The XR glasses are now able to do this via a tech Xreal calls Real 3D. It first debuted on the Xreal 1S glasses and has since landed on Xreal’s One and One Pro specs, too, thanks to an update.

Once switched on, the glasses will create depth in previously flat videos and games. Best of all, it works on any app and with any system, as it’s not handled by your phone, laptop, or console – Xreal’s specs handle all the 3D processing for you.

Starting with my phone before I even booted up any apps, I could see Real 3D in effect, as it turned my phone background – a picture I took of my fiancée in Pompeii – had a stereoscopic effect, as did my app icons, which were now floating above the page.

Actually moving into video, I tried both some animated projects – Eyes of Wakanda and Phineas and Ferb – as well as some live-action stuff – Rogue One and a YouTuber streamer’s latest VoD.

2D Animation is where the tech really shines. The better-defined edges of objects seemingly help the software distinguish items from one another better, whereas Rogue One occasionally had distortion around the edges of objects, and some layers blended incorrectly.

Eyes of Wakanda, with its more complex 3D animated style, slanted in between. Mostly great, but sometimes there would be noticeable errors in the glasses’ rendering. Regardless, I generally found Real 3D to be impressive, and I’ll definitely try to use it.

You can tweak the strength of the stereoscopic effect in the glasses’ settings. You can reduce the errors at the cost of 3D effect strength, or make the effect much stronger at the risk of it having a bit more trouble in more complex scenes.

With my video tests done, I switched over to my Asus ROG Xbox Ally X to boot up Sekiro and The Binding of Isaac. Much like with the shows, Isaac’s simpler 2D style was easier to get a great 3D effect from, whereas Sekiro could struggle at times.

Sekiro’s troubles were also impacted by some noticeable performance dips – such as a lower framerate and a subtle lag – that did make executing its more precise gameplay a little more challenging.

Exactly what XR needs

All this is to say that Real 3D is a very impressive tool, if still a work in progress, as my colleague Lance Ulanoff found it to be when trying the Xreal 1S specs. Despite its occasional slip-ups, I still loved using it, and I’m excited to see how Xreal evolves this tech over time.

I remember chatting with its team at an event a couple of years ago, where we bemoaned the lack of accessible 3D content for XR hardware. At the time, outside of Disney Plus on the Apple Vision Pro, you couldn’t simply buy or rent a 3D flick.

As another attendee in our conversation noted, the quiet part is that if you want 3D content for your glasses, you’d need to sail the seven seas.

This is obviously not ideal, especially for a medium like XR, which is well-positioned to leverage stereoscopic content. So I am so excited that Xreal has taken such an initiative with Real 3D and decided to forcibly drag 3D content to its platform while content makers drag their heels.

It’s definitely another arrow in the Xreal glasses’ already full quiver, and over time I'm sure Real 3D will only get better. The ball’s also now in the court of its rivals. Viture has something similar to Real 3D but it requires an on-device app, while many other glasses have no equivalent.

How to experience Real 3D

If you want to try Real 3D for yourself, you’ll need a pair of Xreal One, Xreal One Pro, or Xreal 1S glasses.

They’ll also need to be running the latest firmware. The easiest way to fix this is to head to Xreal’s Update Page on your PC, connect your glasses to your PC using their USB-C cable, and follow the onscreen prompts to install the update.

Once installed, connect your glasses to a compatible device and open up the glasses’ settings menu by double-tapping the red button on your frames. In the display settings, select Real 3D, and have fun with the new tool.

By returning to the settings, you can turn Real 3D off, but you can also turn it off by unplugging your glasses and reconnecting them to your device. Additionally, you can adjust the strength of the 3D effects.

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Windows 11 has another serious bug hidden in the January update, and this is a showstopper that means affected PCs fail to boot up.

Neowin reports that Microsoft has acknowledged the bug with a message as flagged up via the Ask Woody forums: "Microsoft has received a limited number of reports of an issue in which devices are failing to boot with stop code 'UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME', after installing the January 2026 Windows security update, released January 13, 2026, and later updates.

"Affected devices show a black screen with the message 'Your device ran into a problem and needs a restart. You can restart.' At this stage, the device cannot complete startup and requires manual recovery steps."

So, the good news is that we're told there's a limited impact here, so not many PCs are hit by the bug according to Microsoft. The company said that the issues pertain to Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2.

The not-so-great news is that it's a nasty bug, and as Microsoft notes, you'll need to go through a manual recovery, meaning using the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). That can be used to try and repair the system, returning it to a functional state.

Analysis: more bug misery – and an obvious question

The question in this case is: how 'limited' is limited? This would suggest a small scattering of people on Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 are hit, though Microsoft doesn't elaborate on what flavors of the OS might be in danger here (in terms of Windows 11 Home or Pro, or enterprise editions).

Looking on Reddit, which is the most likely place to find (relatively reliable) reports of problems with Windows updates, I came across this thread with seven separate complaints about boot failures caused by this latest Windows update.

One Redditor notes: "Can confirm. My PC did in fact not boot. Recovery fully corrupted the boot drive and needed a full reformat and reinstall." Another said they were getting a "disk read error" and that a repair operation (via the recovery environment) didn't work to resolve this. A further report says that a system restore did fix their PC failing to boot, thankfully, so not everyone here is running into a brick wall trying to recover their machine. (Note that these all appear to be consumer PCs in the main – as opposed to work computers).

Now, I can't see any other reports of this, but this update has certainly ended badly for some folks, based on the (anecdotal) complaints that are floating around. Some also claim that the new emergency patch issued by Microsoft – KB5078127 – cures this boot failure issue, but that isn't part of the claimed resolutions here going by what Windows Latest has heard from Microsoft. That emergency patch does fix various gremlins causing apps to crash in Windows 11, including Outlook, though – and it's obviously worth applying anyway. Although if you've already installed the January update, and haven't hit boot failures, then you're in the clear anyway.

Those people who've held off the January update due to the various reported bugs, however, may want to stay away for a while longer until Microsoft further investigates this fresh problem (a process that's underway according to Neowin).

I wouldn't normally recommend not installing a Windows 11 update – due to being without the security fixes applied therein – but in this case, as one Redditor put it, the damage done to their PC by the update was worse than any virus. (Not likely, in fact – but you get the gist). Obviously, it's your decision to make, and it does seem like the bug is rare – but that doesn't mean it's impossible that it'll strike if you install the January update.

There's still no news on the January update glitch that's reportedly torpedoing sleep mode on some (older) PCs.

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The 6.6-inch NexPhone runs Android, as well as desktop Linux and Windows 11. As was made clear when we interviewed the CEO of the maker Nex Computer, it's essentially trying to bridge the gap between the phone and the PC by turning that phone into a computer.

So, it's a phone that can be a phone (obviously), but it can also boot a desktop OS and effectively be a computer, either running that environment on the small phone display – with tweaks so the OS works better here – or more ideally, connected to an external monitor of some kind, with Windows or Linux depicted in its full glory.

It's not a new idea, but the way it's done here is very remarkable. You can boot to Android or to Linux (Debian) and still access all your files on the Android system. Or you can go in another direction entirely, and boot Windows 11 (without Android file access, mind) – but this isn't some cut-down flavor of Microsoft's desktop OS. This is full-blown Windows 11.

Why am I so stoked about this prospect? Well, firstly, it's just really cool to think you can have your Windows 11 setup accessible on your phone, to the point that it's just a matter of plugging in the handset to a monitor, and away you go (with some additional input peripherals, naturally).

You'll be able to run all your Office apps on the NexPhone when it's acting as your Windows 11 PC and carry out other basic computing tasks. I've seen people worried that the admittedly somewhat old mid-range ARM mobile CPU (it goes back half a decade or so) might struggle running Windows 11, but based on YouTube footage of the device in action, which has been aired this week, it seems like the OS should work fine with the basics.

Of course, you won't be able to do anything remotely demanding – but for emails, browsing, dipping into Office, and so on, it all looks relatively okay in performance terms. There's 12GB of RAM backing up the Qualcomm CPU, incidentally, which should be enough. It's also worth noting that the CPU has been picked for its long-term support, with 10 years of that in the pipeline, a comforting prospect.

Money talks

The second thing that excites me about the NexPhone is its potential to save people money. While it's more targeted as a secondary phone, or work smartphone (it's a rugged model, incidentally), I can see a market for this later in 2026 for people who are priced out of buying a PC, perhaps.

We've got the RAM crisis, of course, and SSD prices are also heading skywards, so it's no secret that PCs are going to become a good deal more expensive this year. Indeed, these price hikes are widely predicted to get even worse before the situation improves (or even stabilizes), and the reality is that some folks may need to buy a new computer in 2026, but may not be able to afford one. Even though their current PC may be in dire need of replacement and on its very last legs.

If they're also mulling a new (affordable) phone in the near future, the NexPhone could be a tempting middle ground that gives them entry to both worlds. The $549 price will effectively secure two devices: a new mid-range smartphone and a Windows 11 (or Linux) PC. That could seem quite the bargain in a time of spiralling prices (RAM has got truly ridiculous now).

For this niche set of buyers, the NexPhone could be a way to sidestep this whole PC pricing nightmare. It's your phone, it's your PC, and if you get (or already have) a portable display (and Bluetooth keyboard), it could be your laptop, too.

Just scratching the Surface

The final reason the NexPhone is a truly intriguing development is not the device itself, but what it points to in the future. Now this hardware exists – and if the reality of how useful it seems actually pans out, it'll surely pave the way for others to make similar devices.

Even if performance does feel a bit wonky with the Windows 11 side of the equation on the NexPhone, which is one of the main points of skepticism – that and 'who wants Microslop Copilot on a phone' (just use the Linux desktop, then) – a beefier version of such a phone can remedy that.

Further to that, here's another thought: maybe this could prompt Microsoft to consider creating its own higher-end version of this concept? I may be wrong, but I've got a feeling the NexPhone could be a very important step forward in terms of bringing together the worlds of mobile and desktop computing, which, one way or another, is going to be the future.

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Meta Reality Labs’ CTO Andrew Bosworth has spoken publicly about the recent major VR layoffs at the company, and it really does sound like Meta isn’t fussed about VR anymore – but its metaverse sounds like a top priority still.

While in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, Axios interviewed Bosworth, and almost instantly the discussion homed in on the major restructuring we’ve all seen from Reality Labs, which caused the division to shut down multiple VR game studios.

Bosworth explained that Meta’s VR approach has been to build a space with something for everyone, but this “lack of focus comes at the expense of user experience and a great expense in terms of development cost.”

So Meta’s new plan is, as Bosworth puts it, “We’re going to let VR be what it is, what it does great. We’re going to focus a lot more on the third-party content library, the ecosystem that’s developed there.”

Meta Reality Labs’ CTO then goes on to argue that Reality Labs isn’t downsizing. Instead, that investment is being shifted to focus on its glasses – the area it is seeing the most growth. This is consistent with previous comments Meta has made about its ongoing approach to Reality Labs’ efforts.

Something familiar on the Horizon?

What’s interesting is a part of Bosworth’s answer I cut out above. After discussing Meta letting “VR be what it is, what it does great,” and how that means pushing third-party development, he then adds, “and with Horizon we’re focusing a lot more on mobile.”

Horizon is Meta’s metaverse, and while it was initially envisioned for VR, it is also accessible on PC and mobile.

Interestingly, it also serves as Meta’s closest rival to one of its biggest social media rivals. I’m not talking about TikTok, I’m talking about Roblox.

Ask anyone under the age of 12 about this gaming platform, and you won’t be able to get a word in edgewise for about an hour. It’s this massive online gaming platform which, just like Horizon Worlds, offers a large amount of constantly evolving user-created spaces to explore and play in.

Both platforms have also, in recent years, seen a rise in sponsored and branded collaborations, as well as hosting major concerts and live events which take place in the virtual worlds.

To that end, they aren’t just games; they are a very interactive and adaptable form of social media that doesn’t simply chase fads – it spawns them. Though, as you might imagine, Roblox has a much bigger user base than Horizon based on available figures.

That said, with a shift to a more mobile-heavy focus as Bosworth discussed – the gaming platform most accessible to younger users who might not be trusted with a PC or VR headset – Meta is perhaps hoping to shorten the divide between it and Roblox.

Given the lackluster response to Horizon in VR, it's yet to be seen if these efforts will prove more successful in the mobile sphere, but at least VR fans can appreciate the silver lining that Horizon might not be pushed so heavily in VR going forward – and an upcoming update looks to confirm just that.

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Your Meta Quest 3 is getting a UI overhaul, again – and this might be an upgrade VR users will appreciate.

Currently, when you boot up your headset your default landing experience – the very first screen you see – would be the Horizon Feed. This social window highlights popular Horizon Worlds, apps, and what your contacts are up to; and it's a window that I and many other users instantly close, so that we can get into the actual games and content we want to access.

So Meta has announced that, starting with update v85, players will instead boot straight into the Navigator. This is the floating UI Meta adopted last year, which puts a greater emphasis on mixed reality with simpler floating icons, as well as a simple bar for swapping between your library, home, social contacts and the app store.

It’s not perfect, but Navigator is generally a much more useful intro screen that Horizon Feed, so hopefully this is an update most users will appreciate – even if it's not a major one.

Meta also announced that it will be be sunsetting the Horizon Feed entirely with this update.

People have generally not been a fan of this constant extra step of needing to close Horizon Feed when they use their headset.

This post from last year is literally titled “Tired of closing Horizon Feed + People window, every time on startup”, while another is asking for advice on how to “Remove Horizon Feed from Menu”.

It seems Meta is well aware of how little users want to engage with Horizon Feed, as in its announcement it said of the feature that “it historically has not driven strong entitlement conversion”; essentially, people generally don’t access the worlds or games it shows through the feed itself.

Some people are now hoping Meta will take things a step further, replying to the change saying “That makes me hopeful that one day, the doomed Horizon ecosystem goes away entirely. The Quest would be such a better device without it.”

Following the recent news of Meta shutting down studios as it shifts focus away from VR to its glasses, this prospect does seem more likely, although, even as someone who hasn’t been the most impressed by its metaverse efforts thus far, I’m worried that the end of Horizon ecosystem might be joined by a much wider Quest demise – something I don’t want, even if for now I’m pinning my VR hopes on the Steam Frame.

It’s a weird time in the world of VR, but this Horizon Feed news does at least start to return things to a state of normalcy. When we don’t know what will happen next, we can at least count on Meta to make yet another UI change.

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Adobe has revealed new partnerships with a host talent agencies, film studios, directors, VFX houses, and directors like David Ayer of Fast and Furious fame and Black Adam's Jaume Collet-Serra.

First announced at Adobe Max in October 2025, Firefly Foundry is designed to speed up workflows - effectively handing filmmakers the AI tools they need to rapidly produce and polish content that maintains their creativity and vision.

However, creative professionals can't just download the tool like most apps in Adobe's creative suite - you'll need to hit that 'request more information on the website here to get the scoop.

A creative Foundry

But what is Firefly Foundry?

In a world where 85% of films premiering at this year's Sundance Film Festival are created using its tools, the Foundry is Adobe's answer to creatives concerned about where AI fits into storytelling. According to the company, the tool, powered by Firefly, lets users build "high-fidelity images, video, audio, 3D and vector outputs with a complete understanding of a brand or franchise’s creative universe."

The Foundry itself is designed to improve the creation of, well, everything. Social media content, digital displays, in-person events, mobile apps, they all receive a shout-out in Adobe's latest blog.

But it's also designed to become central to both pre- and post-production workflows in filmmaking.

During the initial ideation stage, Firefly Foundry delivers tools for directors and storyboard artists to craft unique shots.

On-set, Adobe states the tool can help crews "ensure they are getting the right creative options for their shot list as filming progresses," while increasing the efficiency of processing the dailies (or "rushes", for British readers).

In post, Foundry can minimize the need for reshoots, with editors and VFX artists able to "pick up shots, correct scenes, and polish final frames."

That's where Adobe's new partnerships with the likes of Cantina Creative, Promise Advanced Imagination, CAA, and William Morris enter the fray. These users have been praising the power of the Foundry.

Collet-Serra, who directed Disney's Jungle Cruise, said: "Leveraging Firefly Foundry’s responsible AI models can support us in finding new, efficient ways to operate throughout production - freeing our mindshare to focus on artistry."

And CEO and co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency Bryan Lourd, explained: “Firefly Foundry empowers artists with commercially safe tools that expand the possibilities of creative expression."

Other partners across film and TV, such as B5 Studios and Promise Advanced Imagination believe Firefly Foundry "empowers artists" and "giv[es] our artists the freedom to push ideas further, while giving co-production, client, and distribution partners confidence in how generative AI is being used."

So, it looks like Firefly Foundry's AI tools could be coming to a theater near you soon.

Users of the iconic Notepad app fall into two camps: those who are pleased Microsoft is building up the Windows 11 app with new features, and those who hate that line of development, and consider it to be bloating the software. Should you fall in the latter camp, you won't like the fact that Notepad is getting more capabilities, and Paint is, too.

Windows Central noticed that Microsoft revealed new versions of both of these apps in testing, with Notepad getting some additional formatting powers, as well as a new 'welcome experience' and an extra dash of AI.

On the formatting front, Notepad is getting nested lists – indented subcategories within lists – and a strikethrough capability (drawing a line through text, meaning crossing something out).

The new welcome experience is a panel that pops up detailing the latest changes in Notepad, so you know what's been recently added (or tacked on since you last launched the app).

And finally, the AI change in Notepad is for the Write, Rewrite, and Summarize features, which will now start a preview of the response the AI is providing in a faster manner. In short, you'll be able to begin reading the AI's output more quickly.

As for Windows 11's Paint app, the main change here is the new coloring book, which is again an AI feature, one that allows you to create one such book based on a theme.

So, if you want to create a coloring book about, say, flying space whales zooming through the solar system (why not?), you can ask the AI to knock one up, and it'll create the various pages.

Analysis: for me, this goes beyond 'bloat vs functionality' and into 'development vs fundamentals'

As noted at the outset, the trio of changes for Notepad will likely either please you or infuriate you – unless maybe you never use Notepad and don't care. At any rate, those concerned about the basic text editor becoming bloated – and indeed much less basic, with a whole raft of features added in recent times – are not going to be happy with a pop-up release notes panel, or further formatting and AI nuances.

The worry is that eventually, Notepad is going to end up far away from being the streamlined text editor that was the original concept, and it'll load more slowly and be less responsive in general thanks to all these extra trimmings.

Part of this is Microsoft compensating for the lack of WordPad in Windows 11, which was the middle-ground app between Notepad and the full version of Word before Microsoft ditched it from Windows 11. So, you can see where the software giant is coming from in that respect, although it begs the question: why drop WordPad in the first place?

Anyhow, the timing of this new version of Notepad is interesting because it arrives just as a frustrating bug in Windows 11 has meant that the app is crashing for a number of people. (This isn't just about Notepad, mind you, but it is one of the affected pieces of software). The underlying issue appears to be a problem with the Microsoft store – or possibly other factors – but it's clear enough it's not actually the fault of Notepad.

Even so, the fact that Microsoft keeps creating more and more seriously annoying bugs – some minor, some major, like this week's app-crashing antics – points again to the issue of Windows 11 fundamentals versus development of the OS.

Which is to say, people want Microsoft to fix the basics with Windows 11, curing all the bugs, oddities and sluggishness with the interface, and generally getting its operating system in good working order beneath the hood – which should (hopefully) mean fewer bugs popping up in the desktop OS. I don't see how it wouldn't. And on top of that, Microsoft also needs to improve its quality assurance (QA) processes around updates to double down on stamping out gremlins in the works.

Most people want this to happen over and above prioritizing new features coming to Windows 11 and its default apps like Notepad. Now, I realize Microsoft is never going to effectively freeze development on its operating system, and I don't think it needs to go that far anyway – but it's clear enough that priorities need to be readjusted here. Stop worrying about jamming many more capabilities, and especially AI features, into Windows 11, and start probing the fundamentals more deeply, and fixing stuff.

I'd really like to see some acknowledgement from Microsoft that the state of Windows 11 right now isn't good enough. Otherwise, the 'Microslop' nickname could stick fast, and there will be (further) reputational damage in terms of the public perception of the quality of Windows 11. Maybe irreparable damage, arguably.

Microsoft shouldn't forget that the reputation of the OS is intimately linked to the success of its big drive with AI. People need to trust Microsoft's AI agents to be let loose on their PC, and be comfortable granting them access to their personal files, and that won't happen if Windows 11 is regarded as a malfunctioning desktop platform that's limping along, hamstrung by subpar QA and testing, and suffering a constant stream of bugs.

To reiterate, I'm not saying Microsoft should totally rein in development of new features, or AI functionality – because clearly, that is never going to happen. But I'm going to continue to bang the well-beaten drum for the idea that there needs to be a better balance between those incoming new features and maintaining all the existing stuff – because what Microsoft is doing right now just isn't working, not for me, and not for many others.

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Windows 11 has run into another couple of glitches, and people are now encountering problems with a range of apps crashing and generally misfiring.

Windows Central reports that certain apps are failing to work for some Windows 11 users, with multiple reports online outlining various frustrations – and our sister site has experienced this problem, too.

Apparently, a range of software is affected, and that includes some of Windows 11's default apps, such as Notepad and Snipping Tool, as well as MSI's Armoury Crate and the Alienware Command Center app, to pick a few examples.

When trying to open software, the bug strikes with an error code (0x803f8001 in many cases, or some other string of meaningless garbage as is typical of these so-called 'stop codes'), as well as a message saying that the app in question is "currently not available in your account" (as shown on Reddit here).

