Martin Brinkmann

Five-hundred-and-ninety-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft has reopened the Windows 10 beta channel after nearly three years of inactivity. It has done so to test new features before they land in Windows 10 Stable. No word on those features though.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft will remove several apps in the Windows 11 version 24H2 feature update. The apps, Cortana, Tips, and WordPad, are deprecated and will be removed in the coming feature update.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released the upcoming feature update Windows 11 24H2 to the Release Preview channel. This marks the last step before its final release later this year. Recall, an AI feature that Microsoft unveiled earlier this week, is not yet part of the preview.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft is working on a new Start menu feature called Companions. This adds a sidebar to Start that shows dynamic content such as widgets there.

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Next month, the Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 10 version 21H2 will reach end of servicing. Microsoft stopped supporting the consumer editions in June 2023 already.

Enterprise, Education and IoT editions of Windows 10 version 21H2 reach end of support on June 11, 2024. Only Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 continue to receive support until January 12, 2027.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Unactivated Windows 11 systems could soon prevent users from changing certain Microsoft Edge settings. Edge could show a "PC not activated" notification in Settings to users.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft reduced the size of Windows 10 updates to improve delivery performance. The same technique has been used on Windows 11 since the release of the operating system in 2021.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft will advertise a selection of apps in the Windows 11 Start menu. The change landed in the latest optional update for Windows 11 and will roll out to all users as part of the May 2024 Patch Day.

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Windows 11's Start menu will soon advertise applications in the recommended section.

Microsoft released a new optional preview update for Windows 11 this week that introduces the feature. The changes it includes will roll out to all Windows 11 devices as part of the May 2024 cumulative security update.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety-one in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft claims that it has improved the performance of the Microsoft Store significantly. Product pages, for instance, load 40% faster now than before, according to Microsoft.

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Five-hundred-and-ninety in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

The Moment Update 5 for Windows 11 is finally here for most users. It is included in the April 2024 cumulative security update for the operating system.

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Spotify's new AI Playlist feature adds an AI component to the creation of playlists on the site. All it takes is to feed the AI some text and it does the rest.

Feed it "sing along songs while riding on a pony in Colorado", "songs while waiting for the microwave to go 'ping'", or "songs for boring bus rides in downtown LA", and you should get a list of matching music almost instantly.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Windows 10 customers may extend support by up to three years after the operating system reaches end of support in October 2025. While Microsoft has yet to announce pricing for consumers, it announced that organizations will have to pay $61 in the first year for a regular extension. The price doubles each year, reaching an incredible $427 for the three year period.

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Microsoft is working on a redesign of the All Apps menu of the Windows 11 Start Menu. The current iteration of All Apps was introduced in Windows 10. Users could activate the section to get an alpha-numerical list of all installed applications.

Critics argue that the layout is not practicable. It has a lot of whitespace and only one entry per line. Users who prefer improved layouts may switch to Start Menu alternatives such as Start11 or StartAllBack.

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released the March 2024 optional update for Windows 11 this week. It includes all the changes of the Moment Update 5, which adds more AI to Windows and also changes for European Economic Area users.

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