Windows Central

Last year, Microsoft announced a major update coming to the Taskbar on Windows 11 that would allow users to swap out the Windows Search box for one powered by Copilot. Dubbed "Ask Copilot," this new experience would let users interact with Copilot straight from the Taskbar, while maintaining support for searching for apps and files.Since its announcement, the feature has slowly rolled out in preview to a small subset of users. Most of those users are commercial customers utilizing the Microsoft

I've always been a fan of physical media, be it movies, music, or games. I'm also old enough that I grew up in a time when it's all we had; there was no Spotify or Netflix. Slowly I'm working through it all to create digital copies for both archival purposes and convenience since there are plenty of situations where it's not practical to put a disc in a machine and consume its content. Right now I'm working through a vast stack of CDs acquired from the days when cars had CD players, not just scr

Built as an alternative to the standard File Explorer in Windows 11, Files is an open-source project that always seems to stay one step ahead of Microsoft. Its latest update to Files v4.2.7 is a perfect example, as it focuses on improving the speed and overall responsiveness of the right-click menu before the official context menu upgrade comes to Windows.The optimization trend extends to multitasking in Files, as v4.2.7 also improves its memory cleanup habits when any tabs are closed. Efficient

I've been keeping watch on Crucial (and by extension, Micron) after the company began refusing to honor lifetime RAM warranties. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the same thing is now happening to customers with dead SSDs.Reddit user AssignmentGlass5591 recently created a thread explaining that their Crucial X10 Pro 4TB external SSD decided to die at just 1% of its advertised lifespan. "It didn't wear out. It just broke," they explain.The failure came with critical warnings in Crucial's app that were bad

Microsoft has today announced a set of major improvements coming to the context menus that appear in File Explorer and the desktop on Windows 11 that are designed to make the right-click experience faster, less cluttered, and more customizable.I first revealed Microsoft's plans to overhaul the context-menu system on Windows 11 last month, and now the company has confirmed those plans. In fact, it's already rolling out preview builds with the new context menu system in place, ready for Windows In

Microsoft has announced that it's disabling its unique Drag Tray file sharing experience on Windows 11 after feedback from Insiders. After initially rolling out to a small subset of users a number of months ago, it appears the company is now scrapping the concept in favor of something else. "Based on feedback, we're removing the experience in this build," Microsoft says. "We're continuing to explore improvements in this area and look forward to sharing more about a future replacement experience

When I reviewed the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ a few months back, I noted how it was a generational jump over AMD’s latest Zen 2 chips found in competing handheld gaming PCs, and when combined with Intel XeSS, it really gave gamers the ultimate handheld we’ve been yearning for.But there were two problems. One was price. Due to RAM and NAND shortages due to demand for AI compute, MSI had to jack the price by at least $500, putting it at an MSRP of $1,799, which is kind of absurd. The other was, surprising

Everyone on the internet is angry. I guess that's nothing new, but are things worse than usual?Over the past week, the X (Twitter) algorithm has been serving me more negativity than usual. When your feeds are algorithmic, you have to stay cognizant of the fact that the platform has basically engineered what you see. Platforms like X, Instagram, etc. have billions of posts covering thousands upon thousands of topics. What you engage with is ultimately what you end up seeing. For me, that's obviou

GitHub is down for thousands of users, potentially costing millions of dollars in lost productivity. Outages started around 9:40 AM ET and affect API requests, pull requests, and webhooks.The issues also affect Copilot. A massive number of developers and companies rely on GitHub and Copilot to get work done, so even a few hours of serious issues can be costly.The official GitHub status page states:"We are experiencing high error rates around 20% for web experiences and api traffic. Archive downl

When I saw the first Mortal Shell 2 trailer, I didn’t think this was a sequel in any way, shape, or form, at least, not until the title screen cropped up. One person on my team said, “Dude, I can’t wait,” which had me super confused. You see, I didn’t really like the original Mortal Shell. Cool concept, but I was very “meh” on it. So why make a sequel? The first game wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire. It felt clunky and awkward and honestly suffered from a case of the mid. I’ve heard plen