The mention of 'account' refers to your Microsoft account, and the bug is seemingly tied into issues with either that account and the Microsoft store.

Windows Central linked to a post on Microsoft's Learn portal complaining about the problem, where an independent advisor, Harold Milan, chipped in to say that: "The Microsoft Store error 0x803f8001 usually occurs when the Store cannot properly validate app licenses, causing built‑in or Store‑dependent apps to stop opening or updating. In most cases, this is due to a corrupted Store cache, a temporary Microsoft account sync issue, or a Store registration glitch rather than actual data loss."

In a separate issue also flagged by Windows Central, Windows 11 users are reporting difficulties with some apps freezing up when saving files to cloud storage. This is happening after installing the January update for the OS (which turned up last week).

Microsoft admitted that: "After installing Windows updates released on or after January 13, 2026 (KB5074109), some applications might become unresponsive or experience unexpected errors when opening files from or saving files to cloud-backed storage, such as OneDrive or Dropbox."

The software giant added: "For example, in some configurations of Outlook that store PST files on OneDrive, Outlook might become unresponsive and fail to reopen unless its process is terminated in Task Manager, or the system is restarted."

That comes on top of issues that have already hit Windows 11 users following the January update, namely sleep mode being broken on some PCs, and glitches with Outlook too (which may be related to the mentioned buggy behavior with cloud services in some cases).

After last year's run of nasty bugs in one form or another, it's disappointing to see how wobbly the start of this year has been for Microsoft's desktop OS, and I'm sadly not seeing any evidence of what I was hoping for in 2026 for Windows 11.

What can I do if I'm affected by these new bugs?

Regarding the latter cloud-related nastiness, there's not much you can do, unless you're hit by the problem with Outlook. In that case, Microsoft explains that "moving the PST files out of OneDrive should resolve the issue" with any luck.

For other apps, you can try contacting the developer for support, or wait for Microsoft to come up with a fix on its side. Microsoft notes that it is "working on releasing a resolution for this issue as soon as possible" but we don't get any timeframe for the arrival of that patch.

The other solution would be to remove the January update causing all this trouble, but that will leave you without its security fixes (which is still possibly the lesser of two evils for some folks, perhaps). Be aware of the risks you would be taking by going this route, though, leaving some vulnerabilities unpatched.

As for the bigger problem with apps crashing due to flakiness related to the Microsoft store (or your Microsoft account), Windows Central says that the remedy it found worked was to install the January update (ironically, given all the strife it's causing elsewhere). That doesn't appear to work for everyone, though.

Other possible cures for these app crashing errors include resetting the Microsoft store cache to fix any corruption therein, as mentioned by the independent advisor above. This is a possible fix for all sorts of issues with the Microsoft store, in fact, and you can follow the instructions here to try it (the process is very easy).

Another trick to give a whirl is simply signing out of the Microsoft store, and then signing back in. You could also try uninstalling, and then reinstalling, the affected app, which has worked for some going by the many reports on this issue – though if you have multiple apps suffering from this bug, that could get tedious.

Finally, simply waiting a while is another tactic, as some app developers are seemingly working in the background on their end – either that, or Microsoft is. Some people have reported that after leaving their PC and going back later on, the issue has just resolved itself.

That would appear to indicate that it might just be a matter of waiting this one out, and hopefully not for long. It may also explain why the January update appeared to cure the problem for Windows Central, but not for others, as this might be a case of coincidental timing with applying that update.

Still, if you remain frustrated by this bug and you haven't yet downloaded the January update, it's definitely something to try – but I'd go through the other suggested remedies first.

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Microsoft has announced that the Xbox app is now out on Windows 11 PCs with Arm processors, meaning the likes of Copilot+ laptops built around Snapdragon X silicon.

In a blog post, Microsoft noted that: "Players can now download and enjoy a wide range of titles from the Xbox PC app game catalog on Arm-based Windows 11 PCs. Today, more than 85% of the Game Pass catalog is compatible with these PCs."

The firm also said it's working with developers to get more games supported on Arm, and that for those titles which can't be run on these Windows 11 devices, there's always another option – streaming via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

The Xbox app offers a central hub for all your games, acting as a game launcher and tying in social aspects, as well as facilitating cloud gaming, as noted, alongside other neat tricks (such as cross-platform saves for your Xbox and PC).

Analysis: big things could happen for Windows on Arm in 2026

This is certainly a useful step forward for Windows gamers who have an Arm PC, and it's one of a few strides that Microsoft has taken in terms of making Snapdragon X laptops better on the gaming front.

That includes compatibility with quite a few more PC games, with the notable addition of titles that use AVX or AVX2 extensions, which Prism – Microsoft's emulation layer to run x86 (AMD and Intel) games on Arm processors – gained the ability to cope with in the October 2025 update for Windows 11.

On top of that, we saw Epic tune up Fortnite to run on Arm PCs, making the game's anti-cheat tool (EAC) compatible. That has long remained a stumbling block for gaming with an Arm processor. Hopefully, other game developers who use EAC to keep cheats at bay will follow suit. (This includes titles such as Elden Ring).

The porting of the Xbox app over to Arm PCs comes with some interesting timing, as we're about to see new Snapdragon X2 laptops introduced in the near future. On top of that, rumor has it that laptops packing Nvidia's N1X processor could debut in the next couple of months. It's another Arm chip and one that has some seriously powerful integrated graphics. Given that, 2026 could be a very promising year for Windows on Arm devices.

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There are some big changes coming to Adobe Acrobat today - and yes, there's a lot of AI involved here.

Acrobat has long topped my guide to the best PDF editors. Its clean, intuitive to use, and has a feature-set that I'd consider pretty vast.

But it seems Adobe isn't content to just leave it there. Already in recent months, we've seen the introduction of a premium business tier, Acrobat Studio, and PDF Spaces - an AI-powered workspace.

Now, the company has launched a series of new tools for the software aligned

What's new in Acrobat?

There are four big changes for the digital document software in this latest update, based on Adobe's three key pillars of faster AI insights, tailored sharing, and content creation through Adobe Express.

According to Adobe: "Over the last year, AI use across Acrobat saw a four-times increase. And a recent Forrester TEI study found Acrobat’s agentic-powered AI Assistant increases efficiencies for summarizing and analyzing documents by 45 percent.”

With that in mind, here's what users can expect.

• New ways to edit PDFs using AI chat
• Generate Podcast lets you turn PDFs into audio overviews
• Generate Presentation transforms documents into decks
• Improve collaboration via PDF Spaces

Let's start with PDF editing - with the AI companion, you can now make changes to documents using natural language. Want to remove pages, or rotate them? Rewrite passages, generate summaries of entire documents? That's all available via the AI chat box. If you're not sure where to start, the system will also serve up ideas for other changes to make or actions to take.

To me, Generate Podcast is the most interesting update. Don't be fooled by the 'podcast' moniker. This is a lot like the read aloud function already found in Acrobat, where you can create an audio overview of documents, transcripts, and notes. Adobe is also promising the output can be tailored "for how you learn so you retain more information."

Generate Presentation is another AI tool (of course), and does exactly what you'd expect: it turns documents into decks for presenting information to colleagues. Powered by Adobe Express, which has received a lot of love over the past year, users can create decks based on over five-hundred thousand templates, and generate custom imagery to make them more eye-catching.

Finally, the company wants to improve collaboration within PDF Spaces. Not the most exciting update, but a welcome one, with new options for inviting collaborators to add files, leave notes, and make comments.

From the demo videos Adobe showed me, they all look helpful in speeding up workflows, and pretty easy to use - as I'd expect from an AI-infused Acrobat. But I'll be interested see more results, and learn how (or even if) professionals are making use of these tools.

Windows 11 has run into more problems with its latest update, and now some users are suffering at the hands of a bug affecting sleep mode.

Windows Latest reports that a number of Windows 11 users are finding sleep mode no longer works after installing the January update (KB5074109, which was released just over a week ago).

This pertains to what's known as the S3 sleep state, which is the original sleep mode for Windows, and so this won't affect newer PCs (as they don't use this, and I'll come back to why shortly). In this sleep state, everything is powered down (display, processor, even the system fans) except for the RAM, which stays alive (maintaining whatever you're doing).

According to one user, the problem is as follows: "After installing KB5074109, the sleep function does not work. On going to Power and pressing Sleep, the screen goes blank, but the PC does not power down. The only way to get the PC to restart is to do a hard restart, i.e. hold the power button down on the PC until it turns off, and then restart. This happens every time I go into Sleep mode."

There are similar reports on Reddit and elsewhere, and unfortunately, as described, this isn't just about sleep mode failing to kick in, but also the fact that the PC effectively crashes, and needs a hard reboot to recover.

Another Windows 11 user observes that the problem has hit three of their PCs (one running Windows 11 Home, and two using Pro editions of the OS). They further note that the problem vanishes when the January update is removed, and returns when it's reinstalled, suggesting this is definitely an issue with KB5074109.

Analysis: insomniac computers

The S3 sleep state only pertains to older PCs, because newer devices running Windows 11 will use modern standby instead. So, as noted, if you have a PC which was bought this decade you likely won't run into any trouble with sleeping, and not with your laptop certainly – all contemporary notebook models have shifted to modern standby (known as S0 'lower power idle'). This may not be the case with all desktops from this decade, mind – for example, my computer is five years old and still uses S3 sleep.

But mostly, if you have a newer machine, you'll likely avoid this gremlin in the works. Those with an older PC who are encountering problems may have to simply avoid using sleep mode – which is hardly ideal, although there is one potential workaround you can try.

According to a Feedback Hub post that Windows Latest spotted, a possible solution is that if you have a USB webcam attached to your PC, you can try unplugging it. That may just do the trick – but otherwise, there are no other suggestions as to how this bug might be sidestepped.

This latest reported bug with the January update comes on top of issues with the classic Outlook app (with POP accounts) whereby it freezes up, and a bug that means some PCs won't shut down. The latter is a nasty one, but it only affects enterprise users with a certain feature enabled, so it isn't something your average person has to worry about, thankfully.

A third bug that Microsoft has acknowledged is an issue with Remote Desktop Connections failing to work, although the good news is that emergency fixes have been deployed for those latter two issues – hopefully fixes will be inbound for the Outlook problem, as well as the sleep bug, soon.

Finally, I've also noticed some user complaints about weird issues with their keyboard and mouse after installing the January update. All in all, then, it's not a great start to the year for Microsoft.

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We’re still reeling from Meta closing down multiple first-party VR software studios, but at a time when it feels like VR is on a serious downswing some are choosing to look on the bright side – and argue that this is in fact a good thing for the industry.

A loud voice in that crowd is Palmer Luckey – the founder of Oculus VR, who later founded military contractor Anduril Industries after being fired by Facebook in 2017 after it acquired Oculus – who took to social media to say that the layoffs are “Not a disaster.”

He added, “I think this is a good decision, and I thought the same back when I was still at Oculus.” He explained further down in his lengthy post that, “Every developer big and small, even the hyper-efficient ones, have had an extremely hard time competing with games developed by Meta-owned teams with budgets and teams that spend vastly in excess of earning potential.”

Luckey is not the first person to highlight these issues with Meta’s strategy. We know it has been throwing money at VR in a way that many other developers – both on the hardware and software side – simply can’t. In turn this has created a de facto one-party system.

Why buy anything other than a Meta Quest headset when it boasts the best software support, and the best hardware (or close to the best) for the price being charged?

Though when it comes to the Quest ecosystem specifically, the games produced from these studios were hardly “Crowding out the rest of the entire ecosystem” as Luckey put it. One, maybe two VR games a year from Meta itself aren’t drowning out the slew of amazing VR games and apps out there – but the deluge of Horizon Worlds and free slop software clogging up prime spots in the Meta Store and promotional carousels certainly are, and according to UploadVR reporting, many developers were complaining about this even a year ago.

While free-to-play titles will keep some users active, big tentpole attractions are what get people in – especially the likes of Batman: Arkham Shadow, or Marvel’s Deadpool VR with very recognizable IP. However with VR still in its relatively fledgling stage you need investment to make these tentpole titles happen.

Now without those teams making the easily recognizable franchises that convince people to dip their toes into VR, I can see VR’s popularity taking a nosedive.

What’s more, looking at crowding out from a hardware perspective you see Meta has also canned its third-party HorizonOS headsets – devices which would have seriously helped VR not feel like a one-horse race.

Taken individually I could perhaps understand the silver linings folks like Luckey are seeing. Looking at the bigger picture though, the dark clouds do look to stretch for miles in every direction.

A move in a new direction, or more missteps?

This is also not considering the smart glasses aspect of Meta's mistake, and how the VR expertise it just lost could have played a vital part in its alternative XR future.

Especially with display glasses seemingly set to become the next big thing, Meta will want content for its smart specs, and games and fitness apps will be essential here just as they were in VR.

Imagine being able to have a virtual Supernatural coach help you run through a workout in your local park in AR, or some kind of IRL AR multiplayer game which was developed using the spatial computing expertise of the very studios Meta just shuttered.

To that end this move, again, doesn’t seem all too sensible.

Meta has arguably made a lot of missteps with the Quest headsets. It's got a lot right too, but essential services like productivity and entertainment have fallen behind compared to the smart glasses rivals I’ve tested.

But as many have said, it feels like Meta has decided to refocus away from VR, and unlike Luckey I don’t believe this is good for the industry. I hope that I’m wrong, but the more I think about the wider space – in particular the rise of glasses over headsets – I can’t help but feel like this is a death knell for VR, with the space potentially set to hit an ice age that’ll last many years before we possibly things return to normal.

Maybe, hopefully, I’m wrong. There are still plenty of excellent third-party VR developers out there, and we have the Steam Frame set to land later this year, so perhaps they’ll keep the flag flying. I’m just not feeling all too optimistic right now.

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We've heard from a pair of the top execs behind GOG – a popular gaming platform focused on classic titles, hence the acronym 'Good Old Games' – and they made some withering comments about Windows 11, as well as dropping hints about how Linux is going to become more important for GOG in 2026.

The execs in question are the new owner of GOG, Michał Kiciński, and the managing director, Maciej Gołębiewski, who were interviewed by PC Gamer.

Our sister site asked about the backlash against Windows 11 – which has reached new heights since Microsoft started pushing AI even harder in the OS late last year – and the increasing interest in Linux as a result (which was already sparked by the success of SteamOS on handhelds).

Kiciński said, "I'm really surprised at Windows. It's such poor-quality software and product, and I'm so surprised that it's [spent] so many years on the market. I can't believe it!"

Kiciński doesn't run Windows 11, you may not be surprised to learn – he uses macOS – but does have to fix the PCs of his parents sometimes.

The owner further explained, "I sometimes have to fix my mum's computer or my father's computer with Windows, [and] like, it's unbelievable… So I'm not surprised that people gravitate outside of the Windows ecosystem."

It was Gołębiewski, however, who dropped the big hint about Linux, when questioned on gamers embracing it as an alternative to Microsoft's OS.

The managing director said that Linux was "one of the things that we've put in our strategy for this year to look closer at", but refused to elaborate further, noting, "I don't want to commit to any specifics, but certainly you will see this trend, and we also see that Linux is close to the hearts of our users, so we probably could do better on that front, and that's something that we'll be looking at."

Analysis: Linux is building up steam (or is it the other way round?)

That last comment comes against a backdrop of Valve having made some laudable progress with SteamOS (and the Steam Deck, plus other handhelds are using the platform, too). This has meant more games are compatible with SteamOS, really driving forward on the Linux compatibility front – and on top of that, we've got the Steam Machine seemingly on the near horizon, too.

That compact device could be a landmark moment for easy and convenient living room gaming, potentially, and so given all this, it's no real surprise that GOG would be looking at Linux more closely for 2026 – and beefing up support for games on this platform.

What's a bit more surprising is the heat that Windows 11 takes here, with the owner of GOG pulling no punches in the assessment of Microsoft's OS. Of course, part of what's "unbelievable" for Kiciński is how Windows is "such poor-quality software" given that it's been on the market for over 30 years now. (And indeed it's existed longer than that, but not as a full-blown operating system, just as an interface overlay on top of DOS).

He is, of course, not isolated in firing flak at Windows 11, which was seen as a step back from Windows 10 by many. Mainly because the performance of the newest OS was lacking compared to its predecessor in some respects – particularly with search and File Explorer, and it still is to this day – plus a bunch of features got dropped with Windows 11 (although a good few have been added back since the OS launched in 2021).

The worst crime Microsoft is guilty of now, though, in the eyes of the growing ranks of detractors, is that big push for cramming more AI into Windows 11 rather than trying to fix those flaky fundamentals – the poor-quality elements the GOG owner is talking about.

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In addition, Supernatural – the excellent VR fitness app that was the linchpin of my VR exercise routine – will no longer be receiving updates or new content (via the Supernatural Facebook group and emails sent to users). It will, however, “remain active”, though questions remain about certain specifics – for example, will Supernatural’s licensed music catalog eventually dwindle to almost nothing, or will partnerships still be renewed?

This also all comes in the wake of the news from late last year that Meta had “paused” its Horizon OS partnerships with Asus and Lenovo.

In a statement to Engadget, a Meta spokesperson said, “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year."

When I followed up with Meta to address claims it was turning its back on VR, I was told by a representative that “Meta doesn’t have anything to share on this.”

While Meta might not have much more to share on this matter, I do: it’s pretty clear Meta isn’t keen to push VR in quite the same way it once was.

The Oculus Quest 2 felt like the moment VR was waiting for. Aided, in part, by people being trapped at home due to COVID-19-era lockdowns, and its truly affordable price for a solid VR machine, the Quest 2 sold phenomenally well.

In less than half a year, it had sold more units than all previous total sales of all other Oculus headsets, and while it's hard to track precise figures for every machine, it seems that for a while the Quest 2 was seemingly even selling better than the Xbox Series consoles (via Android Central).

However, Meta’s golden goose didn’t last forever, and the Meta Quest 3 didn’t land with anything like the same splash, despite being such an awesome device in its own right.

And now Meta has a new favorite child: AI and its AI wearables like the (also hugely popular) Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and as it has said, it is shifting some of its investment and priorities towards this new venture.

Is VR gaming dead?

VR gaming isn’t dead yet, if not least because Valve has its Steam Frame headset due to land later in 2026, and while it won’t be as affordable as a Quest 3 (most likely) the fact it’s a Steam Deck for your face – so it kind of doubles as a Steam Deck and a pair of XR glasses to enjoy your games on a large virtual screen – as well as having all of its VR gaming potential makes me at least a little confident it will have a strong landing.

Plus, if Valve or Google are looking to bolster their XR gaming efforts – Google has its Android XR platform – I’ve heard a lot of talented folks are currently free agents.

Marvel’s Deadpool VR is a fantastic game for capturing the true promise of what it would be like to be Deadpool, and Asgard’s Wrath 2 is a superb, more open-world action adventure that VR doesn’t have enough of. Seeing the teams behind those games work on something for a VR headset with some PC power behind it could be incredible.

Or if Android XR wants a dedicated XR fitness platform, the Supernatural team knows what it’s doing, and I think there’s so much more to explore with fitness in XR – especially in AR. Plus, from a music licensing side of things, Google might have an even easier time, as it already has services like YouTube Music, which could open up an even broader suite of workout options.

We’ll have to wait and see how 2026 unfolds, but while this announcement is frustrating for Quest fans, I believe there’s still some potential for VR to have a stronger year than it did in 2025 – even if it is elsewhere.

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Apple Creator Studio groups core creative apps like Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, MainStage, Pixelmator Pro (a first!), and Final Cut Pro, alongside Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, into a single subscription that spans platforms. For $12.99 / £12.99 / AU$19.99 a month or $129 / £129 / AU$199 per year, you get access across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

It’s clearly a value play. Many of these apps were previously purchased outright or via separate, platform-specific subscriptions. But beyond savings, Apple is betting the bundle will encourage more people to integrate these tools into their workflows — or try them for the first time.

In a shared release, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue said, “Apple Creator Studio is a great value that enables creators of all types to pursue their craft and grow their skills.”

Cue also points to “advanced intelligent tools” designed to speed up workflows, building on AI features already present in apps like Logic Pro for iPad. Notably, Creator Studio officially brings Pixelmator Pro into Apple’s first-party creative lineup. Apple acquired the popular photo-editing app in 2024, and it has a loyal fanbase – myself included – and this bundle finally brings it to the iPad.

When Creator Studio launches on January 28, 2026, subscribers will get access to the following apps:

• Mac: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Freeform, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage
• iPad: Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform
• iPhone: Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Freeform

Eligible students and educators can subscribe at a steep discount: $2.99 / £2.99 / AU$4.99 per month or $29.99 / £29.99 / AU$49.99 per year. Apple is also offering a one-month free trial to eligible customers on both plans, but if you buy a select Mac or iPad, you can get a three-month free trial.

iMovie and GarageBand will remain free entry-level creative apps on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. And for those who prefer to pay once, Pixelmator Pro, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage will continue to be sold individually on the Mac. Beyond the bundling, there are some meaningful platform expansions and new features – so let’s break those down.

Pixelmator Pro is finally coming to iPad

Pixelmator Pro has long been a Mac favorite, but we’ve been waiting for a major update – or a new platform – since Apple acquired it in November 2024. That wait ends on January 28, 2026, when Pixelmator Pro launches on iPad.

Built from scratch for iPadOS, the app is optimized for touch and Apple Pencil, and the Apple Pencil Pro. Apple says workflows will carry seamlessly between Mac and iPad, with many of the same editing tools available across both. Features such as Super Resolution remain, and Apple Pencil gestures, including hover, squeeze, and double-tap, let you preview and adjust effects more fluidly.

