Software & Apps

Mac owners have been suffering at the hands of a bug in Edge that Microsoft had flagged up by a tester, but didn't fix, and the glitch made it into the release version of the browser.

The good news is that it has now been fixed with the latest release of Edge, which is version 144.0.3719.115, as spotted by Neowin.

Microsoft notes on the changelog:

Google's hoping to get Windows 11 users to choose to fire up its Chrome browser as soon as the operating system boots to the desktop.

Windows Latest noticed that a regular contributor of browser info on X, Leopeva64, pointed out the latest step in this grand plan of Google's, which is to nag Chrome users to configure the browser in this way.

The addition of the option to automatically start Chrome on first bootup with Windows 11 - opening the browser in the foreground, it should be noted, not stealthily in the background - actually went into testing a couple of weeks ago.

It's no secret that PC enthusiasts and PC gamers have a generally unfavorable opinion of Windows 11, Microsoft's latest operating system, which many feel like they have to use on account of there being no real alternative. Yes, that includes Linux. In recent years, in addition to performance, bloat, and mountains of telemetry, the shoehorning of Copilot AI features into the operating system has been met with, again, a generally unfavorable reception.

From changing PC keyboards to now including a dedicated Copilot AI key, and from adding new AI features to legacy apps like Paint and Notepad, Microsoft has definitely exhibited a lot of "all in on AI" energy of late. Throw in the lukewarm response to Copilot+ PCs and the whole Recal debacle, where Microsoft's new AI would screenshot everything you do on your PC and store those unencrypted images in an indexable database, and there's good reason to get a little excited about this news.

According to sources close to Windows Central, Microsoft is reportedly "reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11" and will reportedly make changes to either improve or streamline these features, or, get this, remove them entirely.

Although recent reports indicate that Windows 10 is regaining market share in the desktop space, Microsoft's quarterly financial report highlighted a significant milestone for Windows 11. According to the company, there are now 1 billion Windows 11 users, and it took the operating system 1,576 days to reach this milestone.

That last figure is important because it took Windows 10 1,706 days to reach the 1 billion user mark. Windows 11 outpacing or eclipsing Windows 10 is good news for Microsoft; however, it's safe to assume that a big part of Windows 11's surge during the quarter ended December 31, 2025, was due to Microsoft ending support for Windows 10.

According to Microsoft, Windows 11's growth for the quarter can be attributed to this, as there was an overall decline in Windows 'Devices' revenue. Although public sentiment surrounding Windows 11 is far from positive, on the plus side, this 1 billion milestone does make it much more of a success than previously maligned Windows 8 and Windows Vista - two operating systems that failed to crack the 1 billion global user mark.

The general consensus among PC enthusiasts is that Windows 11 and the Windows Experience is in its worst state in years. From bloatware to OS-breaking bugs, performance issues, unwanted Copilot AI features, pop-ups, ads baked into the UI, system instability, frequent Blue Screen crashes, and more - it's not hard to see why.

According to a new report from The Verge's Tom Warren, citing sources close to Microsoft, the company is reportedly redirecting engineers to "urgently fix Windows 11." Apparently, Microsoft is aware just how badly the Windows experience has deteriorated, which has directly affected public perception and trust in the company's ability to deliver a functional and stable operating system.

The Verge's report says Windows is at a "breaking point," which is why Windows engineers are apparently all hands on deck to fix the core issues as soon as possible. This will take place over the next few months (or longer), with Microsoft referring to this endeavor as "swarming."

Google is looking to make its Gemini AI platform a key part of its popular Chrome browser. As detailed in a new blog post titled 'Putting Gemini to work in Chrome' by Chrome Vice President Parisa Tabriz, the browser is set to receive a new "side panel experience" that is effectively an AI assistant powered by Gemini 3. Plus, new agentic AI features.

The new side panel is set to arrive in Chrome for macOS, Windows, and Chromebook, allowing users to access Gemini while their main tab or browser window remains open. Naturally, the Gemini panel can be used to do all of the things you'd expect from the AI platform, from summarizing the content on a page to helping you manage your calendar appointments.

