If you have just upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11, or bought a new PC with Windows 11 as the operating system, you may find that you are suddenly faced with all kinds of distracting stuff and things are not where they used to be. You are not alone: “Microsoft seems dead set on stuffing Windows 11 full of “features” that steal your attention or try to convince or trick you into using some Microsoft product instead of the thing you were going to use.” Why is Windows 11 so annoying? https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/21/24063379/windows-11-ads-bing-edge-cruft
On Thursday 6 June, we looked at some of these annoyances and found ways to disable or modify them. This is mostly done through “Settings” (the cog wheel icon on the main menu). This article describes 7 annoying Windows 11 features you should turn off right now which include: Pop-up banner notifications, Start menu notifications and recommendations, targeted Microsoft ads, News Feed widgets, optional diagnostic data and feedback, unnecessary start-up apps, and Search highlights from Bing. In another article, the same author describes turning off Co-Pilot How to turn off Copilot in Windows 11 — keep it AI free Another thing to disable in settings is the Game Bar (if you don’t use an XBox)
The first thing that most ex-Windows 10 users do is to align the taskbar to the left – it’s in the centre in Windows 11. Here are some simple instructions. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000192071/how-to-change-the-windows-11-taskbar-alignment
If you don’t like Edge, install another browser. Edge, which is Windows 11 browser of choice, is full of newsfeeds and gunk. Find your favourite browser – for most folk it’s Chrome – and install it. https://www.google.com/chrome/ Then you should make your new browser the “Default” – i.e. the one which is used automatically when you use the Internet. https://www.lifewire.com/change-default-browser-windows-11-6823503 ..and avoid using Edge at all.
Tidy up the Start menu by getting rid of shortcuts to apps you don’t use (right-click / delete). There’s an “All Apps” option so you can add other shortcuts to the menu if you like.
One big annoyance is that if you want to use a different media player – for example VLC for all your media (audio, video etc) you cannot change the default with one simple click – you have to change the default player for each specific media file type one by one and there are loads of them….(..sigh)
Chris Betterton-Jones – Knowledge junkie.