A new Warp tool is also coming to Pixelmator Pro on both Mac and iPad, allowing users to twist and reshape layers – another push toward a more premium creative toolkit. You’ll also find that on the iPad, many of the time-saving features like ML Enhance or Super Resolution are sticking around as well.

Logic Pro adds more AI-powered features

Logic Pro was one of Apple’s earliest showcases of AI, thanks to features such as Stem Splitter, which separates a recording into individual sound layers. Now, as part of Creator Studio (or as a standalone Mac purchase), Logic Pro is getting new tools.

The AI Session Player is expanding with a new Synth Player designed for EDM-style performances, adding synth bass elements and dynamic flair. You can tweak complexity in real time, effectively treating it like an always-available session musician. Apple is also adding more royalty-free sounds via a new sound pack, along with natural-language search in the Sound Browser – a welcome quality-of-life upgrade.

Final Cut Pro on iPad gets Montage Maker, while Mac gets new AI features

Final Cut Pro on iPad gains a new feature called Montage Maker. Think of it as a more powerful take on auto-editing – not for vertical social clips, but for traditional video projects.

Select a group of clips, and Final Cut Pro will automatically stitch together a sequence based on what it identifies as key moments. It can recrop footage to your chosen aspect ratio and deliver the result in a full timeline, where you can reorder clips, adjust speed, swap music, and add more media.

If you’re dealing with a larger selection of clips, you’ll now be able to search either the ‘transcript’ of the video or visually, allowing you to easily track down a specific moment within clips on both Final Cut Pro for iPad and the Mac.

Pages, Keynote, and Numbers get new templates and AI functionality, but core versions will stay free

Apple has made this clear: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers will continue to be free on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, with regular updates. Creator Studio subscribers, however, unlock more advanced features. These include early access to intelligent tools – like generating a first-draft Keynote deck from a simple outline – plus a new Content Hub with higher-quality illustrations and photos.

Subscribers also get premium templates across all three apps. Image Playground remains available, but Apple is adding on-device AI tools to upscale images – it’s using the same engine as Super Resolution in Pixelmator Pro – and automatically crop them for documents or presentations directly within Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

As a whole, Creator Studio Pro serves as a unified home for Apple’s creative and productivity apps, while also shining a light on how Apple is using AI – not as a replacement for the long-promised new Siri or the broader Apple Intelligence umbrella, but for practical, quality-of-life improvements inside apps people already use. Between the updates to Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Pixelmator Pro, Apple isn’t trying to replace human creativity so much as offer tools that speed up workflows and encourage experimentation with new effects.

With the first steps toward premium content in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, Apple is also offering higher-end templates and graphics designed to elevate documents and presentations. Image Playground, alongside other AI models, can be used to customize visuals and put your own spin on clip art.

Apple Creator Studio launches on January 28, 2026, as a bundled subscription that includes new features across apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. We’ll go hands-on as soon as possible and share our first impressions closer to launch – but in the meantime, let us know what you think in the comments below. Is this the return of iLife and iWork, reimagined with fresh branding and a more premium edge?

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Up to 13,000 Irish passports have been recalled by the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs due to a botched software update which renders the documents unusable.

The affected passports, printed between December 23 2025 and January 6 2026, do not comply with international travel standards, and must be returned to the passport office.

“Due to a technical issue with a software update, passports issued between 23rd December 2025 and 6th January 2026 inclusive are not fully compliant with international travel standards,” said the Department of Foreign Affairs in a statement, “There is a possibility that some passport holders may have an issue at eGates and border control when travelling.”

Misprinted documents

The technical issue, a printer error, reportedly means that thousands of passports do not include the letters ‘IRL’. This may mean that travelers could face issues when going through travel checks.

There is currently no estimate of how much this error and the recall process will cost the Irish Passport Service. Affected travelers do not need to apply for a new passport, they just need to return the passport to: Passport Return – Customer Care, Passport Service, 42-47 Lower Mount St, Dublin 2 – D02 TN83 Ireland.

Border services worldwide have been notified of the recall, and all passports that are reissued will be given a new passport number.

“The Passport Service has contacted affected customers by email to inform them of the issue and will be reissuing passports to them in the coming days and weeks.”

“Our public office in Dublin can accept affected passports.” the Department of Foreign Affairs confirms. “We will endeavour to re-issue your passport within the day, depending on your travel date. Please come to our Dublin office between 9am and 12:30pm, Monday to Friday, with your passport book (and card if applicable) and proof of imminent travel.”

“The Passport Service sincerely regrets this issue and apologises to affected citizens for the inconvenience caused.”

Via: Irish Times

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Windows 11 could be getting a Copilot button in File Explorer that may be used to invoke some kind of side panel for the AI assistant, in a move that won't go down well in some quarters.

Windows Central noticed that a well-known leaker (PhantomOfEarth) discovered that in the latest Windows 11 preview builds, there's a hidden button in the navigation bar of File Explorer (the app which powers the folders on your desktop).

This button is invisible, in fact, unless you hover over the bar, but it seems that Microsoft is planning some sort of an addition here. What's that got to do with Copilot, though? Well, other clues, namely strings of code in the same preview builds of Windows 11, mention a 'Chat with Copilot' feature – and functionality that offers an option to detach Copilot from File Explorer.

So, the theory is that there will be some kind of Copilot sidebar inside File Explorer that's summoned by clicking on the as yet not visible (or functional) button. The idea would presumably be to provide direct in-line feedback on your files, whether that's summarizing a document, say, or possible edits to a photo.

Windows Central also flagged that the latest preview build of Windows 11 – which arrived late last week – has some additional changes for Copilot.

One of these is bringing a new feature to Narrator, the operating system's screen-reading tool, which enables it to deliver AI-generated descriptions of images (or graphs and the like) for visually impaired Windows 11 users. This is a smart idea that was previously only available to those with Copilot+ PCs, but is now coming to all Windows 11 users (when these features in testing are realized).

The ability to remove the Copilot app on managed devices is also being implemented for IT admins, but only if Microsoft 365 Copilot is present on the device. Everyday Windows 11 users can already uninstall the Copilot app (though note that this doesn't remove the Copilot AI from your PC as such – it has hooks in Windows 11 all over the place – but the app does of course represent a big chunk of it which you can ditch).

There are tools out there which can strip out a lot of the AI from Windows 11, mind, but I'd be careful using anything like this as I've discussed in the past.

Analysis: don't get testy yet – it's still in testing

Of course, Copilot is already in File Explorer, in the context menu which pops up when you right-click on a file, which offers various shortcuts to AI powers. However, that's a fairly subtle implementation, and the new method of having a dedicated Copilot button – and possibly a side panel (that can be detached) – would be putting the AI much more in-your-face, as it were, in your desktop folders.

That wouldn't be a surprising move given Microsoft's renewed push for AI which has been underway for a few months now – ever since AI agents became the next big thing in Windows 11. However, it also wouldn't be a popular move at all, unless it was purely an opt-in experience (and you could get rid of the button).

I'm guessing that Microsoft would only put this in as opt-in (or at least have an easy way to turn it off) given the sensitivity around Copilot and the company cramming too much AI into Windows 11, which is a sore point currently (witness the whole 'Microslop' affair).

Of course, we don't know if this will come to anything yet, as the button isn't even live in testing – and there are just clues in the background of Windows 11 as to what this functionality might be. That said, some sort of Edge-like Copilot sidebar for File Explorer hardly seems unfeasible, but we'll just have to see how this one pans out.

All we can do is keep watching those preview builds in the near future, and keep tabs on the leakers who make it their job to dig into the inner workings of said test releases.

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There are plenty to choose from. Following the success of the Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta collab, as well as the hype being driven by Android XR the field featured a lot of new players alongside several returning favorites.

These five have risen above the crowd, however. Be it thanks to innovations such as eSIM integration or HDR, or just sophisticated simplicity, these are the smart glasses to watch from the Las Vegas show.

RayNeo Air 4 Pro

• The best glasses for entertainment

If you’re after big (virtual) screen entertainment, the new RayNeo Air 4 Pro glasses will be tough to beat, especially at their very low $299 (UK and Australian pricing to be confirmed) price tag.

They still have a 1080p resolution limit, but in a first for these kinds of specs they offer HDR10 support on their micro-OLED panels, which are made even more vivid with 1,200 nits of brightness. The audio has been tuned up as well, thanks to the expertise of Bang & Olufsen.

The screen expertise of TCL, which makes these glasses, is on show here, and while they lack some of the bells and whistles of their rivals, these specs are also relatively inexpensive – and while I have yet to put them through TechRadar’s rigorous testing, I expect they’ll be a shoo-in for the best cheap smart glasses on the market if you want that entertainment focus.

Asus ROG Xreal R1 AR

• The smart glasses gamers will want to buy

Meta who? Following the breakup between Meta and its third-party HorizonOS partners it seems at least one has already moved on to a new collaborator, because Asus and Xreal have debuted these gamer-friendly specs.

Lenovo announced some smart glasses of their own (Meta’s other HorizonOS partner) but as they’re only a prototype and not the most interesting prototype at that, I’ve omitted them from this list.

Anyway, back to Asus, the R1 glasses are basically the splendid Xreal One Pro glasses with two benefits: a 240Hz refresh rate for buttery smooth gaming, and an included ROG Control Dock. The dock includes DisplayPortTM 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0 ports so you can switch between using the glasses with your PC or your console with just a single click.

We don’t yet know the glasses’ price but I expect they’ll be on the pricier end. The One Pro glasses cost $649 / £579, and I wouldn’t hold my breath for these Asus specs to cost any less (certainly not much less).

RayNeo X3 Pro – Project eSIM

• The biggest smart glasses innovation at CES 2026

TCL's AR glasses brand is back on this list again with something a little different. We’ve already seen the RayNeo X3 Pro glasses before – I saw them at CES last year – and they’re your run-of-the-mill AI smart glasses. They boast cameras, speakers and in-built microphones to facilitate AI interactions.

So why have they made this years’ list? This new model boasts an eSIM with 4G capabilities – so no external connection is required.

Now some big questions related to cost, battery life and, importantly, what apps and features the eSIMs will enable still remain – but in the prophesized post-smartphone world that smart glasses are said to enable, this is a much-needed step.

However well this Project eSIM model does, expect others to follow TCL’s lead.

Rokid AI Glasses Style

• The CES 2026 smart glasses to love if you're on a budget

I tried the Rokid Glasses at IFA in late 2025, and this new for CES model is basically those without a display, which is certainly no bad thing – especially when they’re so darn cheap.

The Rokid AI Glasses Style are just like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. They even look a little like them too. You’ll find AI voice commands, a 12MP camera that can shoot in up to 4K, a 12 hour battery life and they’ll cost you less than Meta’s specs. Though Rokid’s glasses don’t come with a charging case by default, which gives them an edge price-wise against the Meta Ray-Bans which do. These cost $299, which is $80 less than Meta's option.

While not mind-blowing in any sense of the word, ecosystems are built on these more budget-friendly offerings. Cheaper options help to get new gadgets in the hands of folks who really want them but can’t afford to spend massive amounts, and so this cheaper option absolutely deserves a shoutout.

MemoMind AI glasses

• The AI smart glasses to watch from CES 2026

Rounding off my list are the XGMI MemoMind AI glasses. The projector brand is a newcomer to the space but has impressed testers with its useful AI features, comfy design, a lightweight display, and a decent battery life – a winning combination in the smart glasses world.

Early impressions are one thing, and tech is difficult to properly judge at a tech show. So while things certainly look positive my advice would be to wait for reviews. I remember being impressed by smart glasses at events like CES and then hating them when I have to spend longer than 10 minutes with them.

At $599, the MemoMind glasses are on the cheaper end of things for display glasses, but that’s still a fair amount to shell out.

None of this is meant to be overly critical of these new specs, of course. I’ve included them on this list because of how good an impression the glasses have left early on. Just maybe keep an eye on them for the next few months to see if they can maintain that positivity before hitting ‘buy now.’

TechRadar is extensively covering this year's CES, and bringing you all of the big announcements as they happen. Head over to our CES 2026 live news page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.

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Windows 11 26H1 has been confirmed to be exclusively for PCs with Arm processors – specifically Qualcomm Snapdragon chips – by a laptop manufacturer.

Windows Central reports that Asus has said its ZenBook A14 and A16 laptops, which have the new Snapdragon X2 inside, will ship with version 26H1 of Windows 11 installed around March or April. However, the ZenBook S14 and S16 notebooks emerging at around the same time which have AMD and Intel CPUs will run with Windows 11 25H2 (the current version of the OS).

Microsoft told us late last year that version 26H1 will include "platform changes to support specific silicon" and that it wasn't an update for 25H2, leading to speculation that it'd be a specific release just for Snapdragon laptops.

This is now effectively confirmed, though not directly by Microsoft yet, it should be noted.

What this means is that Windows 11 26H1 is being built specifically for these Arm PCs with underlying changes to support the new Snapdragon X2 processors from Qualcomm.

In other words, there are no new features with version 26H1, with not a sprinkling of AI in sight (ahem). There'll just be a bunch of tinkering under the hood – all stuff you won't actually see – to ensure that Snapdragon X2 chips run fine with Windows 11. It's all about ironing out wrinkles that may trip the X2 silicon up, as well as applying performance enhancements for these CPUs.

None of the contents of this update will be necessary for x86 CPUs (AMD and Intel), so they won't get 26H1. Instead, Microsoft will work on 26H2 and adding new features there, which all Windows 11 PCs – Arm, AMD, and Intel – will receive later this year (in the same timeframe that the big annual update is normally released, around September to October).

Analysis: here's hoping 'Bromine' won't be as volatile as its namesake

As Windows Central points out, the new underlying platform for Windows 26H1 is codenamed Bromine. You may recall that Windows 11 24H2 first arrived on Arm PCs, too, in mid-2024 – before its general release to all computers later that year – and it came atop a new platform codenamed Germanium.

So, what Microsoft is doing now mirrors the release of the original Snapdragon chips in 2024, whereby an early version of the OS is being deployed – with no new features, just those platform changes underneath – to ensure these laptops work well. The only difference is we have an 'H1' release this time around (presumably because it's so early in the year, or maybe just for better differentiation).

There's nothing much to see here, in short, but one alarm bell is ringing for me. If you recall, Windows 11 24H2 came with a whole load of bugs, and it was my personal theory that the switch to Germanium underneath, and the ton of adjusting and tweaking therein, could be one reason for the avalanche of glitches that crawled forth after that release.

I am seriously hoping we don't get a repeat performance of this with Bromine, considering Microsoft is again messing about with the guts of its desktop OS. However, at least this time around Microsoft is merely refining what it already has in place for Arm silicon, and it's not going to be as much of an effort as implementing Germanium was. So in theory, there's far less in the way of vines here that Microsoft could trip on or become entangled with.

Theories are great, of course, until they're put into practice, and we shall see how that shakes out, but the point remains: a platform shift like this carries risks in terms of unwanted side-effects. Forgive my pessimism, but Microsoft can make a simple change like bringing dark mode to File Explorer result in a persistent, seriously irritating and jarring flashbang bug. Or a straightforward monthly update can entirely break Task Manager so it doesn't actually close anymore.

Bromine should not be a problem in the grand scheme of things, but neither should those bugs have been, and others besides.

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I sat with company CEO Will Wang, who handed me a stylish and surprisingly light pair of Even G2 glasses ($599, prescription extra) that reminded me of the spectacles I once donned to look more like Stanley Tucci on Halloween.

As I turned them over in my hands, there was little indication that these weren't your typical glasses. The frames and even stems were thin. The only indication that these glasses were something more was the pair of pill-shaped protrusions at the end of each stem (they sit right behind your ears when you wear the glasses) and, when viewed at the right angle, a hint of an embedded waveform display smack in the middle of one lens.

Wang, who used to work for Apple and worked on the Apple Watch team, told me the Even G2 do not have much on-board computing power and instead rely on your smartphone for connectivity, heavy computing, and AI processing (or delivering some AI requests to the cloud).

There are no cameras on the frames; instead, the focus is on the waveform screen delivering utility to the wearer. Control is accomplished by using those touch-sensitive bulbs on the back end of the stems (mostly taps, swipes, and long-presses).

I was anxious, though, for a test drive, so as Wang continued to list off the features, I put on the frames. Initially, since they weren't set up for my prescription, the bright display was blurry, so I decided to put them on top of my own glasses – I'm not sure if this arrangement would have worked as well if the Even G2 frames weren't so light.

I was immediately shocked at the sharpness of the monochrome screen. Text and interface elements are a brilliant green, which gives the heads-up display the look of the highest-resolution CRT display ever.

The waveguide technology can make it look like you're viewing an up-to 40-inch screen floating in front of you.

Live translation, navigation, and more

While the Even G2 have no cameras to support gestures, you can pair them with the optional Smart Ring R1 ($249), which duplicates the gesture control interface found on the back end of the smart glasses (yes, it also does health tracking).

Wang started talking to me in Chinese, and I could read the real-time translation clearly without losing sight of Wang. While the translation is handled on the phone, the Even G2 do have some onboard processing to handle the audio processing, noise reduction, display management, and communication with your smartphone.

Next we tried turn-by-turn navigation. Even though the monochrome display does not produce a colorized and highly detailed map, I could see the arrow representing me and my orientation alongside my directions. When I turned my head, the frames picked up the direction and shifted my arrow accordingly.

The glasses support notifications and interface with your favorite LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

I found navigating the interface by using the touch-sensitive bulbs behind my ears simple, and the clarity of the interface removed any possible confusion.

Perhaps because the Even G2 keep the adornments to a minimum, battery life is claimed to be strong, with Even Realities promising up to two days from a full charge.

Obviously, Even Realities is not the only smart glasses company working toward lighter, better-looking, and longer-lasting smart display glasses, but most of those glasses, especially the more exciting ones with full-color displays and embedded cameras, still have that extra bulk, especially in the stems, and usually shorter battery life. These are much more like secret smarts, and without the potential privacy issues revolving around always-on-your face cameras.

The Even G2 are not cheap, and the Ring adds hundreds more to the price (as does the cost of a prescription); but I came away thinking that Even Realities is on the right track, and that wearables competitors could learn a thing or two from the company.

Some Windows 10 users are already making the leap to Linux – perhaps because their PCs can't run Windows 11 – and a new project may spark further enthusiasm for the alternative OS (as SteamOS has certainly already done on the gaming front).

The Register reports that a new Linux distro has a very bold idea, in that it's not just aiming to be Windows-like as some distributions do, but to actually be the Windows desktop environment running on top of the core of Linux.

It's called Loss32 (a pun on the 'Win32' API) and it's the brainchild of a Japanese developer, Hikari no Yume, who put forward the idea at the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (in Germany at the end of last year).

The central concept is described by the developer as follows: "A dream of a Linux distribution where the entire desktop environment is Win32 software running under WINE. A completely free and open-source OS where you can just download .exe files and run them, for the power user who isn't necessarily a Unixhead, or just for someone who thinks this sounds fun."

What you'll essentially have is a Windows interface running via WINE (not the alcoholic drink, but a runtime environment for running Windows apps natively on Linux) sat on top of the Linux kernel.

This is markedly different from current Linux efforts on the Windows front, which include Linux distros that are capable of running Windows apps – it goes much further. Ultimately, Loss32 is the whole kaboodle of Windows – File Explorer and so forth – sat on top of Linux.

It's also distinct to ReactOS, although this is a similar idea in terms of being 'Windows without Microsoft'. However, the developer notes: "ReactOS tries to reimplement the Windows NT kernel, and that has always been its Achilles heel, holding it back from a hardware compatibility and stability standpoint.

"The Loss32 concept is to achieve a similar-feeling end result to ReactOS, but built on a more usable foundation, using components known to work well (the Linux kernel, WINE, everything that glues those together, and a sprinkling of ReactOS userland niceties)."

The developer has promised that an initial proof-of-concept for the distro will arrive at some point in January 2026, so in the next few weeks, but obviously there's a long road ahead from there to any possible fruition for this project.

Analysis: lossy impression

In short, Loss32 would be just like using a Windows PC, except you'd actually be running a Linux distro (underneath, though you wouldn't know that – well, hopefully, and I'll come back to that point in a moment).

In theory, that would mean Windows without any of the Microsoft nonsense such as telemetry (data on your system being piped back to the company's servers), nag screens and so on. And given that Loss32 is still actually Linux, you could run Linux apps on this OS if you wanted, as well.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that (it never is). The trouble is that the actual implementation of Windows elements could be flaky running via WINE, and glitchy or sluggish. As the developer acknowledges, it has a "lot of unfortunate rough edges that people only tolerate because they use WINE as a last resort".

Although of course, some folks will point out that Microsoft's native implementation of the interface in Windows 11 is flaky anyway, and in some ways, they have a very good point (cough, File Explorer, cough).

At any rate, there would be a lot to hammer out with this project to say the least, and as for the potential arrival timeframe for a finished distro, the developer's curt comment is: "God only knows." However, the hope is that the development of Loss32 itself, a "desktop environment where everything runs in WINE will stimulate making WINE better for everyone, whether they're going to use this project or not".

Loss32 is more of a distant curiosity than anything else for now. But the fundamental idea – and the gathering momentum behind Linux, driven of late by SteamOS, Proton, and Valve's Steam Deck (plus other handhelds) and the incoming Steam Machine – is perhaps another seed being planted for the great Linux uprising.

Talk of the Linux revolution has been going on seemingly forever, though, inevitably leading to skepticism about whether we'll ever witness such an event. However, given the hostility towards Windows 11 currently – and the venomous potshots being taken at Microsoft due to its unrelenting push for more AI, including the trending barb that is 'Microslop' – it feels like Linux increasingly has an opportunity to mount a meaningful challenge to the dominant desktop OS.

