Software & Apps News - Page 1

WhatsApp has grown to become one of the biggest instant messaging platforms on the planet but it's always had one particular problem - there was no real way to sign into an account on multiple devices at the same time. That's changing thanks to companion mode, and now that mode is rolling out on the iPhone.

Companion mode has been available on other platforms for a little while but this is the first time that we've heard of it starting to be added to some people's accounts who use iPhones. According to a WABetaInfo report, some people are now seeing the feature become available after installing the latest version of WhatsApp from the App Store.

WhatsApp first announced companion mode back in April 2023 and it admitted at the time that it was a feature that was highly requested by users. Companion mode allows users to connect up to four additional devices to an account linked to an iPhone.

Microsoft has been boasting about how it has improved various facets of performance in Windows 11, from core parts of the interface to how smoothly gaming mice run.

Microsoft has made a case as to why Windows 11 is a much leaner and faster OS (Image Credit: Microsoft)

This comes courtesy of a Microsoft blog post detailing the 'major strides' taken in the past year to improve performance across a range of fundamentals for Windows 11.

That includes boosting the performance of "frequently used shell interactions like Taskbar, Notifications, and Quick Settings" by up to 15% in some cases.

In this post, we will be going through the process of recovering and rebuilding an Exchange Server setup after a failed migration from Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange Server 2019. We will be using Stellar Repair for Exchange as the recovery tool.

A client had a setup on a physical server with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 (Standard) with three mailbox databases. The client purchased a new server with Windows Server 2022, and Hyper-V with the Active Directory already moved onto a Windows Server 2022 virtual machine. The plan was to also move to Exchange Server 2019 and decommission the old server as the Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are out of support and end of life. Though they had some legacy applications, they were not compatible with the new systems. However, after the re-development of some APIs, this was rectified.

This is a big leap from an all-in-one box with one point of failure to splitting the services and virtualizing the system. This is ideal for the mobility and operability of the system. To do this, they cannot just install the Exchange Server 2019 as it cannot co-exist with Exchange Server 2010. They must first install the Exchange Server 2013 or 2016, move all the data to it, and decommission the Exchange Server 2010. After that, install the Exchange Server 2019, move all the data to it, and then decommission the Exchange Server 2013 or 2016. As they have around 1000 mailboxes, this isn't an easy task. It needs to be planned correctly.

Windows 11's next feature update - Moment 3 - has arrived as an optional upgrade.

Moment 3 is here, but it's still in preview right now (Image Credit: Microsoft)

In other words, the cumulative update KB5026446 (which is build 22621.1778 for Windows 11 22H2) is still in testing, but you can install the preview if you want to get all those goodies in terms of fresh features.

The more cautious will likely want to wait, though, until next month, when the full release version of Moment 3 will be deployed (on June 13).

Microsoft is opening things up so more Android app developers can get their wares on Windows 11, if they wish.

Windows 11 should soon offer a lot more in the way of Android wares (Image Credit: Microsoft)

Android Police spotted this announcement, which was rather buried in a whole flurry of revelations and changes Microsoft detailed in a lengthy blog post about its Build conference.

Those introductions include native support for dealing with RAR files (and other less common archive formats) and the big announcement of the Windows 11 Copilot AI.

Windows 11 now supports a whole new bunch of archive formats, to the relief of many who for years may have been frustrated by the lack of the operating system's ability to cope with the likes of RAR files.

Expanded archive format support is not on nearly the same scale as Microsoft's Copilot, but it's still good to see (Image Credit: Microsoft)

We've all been there. Probably. Somebody sends you a bunch of files compressed in a different way to the standard ZIP archive, and you groan, heading off to try to find a third-party app to gain access to the contents. WinRAR was an old standby in the case of the mentioned RAR format, as many will doubtless recall.

Those hardships are now at an end, though, as at the Build developer conference, Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer and VP Microsoft Devices, announced that Windows 11 is getting support for RAR, TAR, 7-Zip and GZ formats. This will arrive in a new preview build later this week, we're told.

Microsoft has made a big revelation at its Build conference, with the software giant putting an AI assistant front and center in Windows 11.

Copilot is the name of the AI, which can be invoked by clicking its icon on the taskbar, then it pops up in a side panel, ready to assist with whatever it is you happen to be doing.

Or, in the usual style, you can simply ask the AI questions. Such as how you can adjust your system to focus on getting some work done, an example Microsoft gives, in reply to which Copilot suggests using Windows 11's focus timer feature and switching to the operating system's dark theme.

Microsoft has been rolling out Edge's built-in VPN functionality to some users in a 'controlled' manner of late, and we've just seen a hint of how much data allowance it could eventually run with.

As spotted by Leopeva64, a regular leaker on all things Edge, in the Canary (testing) version of the browser, the Settings page now clearly states that you get 5GB of free data per month.

The amount of data Edge has offered previously has been bumped up and down a bit throughout the VPN's existence in testing (and in the limited rollout). It has been as high as 15GB for a time (as a trial), and as low as 1GB (which we witnessed when the VPN started to come to the release version of Microsoft's browser).

Windows 11 has a bug that's reportedly causing some VPNs (using one specific protocol) to run very sluggishly, and Microsoft has said it's now looking into the matter.

Windows 11 has been hit by a nasty VPN slowdown bug (Image Credit: Microsoft)

The issue has been reported on Reddit (and other forums online), having started in the cumulative update for May that rolled out last week. (Technically, it began in the preview of that update which was deployed late in April for Windows 11 22H2).

This problem seemingly affects L2TP/IPsec connections, not the most used VPN protocol (that would be the likes of OpenVPN and WireGuard).

Microsoft has finally got round to fixing a bug that broke Spotify integration with its Focus Sessions feature on Windows 11.

That feature is something Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, and VP Microsoft Devices, tweeted very enthusiastically about back in 2021.

Indeed, Panay called Focus Sessions (fired up via the Windows Clock app) a "game-changer," with Spotify integration being part of what made it so great.