4 Windows 11 features that make me regret upgrading

Windows 11 has a lot of great aspects that make it the go-to desktop operating system for many users. But there are times I wish I hadn’t upgraded my PC due to certain features and quirks. While I’ve taken steps to make Windows 11 less annoying, it feels like I’m constantly playing whack-a-mole with nuisances and changes.

Since Windows 10 is losing support soon unless you’re willing to pay extra, I’ve mostly made my peace with the upgrade. But these Windows 11 features sometimes make me wish I could go back to Windows 10.

4

The overemphasis on Copilot

Not everyone wants to use generative AI

With generative AI being the shiny new toy that many companies have heavily invested in, we’re surrounded by prompts to use AI assistants on various services. This is no different with Copilot, which seems to become more and more integrated with each update.

Now, to be fair, Windows 10 does have Copilot prompts on occasion. When I updated my Windows 10 laptop, I also had the unwelcome addition of Microsoft 365 Copilot. But I was easily able to remove this and the pinned app.

You’re also able to remove Copilot as an app on Windows 11, as well as uninstall Microsoft 365 Copilot. But I haven’t been able to remove it from my search bar, where there’s a Copilot button built in and prompts to ask Copilot things about various topics. For example, as I’m writing this, Microsoft would like me to quiz the AI assistant about Pluto.

There are many reasons why Copilot puts people off of Windows 11. I personally don’t want to share my data and queries with it, plus I don’t want my work to be used to train it further. So it would be great if Microsoft would stop trying to get me to interact with it.

Windows 10’s Start Menu is far from perfect, but I’ve always found it more intuitive than the redesigned Start Menu on Windows 11. Both have unnecessary elements — Windows 10 includes a Play and explore section that just pushes games and Microsoft services I’m not interested in. But the primary view is still a list of my most used apps and apps in alphabetical order.

On Windows 11, the Start Menu most prominently features a set of default Pinned apps. None of these apps are actually based on what I use the most, but are rather a series of Microsoft services and games. It even shows me LinkedIn and Clipchamp even though I have never opened either app. Instead of a list of my most used apps, it includes the ones most recently installed and a series of recent files. I’d much rather have a list of my apps that I can scroll through.

It feels like overall the Start Menu on Windows 11 has become a lot less useful and much less user-oriented. If you want it to work for you, you’ll need to customize the various items or settle for the Microsoft-focused apps and services by default.

It’s easier to just disable it to avoid distractions

For a long time, the taskbar widget actually escaped my notice. But one day I spotted the day’s temperature and weather. What made me really notice it is that it showed the temperature in Fahrenheit, which I’d argue is only useful to those living in the US. It’s when I decided to try to change the temperature setting that I realized there was an entire, unwieldy mix of tools — most of which were irrelevant to me. I changed the temperature to Celsius, then tried to ignore the rest of the widget. But as if encouraged by my one-time interaction, the widget started switching to sports scores and financial information.

Now, I would give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and say that it maybe didn’t have enough data about my interests to show a useful set of information. But even without signing into the widget, it was linked to my Microsoft account. It even has my location based on my IP address. So even with the data already linked to me, the widget was just not useful. It showed me a general mix of news on topics and sources I don’t follow. It also showed me earnings reports for companies I’ve never heard of.

Luckily, you can customize the widgets and remove the ones that aren’t useful. But it feels like there’s a trend with Windows 11, like with the Start Menu, where you have to dedicate time to reorganizing a feature that is not useful by default. If you don’t invest this time, you’re stuck with distracting text popping up on your taskbar every few minutes.

I managed to customize it somewhat, removing useless widgets and switching off notifications. But I couldn’t remove the MSN feed of news and videos that were the most annoying part of the experience. In the end, I just ended up disabling the entire widget in my taskbar settings.

1

The constant upselling of Microsoft services

No, I don’t want to buy more OneDrive storage

Lately, when I use Windows 11, it feels like the OS is constantly trying to sell me something. I think that a major factor in this is that while I was able to set up Windows 10 using a local account, Windows 11 is linked to my Microsoft account. The upselling started off relatively innocuous, like notifications that I should enable OneDrive. But once I enabled OneDrive, the notifications switched to telling me to upgrade my storage (even though I have barely anything synced to OneDrive).

I recently also tried Microsoft 365 (now known as Microsoft 365 Copilot), mostly to check if a more recent version of Microsoft Word would help me with a file that was not working with Microsoft Word 2013. When my trial was over, I found that Windows would always open the new version of Word and prompt me to subscribe to 365. I almost thought that my 2013 version of the Office suite had been uninstalled because it was no longer listed among the available apps to open documents with.

I was able to restore the functionality of Office 2013, otherwise I would have switched to a free Microsoft Office alternative. But it feels like only a matter of time before Windows 11 tries to sell me something else.

Windows 11 makes me feel like I’m fighting with the OS

Over the years, I’ve usually been unfazed by changes between Microsoft’s Windows versions, but increasingly it feels like I have to fight with my OS to get it to provide me with useful, basic features. I don’t want to have to disable a bunch of features just to stop getting pinged by annoying notifications and recommendations. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to be leaning into these annoying features with Windows 11, and every time I update it I have to worry about what annoying functionality or rebrand the company might introduce next.