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Dropped halfway down an otherwise run-of-the-mill CES 2026 blog post as if it were a nonchalant aside comment in Meta’s conversation, this frustrating detail means that the “early 2026” launch of the Meta specs outside of the US won’t be happening – or at least it won't be as early as we'd hoped.

Instead, Meta explains that us folks in the UK, Canada, France, and Italy (as well as other regions Meta said it would expand availability to) will have to wait while it focuses on “fulfilling orders in the US”. Worst of all for those of us outside the US, it doesn’t say when the rollout will resume.

I reached out to Meta directly, and a representative told me: “We’re really pleased with the reception of our new wearables products,” however, at this time they “don’t have anything further to share” with respect to the international expansion pause, nor its plans to improve US fulfillment of the Display glasses.

Not the start to 2026 I wanted

Meta’s pause to its international Display glasses distribution is not how I hoped 2026 would kick off in the XR field. I was genuinely looking forward to trying a pair out in the next few months, and I'm devastated that I'll need to wait for some unknown amount of time before that’ll change.

It’s surprising that Meta would tease a rollout only to go back on its word, though that would speak to the unprecedented level of interest in its Meta Ray-Ban Display specs it described in its blog post.

While impressive, the Display specs aren’t cheap – before applying extra costs like prescriptions they’ll set you back $799, over double the cost of the standard $379 / £379 / AU$599 Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses. What’s more, we know the last consumer wearable truly comparable to Meta’s Display glasses, Google Glass, was something of a flop.

With both points in mind, it’s not a surprise that Meta would be conservative about the level of interest in its new Display-equipped glasses. Sure, lots of people might book up free demo slots, but then they might instead just buy the much cheaper display-less smart specs, if they buy anything at all.

I imagine most people do still opt for one of those latter two options, but clearly far more people than expected have decided to splash out on the Meta Ray-Ban Displays. Long wait times will only frustrate customers, so it makes sense for Meta to focus on its one existing market while it ramps up production – as the alternative would be to launch them globally and end up making a much larger group of people annoyed that they can’t get the smart glasses they’ve ordered.

Of course, understanding Meta’s reasoning does nothing to alleviate the annoyance I, and I’m sure others, are feeling about the pause.

The only silver lining I can offer is that I imagine Meta won’t want to delay things for too long. With Google's Android XR glasses snapping at its heels there’s a risk that, if it holds off for too long on a global launch, one of Google's glasses partners – who are working on both display and display-less smart specs – could swoop in and steal the international market from under Meta’s nose.

We’ll have to wait and see how things progress, but I have a feeling (read: desperate hope) us non-US folks will get our hands on the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses before too long. Let's hope I'm not still saying that this time next year.

TechRadar will be extensively covering this year's CES, and will bring you all of the big announcements as they happen. Head over to our CES 2026 live news page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything we've seen.

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Microsoft's Edge browser looks like it'll be getting an AI makeover of sorts, with a redesigned interface that adopts a very similar appearance to the Copilot app – and it's a move that isn't going down at all well with those fed up of Microsoft pushing AI harder with Windows 11.

Windows Central reports that new builds of Edge in the Canary and Dev channels (the earlier testing avenues) have this revamped interface, which takes some weighty cues from the Copilot app.

That includes context menus and settings panels for the web browser that borrow colors and fonts from the Copilot app, and there's evidence of another hallmark of said app – more pronounced rounded corners – in the design, too.

As Windows Central notes, the redesigned interface elements are being applied to the browser universally, whether or not you have Copilot Mode turned on in Edge.

However, the Copilot-based New Tab Page (which rolled out to Edge last year) is still only presented to those who've enabled Copilot Mode, so others will still get the basic MSN news and Bing feed when they open a new (blank) tab in Edge.

Analysis: a Micro-slippery slope into more slop?

Okay, so we need to caveat this, as per usual with anything that's still in testing. Preview stuff doesn't necessarily make the cut for release, but that said, it's hardly surprising to see Microsoft trying to revamp Edge along these lines, as the browser already has Copilot Mode on the alternative New Tab Page (and has long been infiltrated by Copilot).

In short, it looks like Microsoft is committed to making Edge more Copilot-like as a way to try to sell its browser to more people. But of course, if you read some of the feedback about this latest attempt to expand the scope of Copilot – including from many of the people posting on this Reddit thread – it's already a seriously unpopular idea that they most definitely aren't buying into.

Not everyone hates AI with a passion (or wants to strip it all out of Windows 11), though, and perhaps Microsoft feels it needs to do something more radical to try and fire up Edge adoption. The browser has been faring badly in recent times, after all, so you might argue that it can hardly do any worse.

I'd argue back that it can indeed get worse, though, and that this is all part of a larger worrying picture. Namely that Microsoft is pushing AI ever more forcefully in Windows 11, and this Copilot-ification (ahem) of Edge may yet extend further into other apps, or even the interface of the desktop OS itself.

As I've said for some time now, I don't think the next version of Microsoft's operating system will be called Windows 12; it's likely to be Windows Copilot, or maybe Windows AI, but Microsoft seems very much all-in with the Copilot brand, and this latest redesign move is another piece of evidence as to how heavily the company intends to push with it.

The AI rebellion has been strong, though, and as the new year began we witnessed comments from Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, about how "we need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication" with AI. Just look how quickly that's led to the coining of a new term on social media: 'Microslop' (as well as folks urging everyone to Google it a few times a day, to make sure the nickname sticks).

For those unfamiliar, AI slop is a derogatory term for anything AI-related that's shoveled into a product for the sake of it, bloating things and making them slower (well, more or less – and some might argue that this pretty much encompasses every AI feature). 'Microslop', then, is a slogan that (again, arguably) fits the cap that Microsoft has chosen to don not just in relation to Windows 11, but across much of its product suite (notably with the renaming of Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365 Copilot in the past).

Where does all this end for Microsoft? Nowhere good, I'd suggest, if the approach is simply to bury its head in the sand regarding the criticisms leveled at AI, which are reaching fresh heights as 2026 begins. There's a hell of a lot of eggs going into the Copilot basket, and should these AI features (specifically agents) fail to deliver – or worse still, make a name for themselves as unreliable, or even hazardous – then that could leave the reputation of 'Windows Copilot' in tatters.

Besides this, there's very much a feeling that Microsoft is losing more of the trust of Windows users – a commodity which has already been eroded significantly since Windows 11 launched – and that the least the company can do is address the concerns of those people who are rebelling against the AI trend and rebalance its approach here, instead of berating them for standing in the way of progress.

I remember how when Windows 11 came out Microsoft was busy banging the drum around it listening to feedback from users – but that sentiment seems to have fallen by the wayside for the company when it comes to the AI gold rush.

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Reports of the death of Asus' XR plans have been greatly exaggerated, and at CES 2026 it announced a partnership with XREAL to deliver the ROG XREAL R1 AR gaming glasses – giving the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X a run for its money in the naming department.

These smart glasses are what we’ve come to know from XREAL, but this time there's a focus on Asus’ PC tech. You can connect them directly to a compatible device (such as a ROG Ally) using the USB-C cable to have that device’s display shown on a giant virtual screen (171 inches at 4m), or use the included ROG Control Dock.

This dock includes DisplayPortTM 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0 ports so you can seamlessly switch between using the glasses with your PC or your console. Asus promises this will happen with a “single click”.

As for the glasses themselves, it looks like we’re in for a treat. They boast full-HD (1,920 x 1,080) Sony 0.55-inch micro-OLED displays with a 700 nits peak brightness and 57-degree field of view. This is identical to the XREAL One Pro glasses I loved, so I imagine the XREAL R1 glasses also rely on the same optical engine which is sleek and boasts a crystal clear image better than other similar smart specs I’ve tried – I’ve contacted XREAL to clarify this however as the press release I’ve been sent doesn’t confirm my suspicion.

The big upgrade for these specs, however, is their 240Hz refresh rate – the highest so far from this kind of wearable display. This plants the specs firmly in the 'made for gamers' camp, as a buttery smooth frame rate is required for any kind of elite-level player.

You’ll also get the usual Bose-tuned audio and the electrochromically dimmable lenses we’re used to seeing from XREAL. Based on my experience that means headphones are useful but not a must-have unless you’re travelling, and these specs should be suitable to a wide range of environments.

Lastly, we know the new Asus ROG XREAL R1 AR gaming glasses will “ship globally in the first half of 2026,” but neither XREAL nor Asus has revealed how much they'll cost when they do. Based on their similarity to the XREAL One Pro specs, I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything less than $649 / £579, but we’ll have to wait and see.

And that’s not all we might have to wait and see about when it comes to Asus’ XR plans…

A sign of more to come?

The press release I received ahead of today’s Asus XREAL announcement makes no mention of “Android XR” at all – so there isn’t yet a link between Asus and the ‘new’ kid on the block in the XR space – but the degree of separation between Asus and Android XR is a lot less than it was.

That’s because XREAL has announced Android XR specs are on the way, and given the utility Android XR looks set to bring to smart glasses of all kinds I wouldn’t be surprised if Asus has some Android specs on the way – either through working with XREAL on another ROG-branded pair, or a more in-house design.

While we can only speculate, it wouldn’t be surprising if this ROG Xreal R1 product is what played a part in the divorce of Asus and Meta’s Horizon OS. For Asus, glasses perhaps make better sense as an addition to its ecosystem than a whole VR headset – existing as an upgrade for its ROG handhelds rather than a headset replacing them in some way (kinda like how the Steam Frame headset is sort of a wearable Steam Deck).

For Meta, it could be that the Asus Xreal partnership – especially due to the Xreal’s proximity to Android XR – stepped over a line where was no longer comfortable.

We likely won’t ever know why Asus and Meta split up. Instead, we can just get excited for the Asus ROG XREAL R1 AR gaming glasses, and patiently hope this is the first of many Asus smart specs.

TechRadar will be extensively covering this year's CES, and will bring you all of the big announcements as they happen. Head over to our CES 2026 news page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything from wireless TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.

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I doubt this will come as a huge surprise to many who’ve been following the technology world over the past year or so, as the Vision Pro not only launched at a hefty $3,499 in the US, but was also limited to Apple platforms. This classic walled-garden approach is nothing new for Apple, as it has worked wonders for the tech giant in the past; yet this time it looks like it hasn’t paid off.

In response to this news, Editor-at-Large Lance Ulanoff noted, “I actually thought they cut back production last year, but maybe they imagined the M5 upgrade would make a big difference. (Narrator: It did not.).”

And I was in a similar thought boat to Ulanoff, as I also felt there had not been much chatter around the Vision Pro or visionOS last year, and I can’t really recall seeing anyone actually use the mixed reality headset.

In many ways, it’s a pity, as you’ll see in our Apple Vision Pro review, the technology in the headset is rather impressive. Equally, it did give the impression of a first-generation device aimed more at developers than a gadget for consumers, and thus a headset destined for a second generation, likely stripped back of some of the most advanced tech but given a more palatable price. This didn’t happen.

That’s not to say Apple’s work in augmented and mixed reality is over, as the Cupertino company currently has a few Vision Pro-centric jobs posted. But these appear to be more software-based, and I’d bet that whatever’s next for Apple’s AR won’t involve a three-grand headset.

Still a niche

Sadly, I think virtual reality is still a somewhat niche proposition, with augmented reality being more of a feature people might use in phone apps – think Pokémon Go – than with headsets. And cost is clearly a big factor, with our selection of the best VR headsets mostly looking at more affordable systems; the Meta Quest 3 being the standout.

And another sad point is, I’ve seen this before with the PlayStation VR 2. A fantastic virtual reality headset stuffed with smart tech and a couple of very impressive games, yet it failed to galvanize the vast amount of PS5 owners, with one of the core reasons surely down to its launch price being the same as an actual launch PS5.

I want nothing more than to see VR, AR, and mixed reality really become something special and widespread. But until price, accessibility, and software experiences can be refined and opened beyond the Meta Quest, I don’t think that future will crest the horizon.

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A popular tweaking tool designed to debloat Windows 11 has a new version that has some fresh powers to strip out AI features from the OS.

Neowin reports that version 2.4 of FlyOOBE is now out and the headline change is the improved detection of AI features across Windows 11 and fresh additions in terms of removing those abilities.

On the GitHub page for FlyOOBE, the developer explains that the tool now boasts "optional deep cleanup capabilities via external tooling such as RemoveWindowsAI".

The developer also references Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's quote that "we need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication", and says that they agree with that sentiment – but that Windows 11 users still deserve a choice about whether AI features are in the OS, or not.

After all, if you don't use them, you may not want those extra bits and bobs hanging around in the background of Windows 11, and utilities like FlyOOBE give you the opportunity to remove AI extras (and other functionality in the OS that you may regard as bloat).

If you're wondering about the name of this software, 'OOBE' refers to the 'out of box experience' or Windows 11 setup, as this utility lets you change how the operating system is configured in a bunch of ways.

Analysis: pro-choice not anti-AI

The developer further explains that this is about being a "pro user choice" and not anti-AI, but notes that the name of the new AI debloating controls is now officially 'Slopilot', which is either a reference to removing AI slop, or Copilot features that 'slow' your down PC (or possibly both).

At any rate, the new AI removal features are mainly leveraged by RemoveWindowsAI (and presumably other unnamed third-party elements), which is a separate tool made by Zoicware (and also available via a GitHub download). Our sister site Tom's Hardware has put that utility through its paces in the past, and found it to be useful for easily disabling a bunch of AI features in Windows 11.

That said, I'd still pause for thought before diving into this kind of endeavor. Any third-party software needs to be regarded with some caution, even if it's been well-used (and FlyOOBE has some 2.5 million downloads to date, the developer informs us). There's also potential for trouble down the line with disabling components in Windows 11 – what works fine now could prove a serious spanner in the works if it clashes with a future Microsoft monthly update.

For those reasons, unless you're really keen to get rid of as much AI as possible in Windows 11, I'd recommend putting up with it (and disabling what you can via traditional methods in Windows settings). Still, for those who want some seriously in-depth removal options – and there are clearly a lot of folks in that particular boat, judging from the popularity of this kind of software – these AI debloating tools do a good enough job by all accounts.

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Windows 11's performance does not come off at all well in a new comparison test that pits six different versions of Microsoft's desktop OS against each other – although it doesn't do so in a very fair way.

Tom's Hardware noticed the suite of tests run by YouTuber TrigrZolt (see the clip below), and the basic premise is quite flawed – and I'll come back to why later (although it's rather illuminating to compare Windows 11 to 10 in some respects, and I'll return to that point, too).

At any rate, first of all, let's look at the tests themselves, which were carried out on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11 (using the latest, or final, versions in all cases, as you'd expect).

They were run on the same model of laptop, with a bank of six old Lenovo ThinkPad X220 notebooks being used, and this is the major problem with this particular round of testing, as the YouTuber acknowledges (saying this testing is more about 'historic' perspective rather than practicality).

This laptop has an Intel Core i5-2520M CPU and a 256GB hard disk (not an SSD), with 8GB of RAM, and the notebook isn't officially compatible with Windows 11 (but can still be fudged to run the OS, of course).

As noted at the outset, Windows 11 performs pretty badly across most of the tests thrown at these laptops, which are run simultaneously across the different notebooks – you can see some tests, like bootup speed, being performed in real time, while others, like the battery-life test, are sped up.

Speaking of bootup, this is one metric where Windows 11 comes dead last, and even when the desktop does finally appear, the taskbar is notably missing (as it's still loading in). Windows 8.1 is actually the fastest OS to boot.

Windows 11 is also in last place when it comes to the memory that these operating systems consume, due to its larger complement of background processes. The same is true of the battery test, where the Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 11 died first. (Windows XP was victorious here, although the difference was minor, just a couple of minutes – all the OSes lasted for just over an hour).

In the video-editing test (using OpenShot), Windows 11 came last, too (although the caveat here is that Windows XP and Vista couldn't run this editor). When testing app opening speeds, TrigrZolt found that Windows 11 again came last for firing up Paint (which was notably slower than all other Windows versions), and also File Explorer (that's notoriously sluggish with Windows 11).

Windows 11 did better in some tests, such as storage (the drive space that the operating system consumes, including its default apps), where Microsoft's newest OS ranked fourth (Windows XP wins here, which isn't surprising as it's so lean). Also, in one of the web-page loading tests, Windows 11 came third (but was last in the other one, loading Google's search page).

Windows 11 was nippy in the file transfer test (copying a large ZIP file from a USB stick) as well, finishing second here (it was only a fraction slower than Windows 10 – in fact, it was pretty much a dead heat).

Check out the full range of tests in the video below if you want to see for yourself, before I dive into my analysis.

Analysis: bleak, yet unfair – but Microsoft should still take note

A bleak picture is painted of the general performance prowess of Windows 11 across many fronts here, but as I've mentioned there are hefty caveats. The most obvious sticking point here is that it's not fair to use a laptop that doesn't meet the minimum hardware requirements for an OS, which is the case for this Lenovo notebook and Windows 11.

Those requirements are there for a reason, whether or not you believe Microsoft was right in pushing steeper specs for Windows 11. A PC needs to meet this minimum spec to provide a responsive and reasonable enough experience with Windows 11, and if it doesn't, you can't then complain: 'Hey, look how slow all this runs'. Because Microsoft already told you it'll be a subpar experience with those system requirements.

Some of the app benchmark choices also skew things against Windows 11, such as Paint, which is a far heftier app in the modern OS than it used to be (in other words, a particularly beefed-up default app was chosen here). As does the use of a hard drive, which is ancient tech, really, for a primary system drive these days – any contemporary PC has an SSD.

In short, the design of this suite of tests shows off the worst of Windows 11 in many respects, and the best of a much leaner OS from way back in the day like Windows XP. As Tom's Hardware points out, a better test would be to compare these operating systems running on hardware relevant to their era (so Windows 11 is at least installed on a laptop that meets its minimum spec); although arranging and balancing that alternative test wouldn't be easy, of course.

Furthermore, this testing isn't without merit. It does point out relative shortcomings, such as the slow loading of Paint and File Explorer in Windows 11, or other performance hiccups, and how Windows 10 does better in many ways. That said, a lot of those pain points are to do with Microsoft's choices to beef up Windows 11 and its apps, which again, must be taken into consideration – Microsoft's newest OS does a lot more than the older versions in terms of features and functionality.

Also, the comments on this YouTube video should prove valuable guidance for Microsoft, should the company choose to peruse them. Accusations of Windows 11 being bloated, amongst complaints about telemetry data and background monitoring ('spying' is the term used), are repeated themes.

And there's definitely room for improvement with Windows 11's general performance on the desktop – particularly in the case of File Explorer, which has been a longstanding beef with Microsoft, not to mention the company overly focusing on AI in more recent times at the expense of the OS fundamentals.

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In a world of smart glasses that can listen and speak to you, show you new worlds, and provide information on top of your world, Xreal's brand of display glasses is almost quaint. They're not smart. There's no effort to bring in information from the outside world or redefine how you see the real world. Put simply, this is a virtual 200-inch screen in your backpack, bag, or pocket that you can put on at any moment to enjoy a movie, gaming, or even a much larger laptop work screen.

Xreal, in fact, delivers this niche capability better than most and, with the new Xreal 1S, offers greater clarity, a wider view, and a better price than ever before.

From a practical perspective, Xreal 1S is a wearable display that uses impressive passthrough technology to take the display feed from almost any display-laden device that offers USB-C output and project it in front of your eyes on a pair of prisms backed by high-resolution Sony Micro-OLED displays.

There's no power source; inside the lightweight frames are powered by the connected device. There is virtually no setup beyond donning the frames and connecting your device.

Instead of fancy gesture and gaze control, you still control your external device as you would without the Xreal 1S. You use the touchscreen on your phone, the keyboard and mouse on your laptop, and joysticks on your gaming devices.

The Xreal 1S brings a handful of important upgrades, including brighter screens (now 700 nits, up from 600 nits on the Xreal One), higher resolution (was 1080, now 1200), and a slightly wider field of view (was 50-degree, now 52-degree FoV).

Nestled under some settings in the new eyewear is a new Real 3D capability that can turn virtually everything on-screen, including 2D photos and videos, even an interface, into a 3D landscape. It's a work in progress that, as of this writing, provides decidedly mixed results (I suspect slipstream software updates will improve it over time).

As for how the eyewear works, the Xreal 1S headset is an excellent companion at home, work, or on the road (think a long flight or commute). It's quite easy to lose yourself in the immersive screen, and now, with a somewhat cheaper device, this might be the antidote to all those more expensive, immersive, and intelligent wearables. It qualifies as one of the best AR glasses I've used to date.

Xreal 1S: Price and availability

The Xreal 1S was unveiled on January 4, 2025, and is now available to order in the US and UK from Xreal.com for $449 / £399.

This is notably a $50 price reduction from the Xreal One, while enhancing several features. The Xreal 1S frames are still more expensive than the Meta AI-sporting Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen 2 ($329), but, despite their intelligence, the Meta frames do not include a pair of displays (See the Meta Ray-Ban Display for that).

Throughout this review, I also test-drove a couple of optional accessories, including the $99 Xreal Eye, a 12MP modular camera, and the Xreal Neo ($99), a battery pack and video passthrough device necessary for using the Xreal with your Nintendo Switch. While the camera is a nice-to-have and nudges the Xreal 1S toward Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses territory (it takes passable photos and fun POV videos), the Neo is a must-have if you want the Nintendo Switch virtual big-screen experience.

• Value: 4/5

Xreal 1S: Design

• Wired USB-C connection
• Lightweight – just 84 grams
• Auto-dimming shades

The benefit of the Xreal 1S not being stuffed with technology and battery power is immediately obvious. It's a light, almost stylish piece of eyewear that doesn't weigh heavily on the face.