I haven't seen a sane GPU price in what feels like almost a year, and the landscape isn't getting any better for gamers.The NVIDIA RTX 5090, which arrived at a $1,999 MSRP in 2025, is now listed at Newegg starting at $4,799.99. The MSI Ventus 3X OC is indeed the lowest price I could find, and there are other options that push well beyond $5,000.Bad luck if you're shopping for a new RTX 5090 alone. The high-end of NVIDIA's consumer GPU stack has become inaccessible for the average gamer, and ther

A former Microsoft engineer is working on a way to make Live Tiles relevant in 2026. Jeff Fritz, who worked at Microsoft until last month, has been showcasing an app called DayFrame on several of his recent live streams.DayFrame is what happens when Windows Phone and Outlook have a baby. The app features a persistent hub with shortcuts to your email, calendar, contacts, and other tools. The layout is inspired by Windows Phone and would look natural on a Lumia smartphone.Fans of retro Windows des

I'm a big fan of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) not least because I like Linux, and it means I can run it from the same PC as Windows 11 without the need for virtual machines or dual-booting. It's been around for quite a while now and is a pretty powerful tool for developers, especially, and it's come to light that for Canonical, at least, WSL might soon be the biggest source of users of Ubuntu. It comes to light from comments made by Canonical's VP of Engineering, Jon Seagar, actually ba

I was at Computex this year when NVIDIA's RTX Spark System-on-Chip (SoC) was revealed to the world, and from the start, I had a hunch that it would be a big deal.A powerful chip for Windows on ARM that can run every Windows app ever made? That was one of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's first promises.With Microsoft as its launch partner, the Surface Laptop Ultra was one of the first RTX Spark laptops announced, but ASUS was right up there with its ProArt P16 and ProArt P14, two laptops I got to see fi

Less than one year after being launched in preview and before leaving testing, the COPILOT function in Excel is going away. The function never shipped to general availability, but it could be used by Frontier and Insider users since August 2025.The COPILOT function allowed users to use natural language to place prompts into spreadsheets. For example, you could use it to summarize text or categorize feedback. The function could also look up information from the web.While useful, the function had

Monitors generally last so long that I often forget how significant an upgrade can be, but seeing some of the 4K displays and OLED panels in our recent reviews always proves they're among the best investments you can make. After all, you're looking at your PC monitor most of the time, so it's worth it.• Back to school deals up to $900 off PCs and more at DellSure enough, Dell is offering generous discounts on some of the best monitors we've tested, including a gaming variant in its Alienware sub

Microsoft is finally paying more attention to some of the oldest parts of Windows 11, and I hope it doesn't stop with the obvious ones.For years, the operating system has had a strange split personality. Some parts of the system look and feel as if they were designed specifically for Windows 11, while others still feel like they were carried over from much older versions. But that's slowly starting to change.Microsoft has been modernizing parts of Windows 11 for years, gradually updating interfa

Keyboard switches used to be a fairly niche topic. Enthusiasts knew what they wanted and sought it out, while more casual gamers and typists just went with what seemed best. I'm talking about the feel, the sound, and the speed — not to forget pricing, durability, hot-swap support, and layout, especially when getting into gaming keyboards.But the days of switches being an enthusiast's niche are over. Hall Effect and optical switches are enjoying a mainstream push, especially in gaming hardware, a

Windows 11 has a major update on the way, and that update promises to address some of the loudest complaints about the operating system. August is traditionally a slow month for Windows news, but thanks to some previews of what’s on the way next month, we have a lot to talk about.Microsoft’s refreshed taskbar, customizable Start menu, and other improvements are all in the final stages of testing. Microsoft confirmed that a major Windows update is on the way very soon. But my question is, should

Last month, I revealed that Microsoft was hard at work on a redesigned context menu system for Windows 11 that's designed to make them faster and more customizable. Now, we've got our first look at the new context menu customization features, discovered hidden in the latest Windows 11 preview builds, and I've been trying them out! Soon, you'll see a new customize menu option appear at the bottom of the context menu. When selected, you'll be taken into the Windows Settings app where you'll see a