What I would like to see next for Windows 11

I have a Gaming PC that I have assembled myself, but it's almost a decade old now, with a few upgrades over the years. I recently installed Windows 11 on it, and I am impressed. Officially, my PC is not supported to upgrade to Windows 11 as it doesn’t have the required TPM Module and also has an old processor. These two do not fall in line with Microsoft’s requirements for Windows 11. But as always, there were several hacks to install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC, and I did that. Now I have Windows 11 on my decade-old PC.

I like the changes made to Windows 11. I am pleased that the live tiles in the Start menu are gone and that they have completely revamped how it looks. Furthermore, I also like that the start button and the pinned apps are now in the middle of the taskbar by default. I like how they have redone the notification centre and control centre. I was happy to see the updated file explorer and how all the windows look and feel. Windows 11 feels new, fresh, modern and yet recognisable and comfortable for existing users as well.

But I still feel there are some changes that I want Microsoft to implement to make Windows fully fresh, well-designed and pleasurable to use.

I would like Microsoft to invest more time into moving all settings from the Control Panel to the Settings app. They have already done a lot more in Windows 11 compared to Windows 10, but I would like them to go further than that and complete the transition fully.

I would also want Microsoft to fully update all the old parts of the OS where the UI still looks dated. Many parts of the system still look old. This alone will make Windows feel fully modern.

I also want Microsoft to not install bloatware as part of a fresh installation of Windows 11. Microsoft installs some apps and pins others to the start menu, which, I feel, is annoying. I want Microsoft to stop doing that.

I also want Microsoft to update the Apps section in Settings. Most of the apps in the list are always some system utilities like .NET Framework and others that hijack the list of apps that I have installed. I wish Microsoft had a cleaner way of doing this and did not expose all this complexity to casual users.

One of my biggest gripes while using Windows 11 is the inconsistency in icons. From Windows 8 to 10, Microsoft changed all icons to be square and so many third-party apps followed the same. Now, these icons look extremely out of place on Windows 11. I wish Microsoft works with at least the popular third-party apps and get their icons changed to match the Windows 11 aesthetic.

The Windows 11 Store App has great ideas with its new rules that allow any kind of app to be listed in the store. But the App itself is not very reliable. Downloading Apps is slow, the progress bar is terrible, and updating apps also looks and feels unresponsive. I wish Microsoft invests more time to make the store less janky and make the experience a lot more stable. While at it, I wish Microsoft cleans up its store and removes all the junk and fake apps to improve trust with users.

And finally, I want Microsoft to stop integrating Teams directly into Windows, even for casual users. Instead, I wish Microsoft created a brand-new messaging app and integrated that new app into Windows 11. The Teams app is not suitable for casual users and since Skype is old and so it's time for Microsoft to create a new messaging app to fill the space left by Skype and integrate it deeply into Windows and the rest of the Microsoft Ecosystem.