At a glance, it might be easy to mistake them for a large-ish pair of sunglasses. The flexible stem does get a bit bigger than your standard ones to house microphones, Bose speakers, and, on one side, control and volume buttons.

The frames rest comfortably on your nose with a sort of floating bridge. Xreal provides three sizes of nose pads. I was able to stick with the mid-sized.

Behind the dimmable lenses are a pair of thick prisms that aim the Sony Micro OLED displays, which sit horizontally at the top of each lens, at each eye.

I wear glasses, and since I can't put contacts in my eyes, I needed the optional $99 prescription insert from Honsvr. It's pretty easy to attach the prescription lens's lightweight frame to the main Xreal 1S housing: you just have to pop out a pair of tiny rubber stoppers (I used a SIM car remover) and then stick the tiny matching stems into the newly exposed holes. Once my prescription was firmly in there, it never shifted or fell out.

The good news is that the inserts do not push the frames any further from your face (they're already further away than your standard eyewear). If there's one downside to my inserts, it's that the Xreal 1S already looks a little odd when viewed from the side. Now I have another set of lenses in front of my eyes.

Without a companion system, the Xreal 1S is just an inert pair of awkward-looking glasses.

On the back end of one stem is a USB-C port that accepts one side of the roughly, included 4 ft woven cable (the Xreal 1S also ships with a case and cloth for cleaning). The other end plugs into your device of choice. As I mentioned earlier, there's no external battery. Plugging the Xreal 1S into, say, your laptop automatically powers up the glasses.

I also added the optional Xreal Eye modular 12MP camera. Like the subscription lenses, I had to remove a rubber plug before inserting the camera at the peak of the bridge. The camera is useful for capturing decent photos and videos (stored locally, you offload them by plugging the frames into a device and switching to transfer mode). The placement of the camera dead-center on the frames may make them less than welcome in some social situations.

Overall, these are relatively low-key digital frames that won't draw much attention at the office, on a plane, in a train, or at home. They are not for deep immersion of walking about and will draw the occasional stare, but are otherwise well-built for their purpose, and even with a cable running out of the back of one stem, they never feel heavy or uncomfortable to wear.

• Design score: 4/5

Xreal 1S: Performance

• 1200p, 120Hz image at 700-nit brightness
• Works with almost any USB-C device with a screen
• Good Bose audio

As I mentioned, there's minimal setup to use these display glasses. All you need is a device with a screen and a USB-C port that supports video output.

After donning the Xreal 1S, I plugged the other end of the cable into my MacBook Pro 14-inch running an M5 chip.

Inside the Xreal 1S is the X1 chip that handles its video processing duties as well as spatial awareness that allows me to either fix the virtual screen in place or let it follow my gaze.

As soon as I plugged into the frames, they powered up (yes, they draw power from the host system), and within seconds, I saw an extended screen; the system does not instantly present you with the Mac's main desktop. Instead, my MacBook Pro saw the Xreal 1S as another display. I was then able to use the Mac to arrange my displays so that the Xreal 1S virtual display was stacked above my laptop display.

After that, I could use the mouse to move windows onto that screen. Because the Honsver prescription inserts only had my near-vision prescription and not the far-vision one to match my progressive eyeglasses, I could not effectively see and use the laptop keyboard while wearing the Xreal 1S.

That's okay, though, it's with entertainment and social content where the Xreal 1S's virtual display really shines.

I started my entertainment journey by plugging the lenses into the new Lenovo Legion Go S, where I played Spider-Man Remastered.

As I held the portable game platform in my hand and used the Legion's joysticks to play, I marveled at the large, clear, and colorful virtual display. Not only is the 1200p screen sharp, but the motion is perfectly smooth thanks, in part, to the 120Hz refresh rate, and there is effectively zero lag time (it's been measured at 3ms latency). Even in bright spaces, the now 700nit displays held fast, looking just as bright and solid, almost as if I were in a darkened theater. The Bose speakers delivered clear, crisp, and relatively loud sound to my ears, and I quickly lost myself in the gameplay. If you plan on wearing these while, say, on a flight, I would suggest you use earbuds (they'll still pull audio from the host system) so you don't disturb your seatmates.

The Xreal 1S offers two view styles: one fixes the big, virtual screen in place, and if you look away, the display remains anchored in space (this is the extent of the system's spatial capabilities). The other option is to let the screen follow you. Xreal smartly made sure that the screen follows with a smooth lag so that you never feel even a hint of motion sickness.

Switching between these screen modes is easy. You just single-press the control button to anchor the screen or let it move with your gaze. I generally found that I like fixing the screen in place. If you choose the anchored view and you can't see all of the screen, you can long-press the button to realign the view.

There's also the ability to move the screen further away or closer to you, or enlarge os shrink the virtual screen by inch increments. Doing so, though, means accessing the Xreal 1S's slightly confusing menu system. To access the menu, you double-press the control button under the left-hand stem and then press one side of the volume, which also doubles as menu navigation. You can choose to make the screen quite large, but then you're looking all around the 52-degree FoV to see everything. I'd suggest always keeping the four screen corners in full view.

It's through the volume button that you access the lens darkness control. I made it full darkness for a more immersive feel, which is especially useful when watching video.

I next connected the Xreal to my iPhone. As soon as I unlocked the iPhone 17 Pro Max, my virtual screen appeared. I opened social media, including Instagram Reels and TikTok, and had a ball leaning back and flicking through posts on my phone, as the big screen floated in front of my eyes. It's worth noting here that the video feed from the phone to the Xreal 1S does not turn off your iPhone screen. So, yes, someone next to you could still see what you're viewing. You might want to lower the brightness on your iPhone screen for some degree of privacy.

I particularly enjoyed watching Netflix videos in full-screen mode and can honestly imagine myself enjoying a full, big-screen movie on my next cross-country flight.

Xreal's new Real 3D mode was in beta when I tested the glasses. It can convert any image or video (even interfaces) into 3D. Some of it looks good, but most of my early experiences with it on the iPhone 17 Pro Max were not great. Some images developed duplicate images behind them (there was me and an outline of me behind me), and others looked jagged. I'll withhold judgment on this feature until I get the final version.

Xreal 1S also works with the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, but not without a special $99 adapter, the Neo. Nintendo has blocked some third-party video adapters, but Xreal quickly updated the Neo to get around the latest block.

Neo is not just an adapter. It's also a 10,000mAh battery backup and can power the Nintendo Switch or any other device you plug into it. It even has an integrated MagSafe-style magnet if you want to attach it to the back of your iPhone.

To use the Neo, you connect it to the Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 and then plug the Xreal 1S into the Neo. The Nintendo Switch only works with the adapter in docked mode, which means you need to remove the Joy-Cons. After that, it's another great experience. I played Super Mario Kart on both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. It was easy to get lost in the big-screen gameplay, and, in a way, not having to hold the entire Nintendo Switch was a side benefit. To play, I just gripped the two Joy-Cons.

The Neo will work with almost any device, delivering power while also passing the video signal through. You can even plug an external power source into it, which will then let you keep using your third-party device even if it's run out of power (and the Neo is tapped, too). Just remember, the Neo will run you another $99.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Should you buy the Xreal 1S glasses?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Xreal 1S glasses

I spent a couple of weeks with the Xreal 1S using them to play games. view movies, and pursue social media. I tried them with the Neo adapter on a Nintendo Switch (1 and 2) and also connected that accessory to my iPhone.

Read more about how we test.

• First reviewed January 2026

Let's dive into the details of how Microsoft performed in 2025, starting with those key issues around Windows, and moving on to consider hardware, a glaring gaming fail, and other aspects where the company dropped the ball somewhat – plus there were some highlights, too.

Windows 10 support ran out – but there was no rush to upgrade to Windows 11

On October 14, 2025, the curtain was drawn over Windows 10, as the final official update for the last-gen operating system was deployed. But uniquely for consumers, this wasn't necessarily the end, as for the first time, everyday users were offered the chance to sign up for extended updates (along with businesses that have always had this privilege).

The Extended Security Updates (ESU) scheme was yours for the price of $30, or alternatively, you could just sync your PC settings to OneDrive and avail yourself of a year of extra support (through to October 2026) for no financial cost.

It was good to see Microsoft make this move – by which I mean the (effectively) free option for extended updates, which was implemented relatively late in the day – and it meant that quite a few folks remained on Windows 10 as a result. However, in turn this also meant that migration to Windows 11 has been more of a trickle than a torrent. (Although due to a good many older PCs not being compatible with its steeper system requirements, that was always going to be the case to an extent).

As to how many people ultimately make the move from Windows 10 to 11, that remains to be seen next year, when extended support runs out (assuming there's no further extension to the single additional year currently offered to consumers).

So, Windows 10 support ending turned out to be something of a non-event, although not entirely, as some Linux distros claimed that they were getting a substantial number of Windows defectors right off the bat. Is this the beginning of the long-predicted rise of Linux in the sphere of desktop operating systems? Let's not get carried away yet, but Valve is throwing its weight around in this area too with SteamOS (and I'll come back to why that's important shortly).

Microsoft's big push for more AI in Windows 11 – and how it backfired

It's been a turbulent ride for Windows 11 with AI this year, after Microsoft doubled down on its ambitions in this regard. 2025 was the year that the company declared its ambition to 'make every Windows 11 PC an AI PC' built on voice input, new powers for Copilot and AI agents.

And boy, did that not go down well. Not well at all, at least with many vocal members of the Windows community, and in fact we witnessed an outright rebellion of sorts. The leaders of that uprising came down hard on Microsoft for relentlessly pushing AI features that 'no one wants', and reminded the software giant of what people do want – the bugs and fundamentally wonky parts of Windows 11 to be fixed.

Did Microsoft listen? Er, not exactly – some execs even fired back at AI skeptics, and a quagmire of buzzwords ('agentic AI platforms' and so forth) continued to bubble forth from the company's marketing department and top brass (who'd clearly been primed with an AI hymn sheet to sing from).

It wasn't all bad news for Microsoft regarding AI in 2025, though. Some of the AI features which have emerged are quite nifty, like supercharged searching for Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs, which is genuinely useful. An AI agent arriving in the Settings apps could actually be quite handy, too (but is some way off that yet).

However, the overall focus on AI feels way too heavy, and just that fact makes people suspicious and wary (at least on the consumer side, anyway). There are also serious privacy worries and security concerns about AI agents in Windows 11, and rightly so – some of Microsoft's acknowledgements on the security front aren't comforting.

It's been a rocky road for AI in Windows 11 this year, and I don't see that path getting any smoother in 2026, either – unless Microsoft seriously rebalances its priorities with Windows 11 (and its PR and marketing efforts, to boot).

Elsewhere Windows 11 plodded along and still struggled with bugs

Away from AI, which was the big focus as mentioned, Microsoft didn't do a whole lot with Windows 11. And certainly not with the big annual upgrade, as there was very little to see with the 25H2 update. That said, there were some useful improvements made to Windows 11 this year, including a laudable new PC recovery option and a redesigned Start menu which made some useful changes.

However, the overriding theme was what Microsoft failed to do with Windows 11 – namely to sort out its quality assurance, keep a lid on bugs, and improve poor areas of the interface and inner workings of the OS where performance is lacking. The gaming side of Windows 11 was particularly problematic at times in 2025, as you may have noticed.

While the bugs weren't quite as prevalent as we witnessed last year, when the 24H2 update – which did make big changes to Windows 11 – caused quite some chaos, there were still too many of them in 2025. And there were some truly odd glitches – like the flashbang when opening folders, or having the interface displayed in a mishmash of two different languages somehow – which make you wonder what's going on at Microsoft, frankly.

And this is who we're trusting to get things right when it comes to autonomous AI agents working with our files inside Windows 11? You can see why people are nervous – and why Microsoft needs to get a better handle on dealing with Windows 11 bugs, and fast.

Gaming woes with Windows 11 as Microsoft treads a difficult path

As noted above, there were some nasty bugs that hit gamers on Windows 11 this year, and quite a bit of frustration therein. And in many ways, that's bad timing for Microsoft, as its operating system is coming under threat from a rival gaming platform – namely SteamOS.

As gamers on Windows 11 feel increasingly annoyed about the various bugs that are chucked their way, they are likely eyeing the progress Valve is making with SteamOS in terms of game compatibility. Moreover, in 2025 Valve changed up another gear with the revelation of its incoming new Steam Machine, which could be a genuine threat to Microsoft, aiming to make gaming in the living room as neat and convenient an experience as possible.

At the end of 2025, Microsoft acknowledged its gaming shortfalls on Windows 11 and promised (broadly) to be fixing them – but again, there's plenty of skepticism around that. And while the company made some commendable efforts to address Windows 11's issues on handhelds – where SteamOS looks so slick in comparison – these, too, fell short, and the Xbox Full Screen Experience represents more of a fudge than a fix (at least so far).

On the handheld front, Microsoft brought out new hardware, too – teaming up with Asus to release the ROG Xbox Ally X portable – and while this device had strengths, certainly, the price tag attached proved a big stumbling block and difficult to swallow.

Xbox Game Pass price hike misery

Sadly, Microsoft dropped the ball in another cost-related way on the gaming front during 2025, and that was with the Xbox Game Pass.

A substantial price increase was introduced in September 2025, when the Ultimate tier for the Xbox Game Pass was hiked to $29.99 / £22.99 / AU$35.95 per month. This was badly received (putting it mildly) and it sparked mass departures from disgruntled gamers (with so many reaching for that cancel button that Microsoft's systems crashed).

Microsoft argued that this price rise was in line with the value being added to the Xbox Game Pass in terms of additional games and extras, but many subscribers didn't feel that those moves justified anything like the increase levied – and voted with their feet.

While subscriber numbers could have suffered – and likely did, though we don't have any figures – revenue didn't, as per mid-2025 (and Microsoft's end of fiscal 25 earnings report) Game Pass annual revenue hit nearly $5 billion for the first time (including PC subscribers, that is). The apparent exodus of gamers after the price hike might rock that boat, but then again, in terms of revenue, those who've stuck with the top-tier of the service are paying a lot more.

All of this could be wrapped up in the bigger financial picture for the Xbox group and purported profit margin targets – don't forget Microsoft also axed jobs in the Gaming division to the tune of 9,000 in July 2025.

Xbox console sales crash and burn

There was more bad gaming news for Microsoft at the end of the year, as sales of its Xbox console were judged to have fallen off a cliff.

According to figures from an analyst firm aired in December, Xbox sales dropped 70% year-on-year – and while Sony didn't do well either, it didn't experience that big a drop (the PS5 was down 40%).

Of course, the Xbox has been struggling against the PS5 in the console wars anyway, and Microsoft's price hikes for its gaming hardware this year clearly didn't help.

Surface hardware didn't have quite the same impact

Last year was a big one for Microsoft's Surface division, as new Arm-based Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 offerings scored resounding home runs. Did we see a repeat of that success in 2025? Not so much.

The Surface Pro 12 felt like a downgrade from the last model in some ways – which admittedly was related to bringing the price down – and while it wasn't a bad device by any means, it failed to carry the excitement through from the last iteration.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch for 2025 made a better impression, and is without doubt a good notebook, but it can't compete with the MacBook Air 13-inch (M4) in performance terms, and loses out in the value battle against that Apple laptop.

All in all, it wasn't a bad 2025 for the Surface line-up, but it fell short of what Microsoft achieved last year.

Conclusion

It was not a good year for Microsoft. Between job losses, and unpopularity around AI, Windows 11 bugs, Xbox Game Pass and console price hikes alongside plummeting Xbox sales, as well as a (predictable) struggle to stoke migration to its newest OS, there was a lot of negativity directed towards the company this year.

In fact, I've been writing these end-of-year roundups for a long time now, and I can't recall many summaries that have been gloomier than Microsoft's report card for 2025.

Not from a consumer point of view, anyway, but here's the twist: in terms of balance sheets and shareholders, Microsoft had a buoyant 2025. The company saw the aforementioned gaming revenue high (with Game Pass), and its juggernaut cloud service tied in with AI witnessed impressive growth, justifying Microsoft's huge investments in AI – at least from a business perspective.

My worry remains that Microsoft is becoming too focused on profits and talking up AI with incessant marketing to please the shareholders, and it's forgetting about the little guys. You know, the people like you and me who use Windows 11 (or 10) on a daily basis.

I'd suggest this is a course Microsoft continues to pursue at its own peril, and I think the firm needs to remember who its grassroots customers are next year – and not just talk about improvements for Windows 11 like fixing gaming, but to actually act on them.

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But some are incredibly useful, and I've put together this list of the shortcuts I actually use day-to-day for work, browsing, and gaming.

You may already know some of them – but I'm willing to bet you'll learn at least one new trick from this article that'll save you time and Windows-fueled headaches.

I put all of them in one quick-lookup table directly below, but if you want more in-depth explanations, use cases, and bonus shortcuts, read on.

These are the 10+ Windows 11 keyboard shortcuts I can't live without…

1. Windows + .

Windows + . is an incredibly handy little timesaver that not many users know about.

If you've ever Googled 'skull emoji,' tried to find an ASCII face like '( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°),' or realized you need the link you copied to your clipboard an hour ago, this shortcut, which opens the 'Emojis and more' table for you.

It's also invaluable for those who need to use special symbols like Em dashes (—), arrows (→), and various currencies ($ or £).

Windows + V will take you straight to your clipboard history, where you can see past text you've copied with Ctrl + C, and even recent screenshots you've taken. Clipboard history is disabled by default, but Windows + V will still get you there to enable it.

2. Windows + Shift + S

If I had a dime for every time I used Windows + Shift + S, I could buy Microsoft and get rid of Copilot.

Windows + Shift + S is far better than using PrtScn for screenshots because you can choose to grab either a rectangular area of your choosing, just the active window, your entire screen (taskbar and all), or even a freeform shape.

You can also use the toolbar at the top of Windows + Shift + S to switch to screen recording, a color picker that returns Hex, RGB, or HSL values, or a text grabber that allows you to quickly copy words from images or stubborn PDFs.

Plus, once you take a screenshot, you can paste it straight into chats or image-editing software with Ctrl + V.

Screenshots taken this way will be saved to the 'Screenshots' folder by default (not Downloads!)

3. Windows + Alt + Arrow keys

If you ever need to divide your screen up into halves or quadrants – so that you can read an article on the left side of your screen and take notes on the right half, for example – you can use Windows + Alt + Arrow keys for quick cycling between them.

4. Windows + Shift + Arrow keys

This one is for the multi-display users in the audience. If you kitted your setup with two or more of the best monitors, Windows + Shift + Arrow keys is a lifesaver.

You can quickly throw a full-screen video from your left monitor to your right one without having to exit full screen, drag the video over to the other monitor, then re-enter full screen.

It's also great for productivity, allowing you to quickly move spreadsheets or documents to your second monitor.

And for gamers, if a game starts on the wrong monitor you can move it to the correct one (though sometimes this will mess with the game's display resolution).

Plus, it comes in handy when Task Manager opens behind an unresponsive app and you can't access it otherwise.

5. Alt + Tab

Most of you with skin in the Windows game will be very familiar with Alt + Tab. It's a tried and true time-saver, letting you quickly flip through open windows without having to click around.

But it's so useful that I had to include it in this list just in case someone isn't already using it – if this shortcut were to disappear I might genuinely consider switching to Linux.

You can also use Windows + Tab to see all your open windows across multiple desktops, and it's better than Alt + Tab in some cases (for example when you want to look through your open windows without constantly holding down Alt).

6. Windows + Alt + G

If you want to capture highlights of your gameplay, share funny moments with friends, or have a replay to confirm your suspicions of a cheating enemy, Windows + Alt + G is the way to go.

You'll have to enable it before you can use it though, so be sure to open Xbox Game Bar with Windows + G (you do not need to own an Xbox), click the gear icon in the top nav bar to head to settings, then click Widgets and enable 'Record in the background while I'm playing a game.'

Once enabled, Windows + Alt + G will create a clip of the past 30 seconds of gameplay and save it to your Captures folder (in Videos).

You can also choose whether it records solely game audio, or desktop audio as well (which will capture mic inputs from Discord, for example). You can also use Windows + Alt + R to start an ongoing screen recording.

7. Ctrl + Arrow keys

Ctrl + Arrow keys is great for quickly navigating text. It jumps your cursor to the start or end of a word, and can be used in combination with Shift (Ctrl + Shift + Arrow keys) to highlight entire words or lines of text at a time.

It's perfect for grabbing certain sections of text to copy and paste or delete without using your mouse or Ctrl + A, which highlights all of the text on a page or in a text input field.

If you want to highlight text letter by letter, or line by line, use Shift + Arrow keys.

8. Ctrl + F

I've saved my friends countless hours with this one. If you're searching for a name, a date, or even just a certain letter in a document or web page, Ctrl + F will do the searching for you.

After using Ctrl + F to bring up the search field, simply type in whatever you're searching for and use the arrow keys to the right of the search bar to jump directly to the text you want.

It also tells you how many times a certain word, number, or phrase appears on the page, which is useful if you're writing a paper so you can see when it's time to sub in a synonym. I just used Ctrl + F to see that this is the first time I used the word 'paper' in this article (it just jumped to two).

9. Ctrl + R

Ctrl + R refreshes the browser tab you're currently on, which is great for getting fresh results on limited-time sales events, live-blog pages, and YouTube recommendations, among other things.

10. Ctrl + Shift + T

Ctrl + Shift + T will open recently-closed tabs on browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera.

This is a huge time-saver if you close a tab only to realize you need to look at it again, or if you accidentally close the entire browser and need to get your tabs back.

