Microsoft has launched new Windows 11 preview builds today which come with a very interesting change designed to make the OS lighter and less noisy. As of today’s preview, the Widget Panel will hide the MSN feed by default, giving priority to the dedicated and customizable widget interface.
“We’re working to make widgets less distracting and overwhelming by making the experience silent by default.” says Microsoft in a blog post published today.
Microsoft is also changing some of the default behaviors in the Widget Panel. The panel will no longer open automatically when you hover over the weather icon in the taskbar, and the icon itself will only show the weather unless you specify that you want to show other information, such as actions.
These are the changes that are being made:
- Disable Open on hover by default
- Disable taskbar credentials by default
- Widget opening experience on first launch
- Limit taskbar alerts until you choose to open and interact with the widget experience.
This change is part of Microsoft’s larger plan. k2 windows effort, which is a project that was put together in the second half of last year and that addresses the biggest problems with Windows 11. User feedback is being addressed and the company has confirmed that it is taking steps to reduce ads, AIand bloat the entire operating system as part of this initiative.
Making the MSN feed no longer appear by default will go a long way toward reducing the number of ads that appear on the operating system out of the box. Users will now have to manually set the MSN feed to be the default view if they want to see ads or stories in the Widget Panel.
Join us at Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your ideas and discuss our latest news, reviews and more.
