We’re 6 months into Microsoft’s campaign to fix Windows 11: here are 5 things it did right and 3 glaring oversights
It’s time for my quarterly report card on how Microsoft is progressing with its campaign to fix Windows 11. You may remember that my first report was published in early July and it was full of praise given what happened with Windows 11 in those first three months.
So how is Microsoft doing now that six months have passed? Here’s what’s impressed me in terms of what Microsoft has been tweaking lately, but I’ll also cover the missing parts of the puzzle that I really think the company needs to address with its effort to improve Windows 11 in 2026.
5 things Microsoft has done right
1. 8GB performance tuning
Do you have a PC with 8 GB of RAM? You may find that it provides a less than ideal experience when running Windows 11, although it has enough memory to run the operating system as per Microsoft’s system requirements. In fact, 4GB is officially the bare minimum, although I wouldn’t recommend it.
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This is changing, however, because in August, Microsoft let us know that one of its goals when fixing Windows 11 is memory optimization for 8GB devices (and, in fact, for any RAM load). Microsoft said the overall goal is to: “Reduce Windows memory usage to deliver a fast, responsive Windows experience on the PCs customers use every day.”
This is a necessary move overall, but Microsoft has an extra push to make 8GB work better, given the current RAM crisis that means laptop makers are increasingly turning to this memory configuration (since 16GB is too expensive).
It’s absolutely key that Microsoft makes Windows 11 run more smoothly on more efficient RAM configurations, and we’re already seeing some evidence of performance improvements as well as faster loading for apps (not just Windows menus), so that has to be a good thing.
2. Speed increases elsewhere
In addition to work to optimize Windows 11 for RAM usage, Microsoft also announced plans to speed up boot times. This includes not only faster startup, but also more responsive login via Windows Hello, so we expect to get to the desktop much faster in the future. (And to be fair to Microsoft, Windows 11 already boots up pretty quickly, generally speaking.)
Microsoft is also simplifying and streamlining the Windows 11 setup process, which doesn’t hurt either.
3. Search improvements
Windows 11 search has been poor for a long time, and fortunately, Microsoft has recognized this and taken steps to address some of the thorniest issues.
This includes work to make search more useful overall, so it can find files with long compound names, better handle typos, and display possibly relevant results after you’ve typed just two characters, but the biggest change is the ability to turn off web results.
These are the websites that appear in the variety of results that Windows 11 presents and they simply clutter the list, getting in the way. You can now disable them and also dismiss any suggestions from the Microsoft Store. Search is becoming a much more streamlined and useful feature (as it should have been from the beginning, admittedly, but at least Microsoft has finally fixed the major issues here).
4. Right click the right way
The context menu, which appears when you right-click a file or folder, is another part of the Windows 11 interface that’s getting a major update.
Microsoft is tidying up the long list of options to make it look cleaner, removing a lot of stuff from the default context menu view. Again, this is something that shouldn’t have taken this long, but it’s still nice to see the movement finally getting underway.
The context menu is also being tweaked to load faster, and a welcome option to revert the layout to how it appears in Windows 10 is also in the works. Good stuff.
5. Strengthen privacy
This is a minor tweak, but an important one nonetheless, as Microsoft finally allows Windows 11 users to adjust privacy controls for each installed app.
This is currently only possible with apps from the Microsoft Store, as other desktop apps (Win32) have a single master switch to allow (or block) access to the camera and microphone. In other words, you can allow permission for everything, or no apps, with no options in between, which is obviously not very useful. With the upcoming change (currently in testing), you’ll be able to adjust these privacy options for each app.
Three glaring oversights that Microsoft still needs to address
1. Quality guarantee
This is pretty simple: Windows 11 still has too many bugs that appear with annoying regularity. If it’s not broken backup features, it’s audio torpedoed by a Windows update, and those are just the latest two glitches to surface in the past month.
I keep talking about the bug issues, and yes, I understand that Windows is a complex beast of an operating system with many potential hardware configurations to juggle and a vast labyrinth of legacy features to maintain.
However, the high level of errors (some of them quite serious) that we continue to see is not good enough. Microsoft needs to take a hard look at its testing and QA processes and implement some changes; However, we never heard anything about this side of the operating system.
This is the year to fix Windows 11, and if there are two things that users would say in response to the question of what should be fixed, I bet most would answer: performance and bugs. Microsoft is addressing those performance issues, as we’ve seen, but what about the sometimes revealing bugs that still appear in released versions of the operating system?
The good news is that Microsoft has relented in some areas when it comes to the ‘recommendations’ doled out by Windows 11, some of which aren’t even thinly veiled suggestions but direct advertisements. For example, the widget panel is now a much quieter and less ad-infested place.
However, Microsoft still needs to do more on this front and communicate better with its marketing department to ensure that something ridiculous like a full-page Harry Potter ad never happens again. Yes, that ad was served through the Bing Wallpaper app, which isn’t part of Windows 11 by default since you have to choose to install it, but it’s still a prime example of the kind of promotional overkill that shouldn’t happen at Microsoft.
3. Go local
I still want Microsoft to bring back the option to install Windows 11 with a local account, rather than forcing the operating system to link to a Microsoft account during setup. There were hints earlier this year that this could happen, but so far none of Microsoft’s tweaks to the Windows 11 installation process have come close to this option.
Maybe that will change, but given how far Microsoft has gone in the past to avoid workarounds to bypass the Microsoft account requirement, I’m starting to think this won’t be part of the effort to fix Windows 11, which would be a shame.
If Microsoft wants to be an easy crowd pleaser, this would be a relatively easy achievement compared to the previous two changes.
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