Microsoft Will Soon Bring A New Start Menu And AI Agents With Windows 11 Update
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Windows 11 start menu is getting a design overhaul and Microsoft is bringing AI agents to more products for users.
Microsoft is bringing a major update for Windows 11, which finally gives us the new, redesigned Start Menu, along with AI agents, Phone Link integration, and several new AI features. As you might expect, some of these functionalities will be exclusive to the Copilot+ PC users that includes the latest models launched in the last 6 to 10 months in the market.
According to reports, the company has yet to announce the official rollout date for the update. The new version is currently being tested by Windows Insiders on Snapdragon X Copilot Plus PCs, which includes the new Surface tablets from Microsoft.
A New Start
The redesigned Start menu, first unveiled last month in an early preview release, is noticeably larger than previous versions. It offers quicker, scrollable access to the 'All Apps" view, now organised by categories for easier navigation. Additionally, the menu introduces three distinct views for the all-apps list, now positioned at the bottom of the main Start menu page for enhanced accessibility.
The three views include a standard list view, a new grid list view, and a category view, which automatically organises installed apps into 'folders" similar to the App Shelf found on iOS and iPadOS.
The new Windows 11 update will also have a new phone companion panel, giving quick access to recent contacts, messages, calls, battery level and more on both iPhone or Android phone linked to the PC.
In its blog post, Microsoft states that the AI features are intended to 'make our experiences more intuitive, more accessible and ultimately more useful."
Users will soon be able to rely on an on-device AI assistant to adjust Windows settings or troubleshoot common issues, like resizing a mouse cursor. In File Explorer, right-clicking on a file will now reveal new 'Click to Do"-style shortcuts, including options to edit photos or generate text summaries before opening the file.
The Photos app is set to get a new Relight feature, which allows users to add up to three positional light sources to an image. Meanwhile, the Paint app will introduce a content-aware selection tool for drag-and-drop editing, erasing, and generative fill, along with the ability to create digital stickers from text prompts.
The Snipping Tool is also getting major upgrades. New features include Perfect Screenshot, which automatically crops to the most important content, text extraction from images and screenshots, and an eyedropper tool to sample on-screen colours.
These updates will first roll out to Windows on ARM devices that are powered by the Snapdragon X processors, while the Intel and AMD version will get them later this year.
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