Screenshots from a test build of Windows 11 showed Copilot taking over the area of the taskbar currently reserved for the search box.
Credit: Microsoft
Finally, Microsoft is once again trying to allow Copilot to change your PC’s settings, something previous versions could do but were removed in a later iteration. Copilot will attempt to answer plain-language questions about your PC’s settings with a link to the appropriate part of Windows’ large and labyrinthine Settings app.
These new features join others that Microsoft has been testing for a few weeks or months now. The Copilot connectors, rolled out to Windows Insiders earlier this month, can give Copilot access to email and file sharing services like Gmail and Dropbox. New document creation features allow Copilot to export the contents of a Copilot chat into a Word or PDF document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation for further refinement and editing. And AI actions in File Explorer appear in the Windows context menu and enable direct manipulation of files, including batch image editing and document summarization. Combined with Copilot Vision features that allow Copilot to see the entire content of Office documents rather than just the parts on screen, all of these features inject AI into more basic everyday tasks, rather than locking them into individual apps.
As usual, we don’t know exactly when any of these new features will roll out to the general public, and some may never be available outside of the Windows Insider program. None of them are currently included in the Windows 11 25H2 update, at least not the version the company is currently distributing through its Release Preview channel.
Learn lessons from the reminder
Microsoft at least appears to have learned lessons from last year’s botched Windows Recall rollout.
If you haven’t been following: Microsoft’s original plan had been to roll out Recall with the first wave of PC Copilot+, but without first sending it through the Windows Insider Preview program. This program normally gives power users, developers, security researchers and others the opportunity to familiarize themselves with upcoming Windows features before they are released, giving Microsoft feedback on bugs, security flaws or other flaws before rolling them out to all Windows PCs.
