Windows 11's Copilot AI gets some useful tweaks - but we hope bigger changes are coming soon

Windows 11's Copilot AI has seen some useful changes in a new preview build released by Microsoft.

For starters, in preview build 23570 which has just been unleashed in the Dev channel, Copilot now has a lot more finesse in the way the assistant appears, as you can see in the above tweet from PhantomOfEarth.

In previous builds, when you clicked on Copilot and the side-panel (which may eventually be expandable) came into view from the right-hand side of the screen, the AI rather rudely shoved other windows on the desktop out of the way - they positively jerked aside.

But now, there's a much nicer and smoother animation as other windows are rearranged on the desktop to make way for Copilot. It's a small touch, but definitely a pleasing one.

Microsoft has also made it so Copilot is able to appear on different monitors if you have a PC setup with multiple displays. Just hit the Copilot button on the monitor that you wish the AI assistant to appear on, and it will - or you can use the Windows key + C shortcut and Copilot will pitch up on whatever display it was last seen on.

Those are useful changes, but Copilot still feels pretty barebones, and we're waiting for Microsoft to get its foot more to the floor, and bring through more meaningful feature additions. Hopefully those will be in the pipeline soon enough - we know that plugins will be key, and work has been underway on those for a while.

Note that not everyone has Copilot, only folks in the US, UK, Asia and South America, but the AI will be rolled out to everyone in time. (As you've probably seen, there are issues in Europe, for example, around privacy regulations and Microsoft's AI).

The bad news here is that some of those Dev channel testers running Windows 11 Home who previously had Copilot may find that the AI has disappeared from their taskbar in this new build. Microsoft says this is a known issue that it's working to fix.

Another known issue with Copilot is that when firing up the AI using the Voice Access feature, you need to use the 'show grid' command (that allows for directing mouse clicks) to click in the 'Ask me anything' box, but only for the first time.

Elsewhere in build 23570, the Xbox Game Bar has been renamed as the Game Bar (about time), and there are some handy fixes for bugs that could cause File Explorer to crash. There has also been some crashing going on (that's been hanging around for the last few builds) with the taskbar search function, and that has also been resolved.