It reopens tabs in the order they were closed, so if you need multiple tabs open again just use Ctrl + Shift + T multiple times.

Got a favorite Windows 11 shortcut of your own? Let me know in the comments below!

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Let's kick off by addressing these points. PowerToys is a collection of utilities from Microsoft itself – an official add-on pack, if you will, for Windows 11 (and 10) that brings all sorts of extra functionality into the mix.

While it is true that PowerToys is aimed at power-users, and it can get pretty intense with some features, it's not just for hardened PC enthusiasts who feel alive when diving into advanced settings and tweaking the BIOS to get the most from their system.

There are some nifty tools in PowerToys for everyday users – people scared of the BIOS, even – that can make a real difference to their daily computing experiences. Having never used PowerToys before, I've just taken the plunge and picked out the best utilities that are easy to use and add powerful functionality to Windows.

I'm expecting these tools to remain on my Windows 11 and 10 PCs to make my life easier in 2026 in a myriad of ways – and there's no reason why you can't benefit from them, too. Here's what you need to do, and which tools I recommend the most after my experimentation with PowerToys.

First things first: install PowerToys

PowerToys is a suite of tools from Microsoft that's compatible with Windows 10 (version 2004 – the May 2020 Update – or newer) and Windows 11. You'll need to download the installer from the Microsoft Store, or there's also a download from GitHub. I'd advise most people to keep things simple and get PowerToys from the Microsoft Store, as that way they'll receive automatic updates (with the Universal Windows Platform or UWP version).

GitHub offers a traditional app install (Win32 rather than UWP), and if you're more confident in your computing knowledge you can go that route – just make sure you choose the correct version for your PC. You want the 'per user' installation, of the x64 variety for a traditional AMD or Intel PC, or Arm64 installer for a laptop with an Arm chip like Qualcomm's Snapdragon X.

When the installer is downloaded, double-click it to run the setup process (which involves another download) as normal, and follow any instructions presented – although you shouldn't have to do anything much except wait. When the installation is finished, the 'welcome' introductory panel will pop up, and the PowerToys Home page, too.

You can read the welcome info, which introduces the various tools – the PowerToys themselves – complete with illustrative video clips of how they work. One thing to note here is that in the 'General' tab of the welcome window, PowerToys may flag up shortcut conflicts – click on the button to see them (if there are any). If they pertain to a PowerToys utility that you're planning on using, you may have to redefine the key combo for that PowerToy, or the Windows shortcut it's clashing with (but generally the latter can't be remapped). Click the pen icon next to the shortcut combo to redefine it.

After that, you can head to the Home panel where there's a list of all the PowerToys utilities on the right. Clicking any given ability will show you more details on it, along with extra options (Image Resizer, for example, can have custom preset image sizes), and it'll show you the shortcut key combo to use the tool (which you can change if you wish, using the pen icon as mentioned). Don't worry too much about the options, which can be complex for some tools – if you're not sure, just skip over them and leave them at their defaults.

If the slider is on for any given feature in the list of tools, that utility is enabled and sitting in the background waiting to be used – and if it's off, obviously enough, that tool is dormant and can't be used. By default, there are seven tools switched on (in PowerToys version 0.96.1 as downloaded from the Microsoft Store at the time of writing).

Each tool will use a bit of your system resources if it's operational and waiting in the background, so you definitely don't want to go switching them all on. A lot of these are for developers or power-users only – such is the nature of PowerToys – and you won't need to go near many of these features. Having them on would be a waste of RAM, CPU and other resources. However, as I said at the outset, some of these utilities are very handy for general everyday users like you and me, and that's what we're focusing on here.

So, I'd advise you to approach PowerToys like this: firstly, switch off all the tools that are on by default. Then enable the ones I've highlighted below, which are the lean and useful abilities that'll make Windows 11 (or 10) a better place for everyone (at least in my opinion). If you don't like the sound of any particular choice, though, you don't have to use it.

I'm going to make this set of core recommendations, and follow up with a final section on more niche tools that some folks may want to use, depending on their exact needs or PC setup. So, let's kick off with…

1. PowerToys Run

If you use just one tool with PowerToys, it should be Run. This is a quick launcher for Windows, but it effectively acts as an impressive replacement for Windows search.

Summon Run by pressing the Alt key + spacebar and you get a panel that you can type in, one that acts as a more performant and honed search process compared to Windows 11 (or 10). It'll bring up files and apps on your PC in a jiffy.

Note that if you want to just search for files on your PC, use a '?' ahead of the search query – so to find any files on your drives with, say, TechRadar in the name, type the following:

? TechRadar

You can just type the word, of course, without the question mark, but you will also get other non-file results (apps and so forth).

What's great about Run is that it works better than Windows default search in terms of accuracy, and it's cleaner – and faster. Indeed, for some people running older PCs where Windows might take some time to load, say, the Start menu in order to fire up an app, hitting Alt key + spacebar will see the Run panel pop up much more quickly, letting you start the app you're after in a swifter fashion.

Note that as Microsoft now advises in PowerToys, Run is being upgraded to Command Palette, another utility which may eventually take over from this tool. But for now, I'd stick with Run as a super-lean search feature, because Command Palette is still something of a work in progress, and has complexity that you may not need.

2. Peek

This one's simple: press the spacebar with a file selected and you'll get a sneak peek of a preview without having to open it.

For example, choose a photo, hit space, and a preview window showing the picture will spring up without having to wait for it to load in your photo editing app. Nifty.

3. Keyboard Manager

This lets you easily remap a key to be another key (or to trigger a keyboard combo shortcut).

Say you have a compact keyboard that has no Print Screen key (as it was removed to save space), so for taking a screenshot with Print Screen, you're required to use a function key combo that you struggle to remember and isn't very convenient. What you can do instead is remap a key you don't use to be Print Screen.

To do this, just fire up Keyboard Manager in PowerToys, go to 'Remap a key' and click the 'Select' button. Now press the key you want to redefine for screenshot duties – say the backtick (grave accent) key, above Tab, which is rarely used by many folks – then in the dropdown menu under 'Send Key/Shortcut' select Print Screen. When you press backtick now, you'll get a screenshot.

If you want to do another key remap, you can click the 'Add key remapping' button and define a second choice, and so on. To delete any key remap you don't want anymore, click the bin icon on the right.

4. Image Resizer

This is a useful addition to File Explorer's context-sensitive (right-click) menu within Windows 11's folders.

With it turned on, when you right-click on any image file you'll see the ability to 'Resize with Image Resizer' – select that and choose from the preset sizes, and voila, you have an instantly larger (or more compact) picture file. This can be quite the timesaver as it means you don't have to mess around in an image editor (or wait for it to load).

5. Light Switch

Turn on Light Switch (ahem) in PowerToys to use its Mode ability, which lets you put a timer on dark mode for Windows. Choose 'Fixed hours' to set the time you want dark mode to automatically come on, and then turn off, so you don't have to change it manually.

Alternatively, choose 'Sunset to sunrise' and specify your location to have your PC automatically turn on dark mode when evening rolls around, when it's needed (there's an offset timer to tweak this slightly, if required, depending on your personal preference).

This is a very handy ability macOS users have which sadly isn't present in Windows 11, and frankly, I don't understand why it isn't a default feature in Microsoft's OS. Still, you can get the benefit of it using PowerToys.

6. Text Extractor (for Windows 10 users)

Windows 11 users won't need this, as they have the same functionality present in the Snipping Tool, so they can use that instead (as PowerToys will inform you if you're running the newest Microsoft OS). However, if you're on Windows 10, Snipping Tool doesn't have text extraction.

It's a powerful feature that lets you grab text from anywhere on the screen (such as from within images). To use Text Extractor, press Windows key + Shift + T together and you'll get a crosshair – use that to draw a box around the text you want copied to the clipboard. You can then paste it into a document or wherever it's needed.

Other PowerToys you may want to play with

If you want to go a bit further with Microsoft's suite of utilities, aside from the highlights picked out above, you may also want to try the following PowerToys.

File Locksmith is a small addition that could be useful. Have you ever tried to delete (or move) a file in Windows and been told that you can't because it's being used by an unspecified program? The 'Unlock with File Locksmith' option in the right-click menu of the file will tell you what process is using it, so you can end that process (or potentially multiple processes), allowing you to perform the file operation.

Find My Mouse (one of a few mouse utilities) lets you find your mouse cursor should you lose it (this does happen, trust me, if you haven't ever experienced it). Turn on 'Enable Find My Mouse' and you can shake the mouse to have the cursor highlighted, or press the (left) Control key twice (that keyboard method can be redefined).

Also, on the subject of that peripheral, there's Mouse Without Borders which lets you use your mouse (and keyboard) across multiple PCs (when you link them using a security key in PowerToys). This is a bit more complex – find the instructions here – but it's a smart feature if you do need it.

One final recommendation is FancyZones, which is a tool that some Windows users swear by for multi-tasking, allowing you to build your own custom layouts to easily snap app windows into.

This goes beyond Snap Layouts and there's a huge amount of depth and customization you can tinker with in terms of how FancyZones works. This won't be for everyone by any means, and like Mouse Without Borders, this is going to be more of a niche proposition.

By all means check out some of the other tools in PowerToys yourself, but bear in mind that many are pitched at more complex use cases and really are designed for power-users.

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On top of that, there's been a hotbed of controversy surrounding Microsoft's renewed drive to get more AI in Windows 11, with quite the rebellion underway against this goal, at least in some quarters.

While AI isn't exactly the problem in itself, it is a big issue with Windows 11 in some ways, along with the constant bugs, frustrating performance pitfalls, and a couple of other major headaches with the operating system. Let's dive in and explore what Microsoft badly needs to fix with Windows 11 in 2026, at least as I see it.

1. Fix overall sluggishness in Windows 11

It's no secret that Windows 11 is sluggish in some respects. This is something you'll unfortunately encounter in everyday use of the OS, when working with basic parts of the Windows 11 interface – like File Explorer (the folders on your desktop that contain your files).

Microsoft has admitted itself that Windows 11 suffers from slow performance levels and kicked off an initiative to collect more data and feedback on these issues back in July 2025. Since then, we have seen some improvements ushered in, thankfully, such as a fix for some of the poor performance associated with File Explorer (albeit this hasn't been implemented in the most satisfactory way, but it does work).

There's still plenty of work to do, though, and File Explorer remains laggy in some ways, particularly the right-click (context-sensitive) menu which can be unresponsive and slow to actually appear after the click action is taken. What's particularly galling is that File Explorer in Windows 10 runs a lot more slickly. The last-gen version of a desktop OS being quicker than the current-gen incarnation just isn't acceptable.

You need your cutting-edge platform to feel nippy across the board, and Windows 11 simply doesn't. Microsoft needs to fully resolve these performance woes, particularly with File Explorer – which, after all, represents the fundamental 'windows' you use all the time with your files – and slow search functionality.

2. Fix gaming on Windows 11

Windows 11 held considerable promise for gamers when it first launched, and the OS has provided some cool stuff to be fair, such as Auto HDR which is a definite boon. However, DirectStorage is still yet to deliver its full potential on Windows 11, remaining limited to a niche set of PC games (and being problematic with some, like Monster Hunter Wilds) – and other benefits remain thin on the ground.

More problematic than a lack of steps forward, though, are the steps backward for gamers in the form of various nasty glitches. Particularly since Windows 11's 24H2 update, there seems to have been a rash of gaming bugs that are making life miserable for those trying to enjoy the latest fast-paced shooter or strategy epic on their PC. If games aren't outright crashing, they are suffering performance hiccups of one kind or another.

Microsoft needs to do better than this in the future, and to be fair to the company, it realizes this, recently announcing its intention to fix gaming in Windows 11. This means smoothing over bugs and performance hiccups, applying tweaks and optimizations under the hood, and bringing in some new goodies too.

It's good to hear such positive noises, true, but what we need in 2026 is to see those words transformed into action – and frankly there's some doubt on the timeline in terms of how long it might take to introduce new features, given what we've seen with DirectStorage, as mentioned. There are also concerns about whether it's even too late for Microsoft to save the day against a major threat now on the horizon – namely SteamOS and Valve's new Steam Machine.

If Valve can pull off a compelling living room PC, Microsoft could be in trouble, and may start to lose serious market share to Linux (SteamOS is a Linux distro). Especially if Windows 11 continues to be flaky from time to time – too often frankly – on the gaming front. And this could be the beginning of a bigger migration to Linux, perhaps, or that's the danger.

All of this brings me neatly onto the next point on my wish-list…

3. A new QA strategy is vital

It's not just gaming bugs and interface glitches which are all too commonly introduced by Windows 11's monthly updates – we're also seeing all sorts of bizarreness of late.

Examples? Let's see, from the catalogue of oddities for 2025, how about the bug that caused Windows 11 to display half the interface in one language, and the remainder in another.

Not odd enough for you? How about the invisible password login button (that Microsoft advised you try to locate by flailing about with the mouse cursor to find the outline of the button)? Or dark mode being bugged by white flashes when opening folders, a jarring experience when working in the low-light conditions in which you'll use this mode.

How do these bugs even happen? How can something as simple as opening a folder in dark mode go so wrong? Indeed, another pearl of an example here is the problem whereby Task Manager stayed open when the app was closed, and if you opened it multiple times, every instance remained, draining the resources of the PC.

Also: why do the same bugs keep coming back, over and over and over again?

The answer is clear. Microsoft's Quality Assurance for Windows 11 isn't good enough. There's been a lot of talk about how the company changed the QA department years back, and it's never been the same since, but all that speculation aside, it's obvious that Microsoft must do better.

The software giant needs to rethink and improve its whole QA and testing process in 2026, as the continued bad press around the stream of bugs – and baffling missteps – is really damaging the reputation of Windows 11.

4. Stop talking about AI, start listening to Windows 11 users

I've written a lot about this towards the tail end of this year, but Microsoft needs to chill on its big push for AI features. I'm not saying it can't attempt to innovate, or weave more AI into Windows 11, but when doing so, Microsoft must tread very carefully – which, frankly, it isn't.

Windows 11 users are telling Microsoft to 'stop shoving AI down their throats' – a common sentiment I've seen expressed repeatedly on the likes of Reddit and other social platforms – and Microsoft keeps on relentlessly banging its PR drum for AI. Then it wonders why people are getting annoyed.

This all comes back to the previous three points in many ways, as what people are saying they really want is for Microsoft to fix the fundamentals of Windows 11 before driving forward with more AI features in numbers. Fix poor interface performance, fix the bugs, fix the niggles with gaming – all the stuff I've just been talking about is more important than AI. For consumers, anyway.

The more Microsoft goes on about AI, the more people are going to rebel. So, get your house in order around the above three points I've just made, Microsoft, and tell people you're doing that – make some promises, detail how it'll be done. And tone down the trumpeting of AI.

Wishful thinking? Well, yes, probably, as shareholders and investors are impressed by AI shininess, and maybe business organizations, too. But still, can we have more of a balance here, Microsoft? Don't forget the consumers entirely, they still represent a large chunk of Windows 11 users.

5. Get rid of the annoying adverts

Windows 11 has too many thinly veiled adverts, recommendations, suggestions, prompts, nudges, reminders, prods, and so forth. Far too many. More than Windows 10, and the last-gen OS is no slouch for irritating promotional activity itself.

This is a paid-for operating system, remember, not a freebie.

Now, I don't expect Microsoft to just go and strip them all out, or give us a system-wide kill switch to turn off all the ads (that's a joyous dream, of course, but not remotely realistic). That's not going to happen, and clearly there are metrics, telemetry and other data on users which illustrates that these work. (I guess – otherwise why would Microsoft keep on with them? Particularly the banging on about its own services).

I'd just like to see less of this promotional clutter. Granted, we have witnessed some measure of relenting lately, namely the new Start menu, where you can turn off the recommendations panel – but I'd like to see more. Strip the promos back a fair bit and get rid of the more outright adverts (like the ones for Game Pass, or notifications urging folks to buy Avowed), bringing everything back to a more tolerable level.

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In a LinkedIn post from Microsoft engineer Galen Hunt has generated a fair bit of talk after sharing his goal to "eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030" - even advertising an open position on his team to move towards this.

The role’s purpose was to "help us [Microsoft] evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft’s largest C and C++ systems to Rust" – with Hunt explaining that "powerful code processing infrastructure" has already been built.

However, the engineer has since updated his post to say "Just to clarify... Windows is *NOT* being rewritten in Rust with AI [...] My team’s project is a research project."

Project, not plan

According to the post, Hunt’s team’s mission is to "build capabilities to allow Microsoft and our customers to eliminate technical debt at scale," with AI processing infrastructure which "enables us to apply AI agents, guided by algorithms, to make code modifications at scale. The core of this infrastructure is already operating at scale on problems such as code understanding."

Although the post clarifies that this is just one team’s research, the scale of the project seems to be pretty significant; "Our North Star is '1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code'," Hunt explains, "to accomplish this previously unimaginable task, we’ve built a powerful code processing infrastructure. Our algorithmic infrastructure creates a scalable graph over source code at scale."

It is true, though, that Microsoft has initiated a shift towards the Rust programming language – spending $10 million towards making it the "1st class language" for engineering systems.

This push is mirrored in Google’s commitments, with the firm stating that "memory safety bugs in C and C++ continue to be the most-difficult-to-address source of incorrectness,” as Rust joined Java and Kotlin in the Android Open Source Project.

The software supply chain, an entire network of components, tools, and processes used to develop, build, and deliver software, has evolved into a new, very popular attack surface, granting cybercriminals opportunities to bypass standard defenses and reap disproportionately large rewards from a single compromise.

This is according to “Navigating Software Supply Chain Risk
in a Rapid-Release World”, a new in-depth report published by application security company Blackduck.

Based on a survey of 540 software security leaders, the report states that two-thirds (65%) of organizations experienced at least one supply chain attack in the past 12 months.

Compliance is key

These incidents are becoming increasingly multifaceted, with organizations reporting malicious dependencies (30%), unpatched vulnerabilities (28%), zero-day exploits (27%), and malware injections into build pipelines (14%).

The speed at which Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is being adopted in the enterprise is only making things worse. Blackduck says that almost all (95%) organizations now leverage AI tools for software development (mostly ChatGPT), but security protocols are not keeping up. Confidence in the tool is high, while actual verification is alarmingly low.

In fact, only a quarter (24%) of organizations analyze AI-generated code for things like IP, license, security, or quality risks. That, the report argues, leaves plenty of room for vulnerabilities in the supply chain, including introducing copyright-protected IP, or the exposure of sensitive API keys.

To bolster your defenses, you should carefully consider compliance. Blackduck argues that, contrary to popular belief, a compliance-first approach actually accelerates security response times.

There seems to be a clear correlation between robust compliance controls and remediation speed, and 54% of organizations using at least four types of compliance controls act on critical vulnerabilities significantly faster compared to 45% of the general respondent pool.

Furthermore, automation seems to be non-negotiable. Relying on periodic manual monitoring, which is something around 36% of respondents are currently doing, is widely considered insufficient. At the same time, organizations with automatic continuous monitoring are described as “far more effective”.

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If you're a writer of any kind – a blogger, a copywriter, an aspiring novelist or any other kind of word wrangler – you'll know how important your writing tools can be. In the analogue world I'll only write seriously with a really nice pen and creamy paper. And in the digital realm, I write exclusively in Ulysses.

I think Ulysses might be the best writing app you can get on the Mac, on your iPhone or on your iPad. It's definitely the best one for me, which is why I've been using it for ten years now. That's literally millions of words, all written in one app.

What is Ulysses and how much does it cost?

Ulysses enables you to get words out of your brain and onto the page exceptionally quickly and easily, and features a distraction-free interface that hides all the stuff you don't need so you can concentrate on your words.

It's blazingly fast. And it enables you to manage even very large projects. I'm currently writing another book with it, and I use it daily for commercial copywriting, news reporting and little snippets like writing author bios, questions for events I'm hosting and logging things I want to remember later.

It's brilliant on the Mac and on an iPad with an external keyboard, and there's also an iPhone version so you can access, edit and scribble ideas on the go.

Ulysses isn't free, but it's pretty cheap: $39.99 / £39.99 (around AU$60) for an annual plan or £5.99 / $5.99 per month (about AU$9 p/month). Students can also pick it up for $10.99 / £9.99 (or around AU$17) for six months currently.

Why this is my Homescreen Hero

Ulysses is a write-once, publish-anywhere app. It uses Markdown, a form of plain text with simple shortcuts for quickly formatting, linking and structuring documents. Markdown was also designed with speed in mind.

Because the most common shortcuts are all keyboard based – one hash symbol to make text into an H1 heading, two for H2, Command-B for bold and so on – it means I'm not constantly moving to the mouse, which my RSI-addled hands are very happy about.

Because Markdown is plain text there's very little drain on your system, so Ulysses is blazingly fast on even old Macs. Searching even massive folders is instant, and those plain text files can be opened in pretty much any text app as well as from within Ulysses.

Once you've written your words you can export them to pretty much anything in a couple of clicks: to blogging and newsletter platforms such as WordPress, Ghost, Substack and Medium; to the clipboard as plain or rich text; to Microsoft's DOCX format; in plain, rich text or Markdown format; in HTML format; as a PDF; or as an ePub.

There are plenty of templates you can use to format those file types, so for example if I'm exporting to DOCX I can go for a simple, plain template; a film script; a newspaper-style column layout and much more. And there are plenty of themes you can use to customize the way Ulysses looks. You can also tweak the interface for light mode, dark mode or a mix of both: I like to have my sidebars dark and my editing window light.

