 hardware requirements, Microsoft has never adjusted its policies. (To be fair, it did extend the Windows 10 extended security update program by one year for consumers, but in keeping with my point here, it never even communicated the change.)
• OneDrive will still silently enable Folder backup unless you know how and when to stop that.

I’ve probably said this before, but this isn’t two steps, one step backwards, it’s two steps forward, one step to the side. We’re getting many positive changes, some major. But when I review the enshittification in Windows 11 objectively, Microsoft is in fact doing very little to solve the real problems.

And while I used the Taskbar as an example only because it did limp forward in WIP yesterday, this is an excellent example on another level: Very few people will ever use the Taskbar on a different side of the screen, which is why Microsoft killed that feature in the first place. So this is like a magician waving its hands to distract you from the real problem. The new Taskbar is basically busy work aimed at distracting us. The Windows team is listening, and they absolutely have the best of intentions. I love that. But the Windows team is also not fixing the biggest problems with Windows 11.

Still. I love what’s happening with Windows 11, and in a slippery slope sense, this new focus on quality and fundamentals could push further change that will finally address what I see as the biggest problems with Windows 11, the objectively enshittified behaviors. What’s happening this year is positive enough that I believe it could happen. I have hope, and that’s something I wouldn’t have said about Windows 11 a year or two ago.