“We set out to solve one of the most common frustrations we hear — finding and changing settings on your PC — using the power of AI agents,” Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows Experiences at Microsoft, said in a blog post on Tuesday. “An agent uses on-device AI to understand your intent and with your permission, automate and execute tasks.”
Ah Christ. We’ve collectively regressed so much in computer knowledge that people can’t even find a settings menu? Even I have trouble believing that one.
Finding settings in Windows is pretty hard
The last time finding settings in Windows was straight forward was Windows 95. Since the stupid dumbed down ‘settings’ app was vomited upon us, it has been nearly impossible to find the thing you know is there but has now been renamed and moved, and isn’t even indexed in the settings app search bar.
The registry never has and never will be simple nor usable. Windows is rotten to the core.
Just to be the devil’s advocate here: There are way more settings now than back then. That interface wouldn’t cut it either.
deleted by creator
“Hey Copilot. Delete yourself, Recall and all other bloatware from my system. Thank you.”
Easy way to automatically set settings that are convenient for them and disguise it as AI being AI
I actually like the ability for a local AI to help with this in theory. I don’t think it’s an excuse for unintuitive UIs though.
I agree but with Microsoft you know an air-gapped ‘AI agent’ is never going to happen.
Wow, a take that isn’t just “AI bad?” Wild.
Yeah I thought it was weird that it couldn’t do this in windows in the first place when you had to click a button to allow the AI to change your computer from light to dark mode or something. It was right 99% of the time in my brief testing, and just include an undo button in case it isn’t.
All of that said, I’m glad to be on Linux where there isn’t any AI built into my OS, but I’m also not the target audience for needing an AI to change my settings for me.
I dumped Windows about 18 months ago, before their recall and copilot BS. There are many Linux distros out there. They are free and there is almost nothing you can do with Windows that can’t be done on Linux. These days, most games for Windows can be played on Linux using Proton and Wine. There is no reason to keep Windows and plenty of reasons to dump Windows, like not wanting your personal data stolen or monitored by corporations and governments.
Just put the search results in under the search bar, bro.
Glad to be using Linux on all my computers
just a simple search feature works.
Because coming up with a UI that doesn’t suck is too much work
They really are trying to drive away their user base huh
No, we’re just not their target market. Most of their users, inexplicably, actually like changes like this.
Yea, but in my experience most people just dont care.
Quick! I need a guide on how to disable this.
There isn’t a settings switch to turn off?
Oh no you don’t
[deletes wuaueng.dll because windows update has turned itself back on like 5 times]
Maybe if you didn’t split settings into that half-baked settings app, then leave control panel in place with the remaining settings, but make control panel increasingly difficult to get to, we wouldn’t need a stupid AI agent to help us change settings.
Yes! I really feel all this copilot bullshit is to hide the fact they released windows 11 broken as fuck and here 2.5 years later it’s still a pile of shit. It’s just fucked. I have to use it daily for work and clients and it’s done nothing but prepare me to install W10 LTSC this summer or move to Linux. Problem with Linux is a have an Nvidia GPU and don’t like having to fuck with that, otherwise Zorin it will be. Windows 11 pushes me everyday to hate it more and more. Seriously. Daily fucking updates for broken shit and shoving AI down our throats. Fuck windows.
I have an nvidia GPU and it worked out of the box.
I’m dualbooting CachyOS with windows, no issues with my rtx 4070 super.
CachyOS rocks. I settled on it after trying many Linux distros and CachyOS won. All distros had pros and cons CachyOS was easy to update. Easy to install and remove programs without the terminal. Proton and Wine run great on it so most of my Steam and Epic games are playable and all media types play without tinkering. That was an issue with Fedora.
I’ll look into it again this summer. It’s on the list, just not at the moment
Windows 11 actually released 3.5 years ago!
I’m in a similar situation, though I’ve already got a dual boot set up so it’s just a matter of only using Windows when I just absolutely have to.
Earlier today, I tried to zip a directory on Windows 11 with the context menu, and it wouldn’t do it! It’s a feature that’s been in Windows forever and is even in Ubuntu, but somehow over at Microsoft they’ve managed to break it. Incredible.
If you’re unlucky enough like me that you still have to use win 11 for work…
The shortcut Win + x is your friend here. It opens this menu.
Ot you can just right click the start menu
Is Microsoft trying to kill itself?
Yes
Hopefully