How I use Ulysses

The main interface is made up of a main editing window and three sidebars that you can hide or unhide. The very left-hand sidebar is where I organize my projects and folders – so, for example, I'm writing this in my 'Mags Etc > TechRadar' folder. It's a little thing, I know, but I love that I can also customize the sidebar icons and colors.

You can also use folders to break up projects. For example, if you're working on a book you might have separate folders to store your research, your characters' backstories and inspirations, or images of possible locations, plus the actual chapters you're writing. You can also link to external folders on your device or in the cloud.

To the right of the first sidebar there are previews of all the other documents in the current folder, so I can see (and sort or filter) all my other recent TechRadar pieces. The main window shows my words and the current word count, because that's all I need for most writing jobs.

And the sidebar on the right shows me more stats, and can be switched to show progress towards a word count or deadline, the outline of my current document, the images I'm using in the document or the links I've added.

Why I'm recommending Ulysses

To borrow Apple's slogan: it 'just works' (albeit a little bit slowly when it comes to syncing on my iPad and iPhone).

I've tried a lot of writing apps – going way back to the days of WordStar and WordPerfect – and Ulysses is the one that feels like it was made just for me. Not too simple, not too complex, not too demanding and not likely to trash tens of thousands of words and make them unrecoverable, unlike a certain app that rhymes with 'Nicrosoft Bird' once did.

The only real downside of using Ulysses for work documents is that some of my work involves dealing with tracked comments and changes, and Ulysses isn't designed to do that with third parties: you can comment on your documents and projects easily enough, but I haven't found a way to bring in, say, a client's heavily amended Word document.

So I still keep a copy of Word kicking around – but Ulysses is the app I use 99% of the time for fiction, non-fiction, commercial and corporate work.

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I am, of course, referring to the elephant in the room that is Microsoft Copilot, the AI-powered assistant that is now heavily baked into multiple aspects of not just Windows 11, but the broader range of Microsoft products as a whole. Microsoft Word, Outlook, the Edge browser, the 365 suite, and even the File Explorer (where Microsoft recently gave users the option to remove it entirely, because it was still hanging around even if you disabled AI actions in the Windows Settings menu).

Now, I’m not going to make such a bold claim as ‘Copilot is wildly unpopular’, but the AI tool has clearly proved divisive at best among users. I have no doubt there are some people who love Copilot and use it daily; I’m not one of those people, but I’m sure they do exist somewhere other than the slideshows in Microsoft’s quarterly earnings calls.

But for all the tech giant’s pandering to AI-obsessed investors, Copilot has had a rocky journey, and even three years since its original launch, has largely failed to prove itself as a tool that the majority of people want or need to use. Even AI fans prefer ChatGPT, and Microsoft’s own ‘AI CEO’ Mustafa Suleyman recently admitted that Google’s competing Gemini AI outperforms Copilot in some key areas. Frankly, things aren’t looking great.

Locked in

It doesn’t help that Copilot is largely contained within the Windows ecosystem (especially after Meta recently took steps to boot other AI tools from its platforms, though Microsoft has plans to annoy LG TV owners with it too), and Windows itself has seen no shortage of troubles lately.

This sort of parent platform focus shouldn’t be a problem in itself, but when even your own former staff are criticising your biggest product, it should be a sign that something isn’t right.

There are many reasons why Windows 10 remains very popular, with the TPM 2.0 hardware requirement for Windows 11 being a significant factor in blocking adoption, but it’s undeniable that some people - myself included - aren’t upgrading because of how bloated Windows 11 is now.

I mean, seriously; set up a new Windows laptop, and you’re met with a veritable avalanche of unnecessary software and ads for other Microsoft products. This is further evidenced by the existence (and surprising popularity) of Tiny11, the lightweight, AI-free alternative to Windows 11. I won’t outright recommend it here, since it isn’t officially supported by Microsoft and therefore has potential security and compatibility issues, but I can certainly understand why its proponents like it.

Taking a scalpel to all the Copilot nonsense I’m never going to use is an appealing notion.

Do people really like Copilot?

Let’s look at the numbers for a moment. According to Microsoft’s own figures, there are roughly 700 million Windows 11 users worldwide, accounting for a little over half of all Windows users. Conservative estimates for Windows 10 use put the total number of systems at 650 million. A report from Business of Apps puts the count of active Copilot users (as in, the number of people who use it regularly) at 33 million as of November 2025, while tech newsletter Newcomer claimed the number of weekly users was 20 million earlier this year. Meanwhile, ChatGPT has been averaging weekly user counts in the hundreds of millions.

Even if I’m generously massaging the numbers, it doesn’t paint a pleasant picture for Copilot. Even using the 33 million figure, active Copilot users only account for a measly 2.5% of all Windows 10 and 11 users - and it’s important to bear in mind that a significant chunk of Microsoft’s customer base for Copilot is accounted for by businesses, so some of these users would likely fall under ‘my boss it telling me to use this’ rather than ‘I personally want to use this’.

And yet, Copilot keeps encroaching further and further into every aspect of Windows 11, despite being desperately unpopular compared to the AI titan that is ChatGPT. Despite the continual issues with Windows 11 - seriously, it feels like every week something else breaks - Microsoft seems more deeply committed to cramming AI into every nook and cranny of the OS rather than taking the time to fine-tune it and actually provide a genuinely better user experience.

Getting rid of the ads would be a good start, Microsoft - macOS doesn’t have those, and that’s a hard thing to admit as a lifetime fan of Windows PCs over Macs.

So here’s my polite request, Microsoft. Just give it up. Please. It’s not worth pissing off the majority of your user base for a fraction of the market dominated by ChatGPT - especially when you were the ones who gave billions of dollars to OpenAI last year. Keep Windows simple.

That’s especially important right now, too, since with PC component prices soaring (ironically due to fresh AI demand) more people will be struggling to upgrade, and the last thing they need is an AI-bloated resource hog of an operating system.

But I had a dream - not the Martin Luther King kind, the literal kind - last night. I was sitting at my PC, working in Windows - but it wasn’t the Windows I know today. No, it was a simplified version of Microsoft’s industry-dominating OS: no AI shovelware, no unnecessary features, no preloaded apps and intrusive widgets, no distractions. Just a basic desktop interface, with only the applications I chose to download.

No, this isn’t a joke. Yes, it’s probably an indication that years of computing tech journalism have completely fried my brain to the point where I'm seeing Microsoft in my sleep and should consider taking a long vacation. But the longer I think about it, the more convinced I become that this idea has genuine merit. What if a stripped-back version of Windows did exist?

System overload

It’s no secret that Windows has become a little… bloated, let’s say, in recent years. Your mind probably went straight to the more recent introduction of AI-powered features under the Copilot banner, and that’s a very valid concern. Copilot and other AI tools in Windows have proved to be polarizing at best with users, to the point where Microsoft has had to provide the option to remove them entirely in some cases.

There are more issues than just the encroaching menace of ‘helpful’ AI, though. Feature bloat in general has been a growing concern ever since Windows XP, to the point where buying a new Windows laptop inevitably results in your getting a slew of software you didn’t want and will probably never use.

Seriously, just go and take a look through the default program list on your Windows 11 device (assuming you haven’t taken steps to clean up your OS, like I have). Paint 3D, Phone Link, Mixed Reality Portal, Xbox Console Companion, Solitaire and Casual Games. It’s all garbage I never asked for. Add to that the usual assortment of third-party bloatware you’ll find on most laptops and pre-built desktop PCs (my current HP laptop came with ten completely unnecessary extra apps preinstalled), and it’s quickly becoming a digital nightmare of Lynchian proportions.

Okay, maybe I’m being a tad dramatic. Windows 11 has yet to suck me through an evil portal to the Black Lodge. But there’s no denying that the average user actually needs very little from their OS, while Microsoft seems increasingly insistent on cramming more and more and more and more and more inside Windows 11’s already creaking superstructure. It’s little wonder that Windows 10 remains more popular.

Back to basics

I’m not alone in this opinion, either. Even an ex-Microsoft engineer recently took to social media to decry the continuous bloating of Windows 11, saying, “No more AI, no more features. Just fixes.” It’s a powerful statement that rings true; barely a week goes by without our trusted news writers covering some fresh debacle with the world’s most popular operating system.

There’s actually already a version of Windows that mostly fulfils my requirements: Tiny11. It’s almost exactly what I described above, a stripped-back Windows 11 that removes the AI features and bloatware for a more streamlined experience. It’s already proven quite popular; the only problem is that it’s not officially supported by Microsoft, which means using it does open you up to potential security risks and unreliability surrounding updates and driver support.

So why not just strip it all down to the studs and give users what they actually want? ChromeOS, for all its weaknesses against Windows, does at least offer a supremely accessible and - even more importantly - resource-efficient user experience. As PC component prices soar due to AI demand, having an OS that can run smoothly and effectively on less powerful hardware becomes vital. After all, it was Microsoft who urged an industry-wide step up to 16GB of RAM as the new standard for Windows laptops, yet that plan seems an impossibility right now, given current RAM price surges.

In fact, ChromeOS already has an even more lightweight version, the nifty cloud-based ChromeOS Flex, which can be easily used to turn any old Windows device into a Chromebook. It’s good for the planet, too - let’s be honest, e-waste is becoming a real problem worldwide, and being able to keep using your old laptop with a fresh OS is great for the environment and your wallet.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Microsoft takes the cloud-based approach here; that feels like it could be bordering too close to an ‘OS as a service’ situation, while literally every sane person likely agrees that they’d rather just buy a Windows key and be done with it. But there are some tweaks that would need to be made, and I’m not just talking about cutting out all the superfluous AI stuff.

Building the perfect streamlined OS

The big thing here is dropping the TPM 2.0 requirement. I’ve fired shots at Microsoft before over this, as it’s literally one of the biggest factors preventing widespread adoption of Windows 11: loads of older devices literally can’t run it because they lack a TPM 2.0 motherboard module. Yes, it’s good for security, and I can understand why businesses would want to use it, but at the end of the day, it’s not something that hugely benefits the average private user - mainly because the best defence against cyber attacks is simply being smart about your internet use.

Without mandatory TPM 2.0, this hypothetical slimmed-down Windows could run on a ton of existing Windows 10 (or older) devices that are otherwise now stuck with their current OS.

Regarding the apps and functionality that should stay, it’s a short list. The basic software that’s been around forever is safe (Calculator, Calendar, Camera, and a media viewer of some description), and there are also a few things that can’t reasonably be excised without breaking the functionality of the whole OS, like the Settings app and File Explorer. Add a browser and Microsoft Store access (but NO ADS, MICROSOFT) to enable downloading any other software you need, and you’re done. No Game Pass pop-ups, no free trial of OneDrive. Just a blank canvas for you to do exactly what you need.

As for what you should call this new OS, Microsoft, well, I’ll leave that ball in your court. I’m just the ideas guy. ‘Windows Lite’, perhaps? Or ‘Windows Mini’? Maybe you could even give it an XP-inspired design and call it ‘Windows Classic’ - I’m sure a lot of people would love that.

One last note: as amazing as it would be, Microsoft is emphatically Not Going To Do This, and if it does happen, I’ll eat five tins of raw Spam on video and upload it to TechRadar’s social media. Not to rag too hard on CEO Satya Nadella here, but Microsoft is all aboard the AI gravy train, and the only thing that’s going to satisfy the bottomless greed of its shareholders right now is more AI shoved haphazardly into Windows 11. Sorry to end 2025 on a rather sour note, but I don’t expect Windows to get better in 2026 - I expect it to get worse.

More than anything else, the Google Pixel 10 is the software lover’s flagship phone. The tech giant’s latest flagship phone lineup comprises one standard model, the Pixel 10, a more powerful Pixel 10 Pro and enlarged Pixel 10 Pro XL, and foldable Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

All four phones run a lightweight, near-stock version of Android that comes with a heaped helping of AI features. Google Pixel phones use Google Tensor chipsets, which aren’t as powerful as Apple’s A-series mobile chipsets or the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets found in Galaxy phones, so Google really leans on its software experience to give its phones value.

For the most part, this has paid off pretty well. The Google Pixel 10 is our current pick for the best Android phone for everybody, meaning its user experience is friendly and useful to new and expert users alike.

And on the high-end of the lineup, our four-and-a-half star Google Pixel 10 Pro XL review praises the phone’s software and AI experience as unintrusive and powerful, true to the nature of the Pixel lineup.

But that software experience isn’t quite the same on the standard Google Pixel 10 – indeed, there are a handful of cool and interesting features that only the Pro models get (as our Google Pixel 10 review highlights), which I’ve always found to be an odd choice for a flagship lineup that leans so heavily on software.

Specifically, the Google Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold get new call screening and call log features that can check for spammers and take notes while you’re on the phone.

And Google locks away certain camera controls on the standard Pixel 10 for seemingly arbitrary reasons – despite having a 50MP main sensor, you can’t enable 50MP portrait shots or access advanced camera options to change things like your ISO sensitivity. You can do these things on a Pixel 10 Pro.

This is despite the Google Pixel 10 lineup all sharing the same Google Tensor G5 chipset. Sure, the Pro models have 16GB of RAM compared to the standard model’s 12GB, but you can’t seriously tell me that this is why Google has locked away advanced camera controls on the standard model. And Apple Intelligence manages call screening and summaries on phones with as little as 8GB of RAM, so I don’t quite buy that Google couldn’t make it work with the Pixel 10’s 12GB allowance.

So, what can Google do to clear up this confusing product strategy in 2026?

In my opinion there’s a pretty simple answer here – bring the Google Pixel Pro’s exclusive software features to the regular Google Pixel.

I understand completely that phone makers need to distinguish the different models in their lineups somehow. A Pro or Ultra-grade phone needs to earn its title with a handful of exclusive features, and a base model handset can’t stick to a reasonable price if it has all the latest and greatest tech.

But when we look at the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, or the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, what sets the two tiers apart isn’t a matter of software, but hardware.

That’s a convention for a reason. When I pick up an iPhone 17, it’s nice to know that I have access to everything the iPhone 17 Pro can do on the software side of things, and equally the tangibility of hardware upgrades like the iPhone 17 Pro’s telephoto camera makes paying more for the Pro phone, makes more sense than, say, a few extra settings to fiddle with.

And, to be frank, there’s already enough of a hardware difference between the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro to warrant the higher price point. The Pixel 10 Pro has a much more capable camera system than its smaller sibling, as well as a more advanced LTPO display, and a snazzier design with shiny aluminum rails.

If it really is a case of bumping up the base-model's 12GB of RAM to 16GB, then I think Google should just do it – this would have the secondary effect of reassuring users about the hardware power of the standard model, given the lesser performance of the Tensor G5 chipset compared to rival flagships.

Stratifying the software experience feels unnecessary in this context, and especially confusing for the phone brand that leans most heavily on its software experience. Here’s hoping the rumored Pixel 11 series can set things straight in the coming year.

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Windows 11's latest preview build has provided a clearer look at some of the nuts and bolts of how AI agents will work in the OS, and it introduces a number of other changes as well.

Microsoft's blog post explains what's new in preview build 26220.7523 in the Dev and Beta channels. There are several notable additions, including the mentioned AI introductions, which have once again sparked some controversy.

For starters, this new preview brings the Ask Copilot box to the taskbar for business customers – this has already arrived in testing for consumers – and Microsoft reminds us that you can invoke AI agents directly from there.

Microsoft is also moving forward with testing how AI agents will actually work in the taskbar. We get an example here that's focused on Researcher, one of the initial planned agents for Windows 11, which, as the name suggests, autonomously conducts research for you (with access to certain files granted for that purpose). It can "dig into a topic and build a detailed report," and you can track the agent's progress in the taskbar.

Microsoft is testing a feature whereby hovering the mouse cursor over the Copilot or Researcher icon in the taskbar will give you the agent's reasoning updates in real-time, so you can check up with the AI's progress at a glance. Microsoft is also experimenting with whether Research (or other agents) should be a separate icon on the taskbar, or be rolled into the Copilot icon.

Those who want to keep taskbar bloat down may well lean towards the latter idea, though keen users of agents who have multiple AIs working on tasks could perhaps prefer those icons to be separate.

Microsoft further notes that with this preview build it's introducing Agent Launchers for Windows 11, which is a "new framework that enables Windows apps to register AI agents and make them discoverable across the system".

Essentially, this is the groundwork to allow for third-party agents (aside from Microsoft's own agents like Researcher, Copilot, or Analyst) to work within Windows 11 and be integrated with the Ask Copilot box (and Microsoft 365 Copilot).

Elsewhere in this preview release, there's a change for File Explorer, whereby everyday users will now see people icons on the File Explorer home page. These will appear in the 'Activity' column and in the Recent or Recommended sections, meaning that when you mouse over a people icon, you'll get that person's key details on a pop-up card (allowing you to message them, or fire up a call, and so forth).

It's a potentially handy change, but one that'll only apply to consumers who are signed in with their Microsoft account in Windows 11.

Another step forward here is that Microsoft has fixed the 'flashbang' bug with File Explorer, ironing out the remaining problems whereby people would still see white flashes when switching tabs in File Explorer.

Voice Access is also benefiting from an improved setup process to make it easier to get going with this feature, and voice typing with the touch keyboard has been revamped to make it more intuitive.

Analysis: AI continues to rub some people up the wrong way

This represents quite a stride forward with AI agents, and it should be interesting to see how these entities are presented on the taskbar in the end. As noted, it's largely going to be a subjective matter as to whether you want agents to have their own separate taskbar icons, or be integrated with the Ask Copilot box. So, perhaps the best approach, as always, is for Microsoft to present options to that effect, so people can choose their own preference.

Many people would prefer that Microsoft isn't working on AI agents at all, mind, and there's still a negative ongoing reaction to this (as you can see in the official Reddit thread introducing the new preview build). Yes, you don't have to turn on AI agents if you don't want them – neither in testing now, nor in release, when they're eventually unleashed for us all – but people are still unhappy that Microsoft is prioritizing their development over more fundamental issues with Windows 11.

As we see from the comment which has floated to the top of that Reddit thread, it again repeats the line that Microsoft shouldn't be forced to work on AI 'stuff' (language moderated) rather than solving 'UX problems' (issues with the user experience – the interface and performance therein) instead.

And it has to be said, there's a case to be made here, for sure – and while I don't expect Microsoft to pause the development of AI features (that, frankly, is never going to happen), there's definitely a better balance to be struck between progress and honing what already exists within Windows 11.

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After a year and a half of waiting, we finally know where Meta’s third-party Horizon OS headsets are: in the trash. The Asus and Lenovo headsets could perhaps launch under another partnership, but Meta’s Horizon OS rollout has been “paused” according to a statement from the company.

This is according to reporting from Road to VR, which received a statement from Meta saying, “We have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.”

The news is as disappointing as it is expected.

When Meta teased the rollout of Horizon OS to other headsets, it promised us three devices. An Asus headset devoted to gaming, a Lenovo headset for productivity and entertainment, and an Xbox headset – with only that last one ever seeing the light of day as a Limited Edition black and green Meta Quest 3S.

I had hoped we’d see one or both of the remaining headsets at Meta Connect 2025, but when neither materialized, it did occur to me that perhaps they were never coming – something that Meta itself has now essentially confirmed.

Over the Horizon

Third-party partners are an excellent way to grow a platform, especially a software platform as strong as Horizon OS – with its clean interface and incredible range of apps. But as highlighted in the Road to VR reporting, things would have likely been an uphill battle for Asus and Lenovo as Meta does so aggressively undercharge for its Quest hardware. Many experts note that the Quest headsets are likely sold for cost, or even a slight loss, with the hope that Meta could then recuperate expenses on software sales.

Asus and Lenovo would have to charge more than Meta for their headsets to make a profit, even more so because they not only can’t make money through software sales but would also probably be paying to license Horizon OS from Meta.

Android XR, on the other hand (or potentially through a partnership with the upcoming XR-version of SteamOS – Lenovo has previously made a SteamOS handheld), could present a much better opportunity for these brands.

Google is not yet making its own hardware, and so far, Samsung (the only Android XR hardware maker we have a headset price from) doesn’t seem to be pricing its headset overly aggressively. While Valve has yet to tell us the cost of the Steam Frame, comments from its team and speculation from leaks suggest that it too will not be sold at a Meta Quest-level rate, making it easier for potential platform partners to compete.

With these platforms also boasting many of the advantages of Horizon OS (chiefly wide software support) without the Quest-shaped downside, it could be that Asus and Lenovo chose to jump ship.

With that in mind, I’d consider sailing for Android XR or SteamOS too.

Defeat from the jaws of victory

This is an incredible fumble from Meta.

As I discussed in a piece published in the wake of the original third-party partnership announcement, Reality Labs is hemorrhaging cash, and one of the only ways that makes financial sense is if HorizonOS can cement itself as the Android or Windows of XR – the platform everyone turns to to run their hardware.

Alas, it seems Android XR might become the Android of XR. Ignoring the potential mutiny of Asus and Lenovo, it already has Samsung, Xreal, and Gentle Monster, among the brands adopting the operating system.

Perhaps crucially, Google has also configured a unified platform for both glasses and headsets, allowing its partners to easily pursue either avenue of XR. The glasses, especially, are proving themselves as potentially the more lucrative and popular option as successive non-Quest headsets struggle to make a splash (looking at you, Samsung Galaxy XR and Apple Vision Pro).

We’ll have to wait and see if Meta’s go-it-alone strategy works, but this development doesn’t feel like winning – I just hope we see those promised Asus and Lenovo headsets in some other form one day.

The Asus headset has leaked previously, so hopefully it's still on the cards.

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Windows 11 users who've hooked up their Android smartphone to the OS can now get the benefit of some nifty new features, including the ability to lock their PC remotely with their phone.

