Features have been added and bugs have been fixed, but things are still missing.When we reviewed Windows 11 nearly two months ago, it was obvious that some areas of the operating system were still under construction. Many of the built-in apps were still in need of updates, and a handful of features that had been promised back at Windows 11's unveiling in June were still either in preview or missing entirely.
Windows 11 now has two months of updates under its belt. Many of those have focused on fixing the OS's early problems, but others have slowly added features to bring it closer to what Microsoft originally announced. We've covered many of those updates as they've been released. But if you're still on the fence about upgrading and you haven't been following closely, we've put together a quick list of bug fixes and features that have come out since Windows 11 was launched, things Microsoft has been testing since early October, and a few things that we still haven't seen.
Available to the publicThe initial release of Windows 11 was build number 22000.194 (you can see this number by running "winver" from the Run box or the Start menu's search bar). As of the November 2021 update, build number 22000.348, the following things have been added, tweaked, or fixed:
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Ryzen performance issues: Both Microsoft and AMD have released software fixes for
problems that affected newer AMD Ryzen processors, particularly those with higher core counts.
Independent testing verifies that the patches mostly bring Windows 11's Ryzen performance inline
with Windows 10's, though there may still be some room for improvement.
•
Many, many other bug fixes: It would take too long to enumerate the full list of bugs that
Microsoft has fixed in the first few Windows 11 updates (though Microsoft has comprehensive lists
here and here), but patches have addressed everything from taskbar rendering problems to
virtualization issues to printing bugs, as well as quite a few crashes. There's always more to fix with
any software as big and complex as Windows, but rolling the operating system out to a wider swath
of the public has given Microsoft plenty of data to use for fixing bugs.
•
Cosmetic stuff: Is it a big deal that newer Windows 11 updates have put the "blue" back in
"blue screen of death" or that they've added Microsoft's bright, bubbly new emoji designs? Not
really. But changing small stuff like this weeks or months after the official public release of a new
operating system really reinforces the perception that Windows 11 was a plane that took off while
it was still being built.
Currently testing
Android apps were a big part of the Windows 11 announcement, but they're still only available as a preview.These apps and features are available to test in some form, usually through the Windows Insider Program's Beta or Dev channels, but they haven't been released to the general public just yet.
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Android apps: The Windows Subsystem for Android will bring Amazon-backed Android apps
to Windows 11 systems, provided they have the right virtualization features enabled and meet an
even more stringent set of hardware requirements than Windows 11 itself. The preview, available to
Windows Insider Beta channel users only officially support a small subset of Android apps, but
people are already hard at work sideloading other apps from Amazon's and Google's stores.
•
A new Media Player: The current Groove Music app is slated to be replaced with a new Media
Player app, simply called "Media Player" instead of "Windows Media Player." The new app will
handle video files in addition to music when it's released, but that may not be for a while—this app
is only available to Dev channel Windows Insiders and not the more-stable Beta or Release Preview
channels. Users of the legacy Windows 7-era Media Player app will still be able to access it even
once the new app is installed, at least for now.
•
A more nimble Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL): Windows 11 still ships with its own
version of WSL, which adds quite a few features compared to the Windows 10 version. But
Windows 11 users can also access a version of it in the Microsoft Store, where the company
promises faster updates that don't require upgrading to a new version of Windows. While currently
a "preview," Microsoft says that it eventually intends for the Store version of WSL to be the primary
version.
•
Microphone status and muting: Like Android apps, this is a feature that Microsoft showed off
in June but didn't end up shipping in the initial version. Whenever you're on a call, a microphone
icon will appear in your taskbar, and you'll be able to see which app is using your microphone and
mute and unmute yourself directly from that icon without needing to use the app itself. This is
currently only available for Microsoft Teams calls in Dev builds of Windows 11, but Microsoft says
that other apps will be able to add support for the feature if they want.
•
A tweaked Your Phone app: A "coming soon" toggle in the Your Phone app shows off a
tweaked UI that we first glimpsed back in September. The update doesn't really change the
functionality of the app, but it adds a nifty persistent column for notifications. Unfortunately, the
app doesn't include many functional upgrades—like some kind of iPhone support or the ability to
open apps or mirror your phone's screen on a wider variety of non-Samsung, non-Microsoft Android
phones.
Still MIA
The people demand to know: Where is MS Paint's dark mode?This category is a bit more nebulous than the others—some of these still-missing features have actually been promised, some have been leaked, and some are simply logical entries on our wishlist for future updates.
• Dark mode for Paint: The rest of the redesign promised in August is here, but there's still no dark
mode. As fans of both dark mode and MS Paint, we demand to know why Microsoft hasn't kept this
important promise.
• Other app updates: The Media Player and Your Phone updates were officially announced within a
few weeks of being leaked, but we still haven't seen the hide nor hair of the alleged Notepad.exe
redesign spotted back in October. Windows 11 has done quite a bit of work to unify Microsoft's
design language across the OS and its built-in apps, but stragglers like WordPad, built-in admin
tools like Device Manager or the Registry Editor, and even the Microsoft Solitaire Collection are all
still stuck with older designs. I don't think every single app needs to get a new design for Windows
11 to succeed, but I would like Microsoft to fully commit to changing its design language rather
than tweaking a few surface-level things and then stopping.
• More taskbar flexibility: I don't mind most of the taskbar and Start menu changes in Windows 11,
partly because I never bothered customizing my taskbar or Start menu much. But there are a few
feature regressions that seem like relatively smart, easy fixes, like allowing the taskbar to be
placed on the left or right sides of the screen or letting you open files by dragging them to the
taskbar app you want to open them with.
• Cutting off updates for unsupported PCs: For all the noise Microsoft made about Windows 11's
system requirements, the downsides to running it on unsupported PCs have been pretty minimal.
Once you get over the installer hurdles, my experience has been that "unsupported" Windows 11
PCs have gotten the same updates at the same time as the "supported" ones. That doesn't mean
that Microsoft will never pull updates from these PCs. But if you have hardware that isn't on the
official support list that you'd like to squeeze another year or two out of, there have been a few
downsides so far.
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