Windows Latest reports that as of the second week of December, Microsoft is rolling out these new abilities, and you can get them by updating the Link to Windows Android app to the latest version.

This introduces a big 'Lock PC' button on the Android device, which when pressed does exactly that, locking your Windows 11 system even if you're nowhere near it. Windows Latest observes that this happens in just a few seconds, so pretty swiftly indeed.

There are new buttons to send a file from your phone to the PC, and mirror your phone screen to the desktop. You can also send files from the Windows 11 PC to the Android handset, and freely share clipboard content between the two devices (which includes images as well as text you've copied).

On top of that, there's a recent activity panel that contains any files or links that've recently been shared, so you can see these at a glance.

The Android app now displays a couple of key details from your PC, too (which are updated in real-time, more or less – every minute or so). Those are the battery level (for laptops) and Wi-Fi signal strength, which could be a handy to know.

How to get these nifty new abilities

This considerably fleshes out the Link to Windows app for Android, and it's a sizeable step forward for those who use this in conjunction with the Phone Link app on the PC. The ability to share clipboard content easily, and that lock PC feature, are the big highlights here. It's also convenient to have screen mirroring in easy reach with just the tap of a button.

We'd previously seen this functionality in testing, and it was present in a beta rollout last month, but now we're reportedly getting the full upgrade rolling out to all Phone Link users. If you want to get the benefit, update your Link to Windows app now, though it may still take a little time for these new goodies to come through, as ever with any new feature deployment.

To check for updates for the Android app, as per Microsoft's instructions, go into the Settings panel for your phone, and navigate to Advanced features, then tap on Link to Windows. Select the ellipsis (three dots) in the upper-right corner and tap About Link to Windows, where you'll be able to check for updates, and install one if it's available.

If you haven't got started with Phone Link for Windows 11 (and Link to Windows), and you want to do so, we've got an explainer on how to get going. It's not difficult to set up, and there's some surprisingly powerful cross-device functionality on tap (with Phone Link now having its own side panel off the Start menu, too).

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The first is one first teased back at Meta Connect 2025: Conversation Focus.

Today, it’s arriving for folks in the early access program (limited to users in the US and Canada), and the feature is designed to help you better hear people while you’re chatting in a noisy space.

Using this feature, Meta promises your glasses’ microphones can pick up what the person you’re chatting with is saying, isolate their words from the noise of a DJ set, the clanking of cutlery on plates in a busy restaurant, or the hubbub of commuters on the train (among others), and then play their voice through your glasses’ speakers.

You can adjust the amplification level by swiping your temple just like you would turn music up or down, and having been to several Holiday parties recently where I can really struggle to hear other people this tool certainly sounds handy.

Just note that, as an early access too,l Conversation Focus likely won’t work perfectly out of the gate.

Soundtrack your view

The other audio upgrade is coming to a wider range of users, though you’ll need Spotify to take advantage of it.

If you have the music streaming service connected to your Meta account, you can use your glasses’ look and ask feature to soundtrack what you can see – be that playing music from an album cover you’ve seen in the wild, or simply wanting to listen to tracks that suit your current view.

Just say something like “Hey Meta, play a song to match this view.” Spotify will then use its library and understanding of your music tastes to soundtrack your life.

I use Apple Music rather than Spotify, but this feature is tempting me to swap to the rival music streaming service. It sounds like it could be a lot of fun to try.

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Microsoft has provided more details on how AI agents will work in Windows 11 when it comes to permissions for accessing the files on your PC, putting to rest at least some fears around this functionality – but loftier concerns remain.

In case you missed it (somehow), agents were recently revealed as the next big step forward with AI in Windows 11, and Microsoft is preparing the ground for testing them, introducing a slider to turn on 'experimental agentic features' in preview (test) builds.

Some people were worried that turning this on would mean these agents could access your files by default (albeit in a limited set of folders – namely personal documents, videos, downloads and so forth).

Windows Latest reports that Microsoft has clarified (in an update to a support document) that this is not the case, and that even if you have enabled experimental agents, these AI entities will not have access to said personal folders by default. They must still ask every time they want to access your files (unless you decide to permanently allow them).

A permission dialog box will pop up when an AI agent requires file access for a task it has been assigned, and you'll have to explicitly allow it access for that one time, or alternatively to always have access (or you can deny it, of course). Those are the standard options in Windows when you get this kind of choice.

Windows Latest further explains that it'll also be possible to customize permissions for each agent – there are multiple agents, which to begin with will include Copilot, Researcher and Analyst – which is also good to hear.

Analysis: a welcome clarification, but scary prospects remain

It's helpful to get a bit more insight and detail into how AI agents work in terms of file permissions, and given the gravity of letting an AI loose with your files, it's really essential not to grant access by default. (Unless you want this to happen, in which case you can elect to 'always allow' access, though this option can subsequently be changed in Settings, should you later change your mind about it.)

While Microsoft is making it possible to give different permissions to different AI agents, so you can allow, say, Researcher to have access, while denying all other agents, you can't adjust permissions for the folders on a granular level. It's all or nothing in this respect: you grant an agent access to every personal folder (documents, videos, pictures, downloads, music, and the desktop), or none of them. If you want to just give Researcher access to the documents folder only, for example, this isn't possible.

Of course, AI agents are still in early testing with Windows 11, so Microsoft might change its mind and allow for tweaking of access to folders on an individual basis – we shall see.

At any rate, at least for now we have this useful clarification that should help soothe some fears, perhaps, around how Microsoft's agentic creations will operate in Windows 11.

Although that said, there are far more substantial worries floating around regarding AI agents, as you may have noticed. That includes whether Microsoft's propensity to introduce bugs to Windows 11 might also apply to these AIs – and agents going awry in such a way is a scary prospect to say the least – and Microsoft's warning on how agents can open up fresh exploits in terms of malware hasn't been all that comforting, either.

Remember with all this, though, that you don't have to let AI agents onto your PC if you don't want to use them, in much the same way that you don't need to turn on Recall, another AI feature that's caused controversy and privacy concerns. If you're at all in doubt, just steer clear, frankly.

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Only 6% of IT leaders believe their current office software setup works perfectly, with many concerned about costs, security and complexity, new research has claimed

Not only does this highlight a captive audience that could be ready to explore new tech solutions, but IT leaders are openly admitting it – 87% are willing to change their productivity suites in favor of a more unified or secure platform.

The report from JumpCloud and Google Workspace stresses the demand for consolidated stacks, after a period of tech inundation with tools for everything.

IT leaders want to simplify their tech stacks

According to the research, high administrative tasks, complex security setups and complex pricing are some of the biggest pain points IT leaders face today, but the report reveals one (unsurprising) way to quickly and effectively consolidate a lot of software. Yes, it's AI.

At the moment, around two-thirds lack unified and automated device management (62%), security policy enforcement (64%) and compliance management (66%), with nearly half lacking fully unified identity management (46%).

"This unified approach is stronger than purchasing and securing usage across a messy collection of separate tools," Google Workspace Senior Director of Security Product Management Andy Wen wrote.

The joint research also slates the Microsoft 365 platform, noting that IT leaders complain about high administrative overhead (45%), security configuration complexity (44%), complex licensing and pricing (40%) and vendor lock-in (25%).

Besides using the power of AI to bring together vast amounts of data into consolidated platforms, JumpCloud also added that a zero-trust security posture plays an important role in preventing attacks as well as creating a "clear place to manage users and devices."

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Microsoft has finally changed a useful security feature in Windows 11 so it can be turned on and off if needed, at least in testing – whereas currently, if you switch off Smart App Control, it can never be enabled again.

Windows Latest noticed the change which happened last month in Windows 11 preview builds for the Dev and Beta channels, but flew under the radar at the time.

Smart App Control (SAC) is a feature that interrogates any app that you're installing on your Windows 11 PC, checking it against Microsoft's threat intelligence (in the cloud) to discern whether there's anything dodgy about it.

If SAC finds a possible issue that means an app could have malware or be a 'potentially unwanted program' (PUP), it'll block the installation, keeping you safe from theoretical harm.

It's a nifty feature, but the problem with it is that SAC can sometimes be overly cautious and block legitimate software. And if you know that the app you're trying to install is fine, so you want to turn off SAC to allow that software to be installed, then you can't turn SAC back on.

As Microsoft explains in a FAQ about the feature: "In order to ensure a more secure experience, we only enable Smart App Control on clean installs of Microsoft Windows 11. We want to be sure that there aren't already untrusted apps running on the device when we turn Smart App Control on."

This literally means SAC can only be turned on with a clean install of Windows 11, and if you turn it off, there's no way back – just in case untrusted apps have sneaked on in the meantime. Frankly, this doesn't make much sense, and it removes the ability to quickly disable, then enable SAC again, as a workaround to install a legitimate app.

As it stands, if it's ever switched off, the only way you can get SAC back is to reinstall or reset the Windows 11 PC (not reboot – this means a full OS reset), which is a major hassle.

Thankfully, Microsoft has now seen sense and introduced the ability to turn SAC on or off whenever you want, which is present in Windows Security > App & Browser Control > Smart App Control settings – in preview builds as noted.

Analysis: SAC change has been a long time coming

Presumably, this change will make the cut from testing, because as noted, it's seriously frustrating the way SAC works right now. If you run into any trouble with legitimate software, you must trash the feature entirely or switch it off and then run a full PC reset process to turn it back on.

How this design implementation was ever allowed to fly, I'm not sure. SAC is a useful extra line of defense against possible malware or adware, especially for less tech-savvy folks who might be in the most need of extra protection. But it's exactly those users who won't want to fully reset their PC to turn it back on (or even understand that it is permanently off), so this never made much sense.

At any rate, now Microsoft has made it so you can get any app you know is safe onto your PC, even if SAC blocks it, by temporarily turning off the feature. An allow-list of some kind would be a better approach, arguably, letting you specify trusted apps, but that's nitpicking (and this functionality could still be introduced in testing, perhaps).

It's also worth noting that in its current implementation, SAC will always be off if you upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 (as that isn't a clean install). And with a clean Windows 11 install, it has an 'evaluation mode' where SAC determines if it's suitable for your PC (depending on the kind of software you typically install, and whether it gets in the way a lot). Hopefully, that evaluation can now be dispensed with, too, if there's a simple way to turn SAC off and on again at will without having to mess around with completely resetting your operating system.

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Winter is upon us, and Google Maps is reviving one its past features just in time for snowsports season – ski trails, lodge markers, and lifts are back after a year-long hiatus.

Previously, keen skiers and snowboarders could use Google Maps to source information for trip-planning, but the company removed this in October 2024, stating in a help page that “most users don’t turn to Google Maps for this type of information, and that they instead prefer to use maps directly from the individual ski resorts, since they’re seen as the most authoritative source of this information.”

This sparked a bit of backlash from those who relied on Google Maps’ ski trail details, which led to a petition that was signed by almost 3,000 people. Google has now responded in a statement shared to ski site POWDER, revealing: “We heard from many people who missed having ski information on Google Maps, so we’re bringing ski lifts and trails back this winter.”

So how is it different from last year? For starters, Google has updated its data set so that it features recent satellite and aerial imagery, in addition to information provided by the ski resorts themselves, allowing for past trail routes to be corrected. It also allows skiers to see pinpoints such as where a trail ends and where a chairlift drops you off.

While all of this is a huge upgrade, it appears that only a select number of resorts across North America and Europe, including Whistler Blackcomb, British Columbia; Park City Mountain, Utah; and Palisades Tahoe, California. There are several popular resorts missing such as the Red Mountain Resort, British Columbia, and Hoodoo Ski Area, Oregon – suggesting that these will be added later when resort and satellite information is reviewed.

Despite this limitation, we wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Google Maps expanding the number of ski resorts it houses, and we’re assuming that those that details of those currently missing will gradually roll out – likely next year. We’ll be on the lookout for any updates that come from Google and keep you posted with new information.

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Google has unveiled the next steps of Google Translate’s evolution, announcing that live translations are on the way to all earbuds, which is rolling out in beta to users in the US, Mexico, and India in the Translate app on Android.

When Google first rolled out real-time voice translations, they were limited to Pixel Buds only, but that’s about to change. The company has also shared that it’s planning to expand this to more countries and even bring it to iOS, but that won’t be until sometime in 2026.

In its blog announcement, the tech giant revealed that the latest upgrade “works to preserve the tone, emphasis, and cadence of each speaker”, allowing for more natural and accurate translations while making it easier to decipher who said what in a conversation. However, this isn’t the only scenario where live translations can come in handy.

Supporting over 70 languages, Google adds that you can use live translations in several different situations, for example, when you’re listening to a speech or lecture in a different language, or when you’re watching a movie or TV show that’s not in your native language.

Google is constantly building on Translate’s capabilities, especially when it comes to the Gemini smarts that power them. In addition to the expansion of live translations to all headphones, Google has also refined Gemini to improve translations on slang, idioms, and local expressions, using the example of ‘stealing my thunder’.

It shared in its announcement that “it's easier than ever to get a more natural, accurate translation, instead of a literal word-for-word translation. Gemini parses the context to give you a helpful translation that captures what the idiom really means,” which is kicking off in beta in the US and India.

While Google Translate is a useful tool for standard language translation features, it also offers its own language-learning service – a Duolingo dupe that’s also getting a neat upgrade.

Google has updated its language learning tools with improved feedback, offering notes on your pronunciation as well as tips on how you can improve. There’s also a new feature that lets you keep track of your progress and see how many days in a row you’ve been learning – so you can see clearly how consistent you are.

That’s not all, as Google shared its expansion of this tool to 20 new countries, including Germany, India, Sweden, and Taiwan, to grant more users access to different learning models. English speakers can now brush up on their German and Portuguese, while those who speak Bengali, Mandarin Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, German, Hindi, Italian, Romanian, and Swedish can now learn English, creeping up slowly to the likes of Duolingo.

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However, what if I said there is a way to give your PC a memory boost for free, which could at the very least delay the need to buy more RAM until prices get more sensible?

It might sound too good to be true, or even a scam (no, you can’t download more RAM), but it uses a feature that’s been part of Windows for decades: virtual memory.

Virtual memory allows Windows 11 to use a portion of your PC’s standard storage (where files, folders, and the like are permanently stored until you move or delete them), as RAM, where data is only temporarily stored for quick access.

For those of us who have been using PCs for decades, virtual memory was once quite a handy little ‘hack’ for getting a performance boost. However, as RAM became faster and more affordable, it feels a bit like it’s been forgotten about – but with the increase in RAM prices (and the increase in capacity and speed of Solid State Drives [SSDs]), this old school feature could see a resurgence.

Before I go into how to use virtual memory, it’s worth keeping your expectations in check. It won’t give you the kind of boost installing 32GB of DDR5 would do, for example, but it could help PCs that are struggling with multiple apps open at once, make overall performance of Windows 11 feel faster, and help improve the stability of your PC (especially if it often crashes due to lack of memory). People with 4GB or even 8GB of RAM will see the biggest benefit.

Also, while I call this a ‘hack’, it’s a relatively easy feature to use, and it’s an official, built-in part of Windows 11, so you don’t need to download any additional software. So, read on to find out how to get a free speed boost with virtual memory.

Tools and requirements

• Windows 11
• An SSD with spare storage space

Quick steps

1. Open Windows 11's Settings app and go to the System section
2. Open up Advanced settings
3. Set the virtual memory amount
4. Restart your PC

Step by step guide

How to use virtual memory in Windows 11: FAQ

How to use virtual memory in Windows 11: Final thoughts

Using virtual memory in Windows 11 can give your PC a legitimate performance boost without having to spend any money. This makes it a fantastic feature for anyone who has a PC that's struggling with a limited amount of RAM, as you can boost your PC's memory capacity for free while the cost of RAM increases.

However, you should bear in mind the pros and cons of using virtual memory, and what it can and can't do. If your PC is seriously struggling, I still recommend upgrading the physical memory of your machine (check out our best RAM guide for advice) as soon as you can afford to. Meanwhile, using virtual memory can give you a useful boost until RAM prices come down again.

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Alongside iOS 26.2, Apple has also released the equivalent software updates for its other devices, and those updates include macOS Tahoe 26.2 – with a useful new Edge Light feature to illuminate your face during video calls on Apple Silicon Macs.

As MacRumors reports, the addition of Edge Light is the biggest change with this release. It will use your Mac display "to illuminate your face like a virtual ring light when you're on a video call in low light". With newer Macs, introduced in 2024 and later, you can have the light turn on automatically in low light conditions too.

The feature offers customizable light width and temperature settings, so you can tweak the illumination as you prefer, and when you use a mouse or trackpad the light will instantly recede so you can see what you're doing on screen.

We wrote about this feature when the developer beta for macOS Tahoe 26.2 was released, and it sounds like it could be particularly handy when you're rushing to get set up for a call and don't have as much time as you might like to sort out the lighting.

Minor updates and an AirDrop tweak

Other new features in macOS Tahoe 26.2 include automatically generated chapters in podcasts, embedded links to mentioned podcasts, improved filters in the Games library, in-game challenge updates, and support for connected controllers.

There are also a bunch of bug fixes and smaller tweaks too, as usual for a macOS update like this. Navigation has been improved within the Apple News app for example, while tables in the Freeform app are now more flexible in terms of what they can hold. A Favorite Songs playlist has been added to Top Picks in Apple Music too.

Apple also says that with this update, "AirDrop codes offer an additional layer of verification when using AirDrop with unknown contacts by providing a code on the receiver's device that the sender must enter to complete the transfer".

We'll have to wait and see whether or not that breaks the AirDrop support that Google recently added to its Pixel 10 phones – but it wouldn't be a huge surprise. The macOS Tahoe 26.2 update is rolling out globally now.

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That approach worked for a while, but we’re now running into the limits of what “bigger” can buy.

The next breakthrough isn’t about cranking parameters into the billions. It’s about the architecture underneath, the part most people don’t see but absolutely feel when it isn’t working.

That’s where agentic AI comes in. Not agents as a buzzword, but as a practical shift in how intelligence is distributed.

Instead of one model waiting for a prompt and producing an answer, you get groups of smaller, purpose-built agents that watch what’s happening, reason about it, and act.

The intelligence is in how they collaborate, not in one giant model doing everything.

Once you start thinking about it that way, the conversation shifts from “What can the model do?” to “What does the system let the model do?” And that’s all architecture.

From Generative Answers to Ongoing Loops

Generative AI changed how people interact with software, sure. But the pattern hasn’t changed much: question in, answer out, and then everything resets.

Agentic systems don’t operate like that. They stay alert. They respond to signals you didn’t explicitly ask about, like changes in customer behavior, shifts in demand, and little anomalies that usually slip past dashboards.

And the biggest difference is time. These aren’t one-off tasks. Agents run loops. They observe, decide, try something, and come back when the situation shifts. It looks a lot more like how teams actually work when they’re at their best.

But none of that coordination works without shared context. If you have one agent basing decisions on unified profiles and another pulling from a stale, duplicated dataset, you’re going to get drift. And once agents drift, they stop being intelligent and start being unpredictable.

Unified Data Isn’t Optional Anymore

We’ve all known that fragmented data is annoying. In agentic systems, it becomes dangerous. Agents operate in parallel, and they need the same understanding of customers, products, events — everything. Otherwise, you get contradictory decisions that only show up after damage is done.

A unified, identity-resolved layer becomes the shared memory. It’s what keeps agents grounded and lets them collaborate instead of stepping on each other. This isn’t a philosophical point. Without that shared memory, agents “learn” different realities, and your system becomes incoherent fast.

Ecosystems, Not Monoliths

For years, enterprises gravitated toward big, do-everything platforms because they were afraid that stitching systems together would break things. Ironically, agentic AI flips that idea on its head.

Instead of giant platforms, you get small, specialized agents that talk to each other, almost like microservices, except they’re reasoning, not just processing.

Here’s the catch: it’s not enough for these agents to simply exchange data. They have to interpret the data in the same way. That’s where interoperability becomes a real engineering challenge.

The APIs matter less than the meaning attached to them. Two agents should receive the same signal and reach the same basic understanding of what it represents.

Get this wrong and you don’t have autonomy — you have chaos.

But when it works, you get an environment where you can add or upgrade agents without every change turning into a rewrite. The system gets smarter over time rather than more brittle.

Designing for AI from the Beginning

Many teams today still treat AI as a plug-in, something you add to an existing system after everything else is in place.

That approach just doesn’t work with agentic systems. You need data models designed for evolving schemas, governance that can handle autonomous behavior, and infrastructure built for feedback loops, not one-time transactions.

In an AI-first architecture, intelligence isn’t a feature. It’s part of the plumbing. Data moves in ways that support long-running decisions. Schemas evolve. Agents need context that lasts longer than a single request. It’s a different mindset from traditional software design, closer to designing ecosystems than applications.

Humans Aren’t Going Anywhere

There’s always a worry that “agentic AI” means people step aside. The reality is sort of the opposite. Agents take on the minute-by-minute decision loops, but humans define the goals, priorities, boundaries, and tradeoffs that make those loops meaningful.

It actually makes oversight easier. Instead of reviewing every action, people look for patterns — drift, bias, misalignment — and course-correct the system as a whole. One person can guide a lot of agents because the job shifts from giving instructions to refining intent.

Humans bring the judgment. Agents bring the stamina.

Where This All Leads

Agentic AI isn’t just the next model trend. It’s a shift in how intelligence gets embedded into systems. But autonomy without the right architecture will never produce the outcomes people expect.

You need unified data so that agents are aligned. You need interoperable systems so agents can communicate. And you need infrastructure designed for a long-lived context and continuous learning.

If generative AI was about answers, agentic AI is about ongoing intelligence, and that only works if the architecture underneath it is built for the world it’s operating in.

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