Gemini in Chrome also supports Google's 'Connected Apps,' integrating Gmail, Calendar, Maps, YouTube, and more. In one example of how this might work, asking Gemini to book a flight to a conference will see it find the event details from an email, check your Calendar, and then use Google Flights to offer recommendations. Integrating Gemini with other Google apps is optional, so it's not required.

Google's new desktop operating system has been leaked ahead of its official debut, with 9to5Google spotting recordings of Aluminum OS running on an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 Chromebook. The screen recordings were found on a bug report on the Chromium Issue Tracker, with the operating system reportedly running on x86 architecture.

Aluminum OS, like other operating systems, features a centralized taskbar at the bottom of the screen. In the recording above, you can see icons for various Google apps, including Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, and Gemini AI. There's also a status bar at the top right of the screen, with a layout similar to that on mobile and tablet devices, showing notification icons, Wi-Fi signal strength, battery level, and the time.

Running smoothly on x86 architecture, presumably, Google's Gemini AI features and open-source models will run locally on processors with NPUs. Aluminum OS is effectively an extension of ChromeOS and Android 16's desktop mode for PC, with this leak showing the UI and some split-screen multitasking. Check out the second video below.

Windows 10 has managed to pull some new or previous users from Windows 11 after Microsoft's latest operating system managed to secure the top spot on the Windows market share chart.

The data comes from Statcounter, which outlines that in October, 2025, Windows 11 held 58.18% market share, compared to Windows 10's 41.17%, but then in November 2025, Windows 11 dropped down to 53.7%, compared to Windows 10's 42.7%. While this is only a change of a few percent, it represents millions of users, especially considering Microsoft said Windows is currently active on over 1.4 billion devices worldwide.

Notably, Windows 7 increased its user base by roughly 3.9% during the same period. Data as of December 2025 indicates Windows 11 has 50.7% of the market, while Windows 10 increased to about 44.6%, and the remainder is Microsoft's previous operating systems.

Apple has fallen significantly behind the competition when it comes to creating an in-house AI model capable of sufficiently upgrading Siri to the level the company advertised in 2024, and following reports of internal struggles with Apple Intelligence-related development teams, Apple finally fell on its sword and signed a deal with its direct competitor, Google, for access to its Gemini AI models.

Apple intends to use Gemini to power upcoming Apple Intelligence features, and ultimately give Siri a most-welcomed upgrade in the intelligence department. Initially, Apple was in discussions with Anthropic for access to its models, but following drawn-out conversations and an unfavourable payment structure for Apple, Anthropic was no longer an option.

OpenAI was another possible contender, especially since the two companies have already inked a deal to integrate ChatGPT into Siri, which is triggered only when the user's prompt can't be fulfilled by Apple's own AI model. However, given that OpenAI is currently working on releasing its first physical device, which is being helmed by former Apple designer Jony Ive, and that device is meant to be a way users can communicate with AI, Apple recognized potential conflicts of interest with going with OpenAI.

Microsoft's simple digital drawing and image creation app, Paint, is continuing to get an AI makeover, with the company announcing a new feature for Windows Insiders that will leverage image-generation tools to let users create a Coloring Book. And that's precisely what the new tool is called, with Coloring Book letting users "create unique coloring book pages from a text prompt."

Basically, it's an AI image generation that creates black ink drawings in the style of a children's coloring book, with Microsoft explaining that once you enter text like "a cute fluffy cat on a donut" or "a house with a garden and fence" and then hit the Generate button, you'll be presented with your creation.

To complement this new feature, Paint is also getting expanded Fill controls with a new 'tolerance slider' that gives users direct control over how much color (in percentage) is applied. Although not exactly essential, the new Coloring Book feature does sound like it could be fun for families to use, as it opens the door to a seemingly limitless ability to generate different Coloring Book pages.

Elon Musk has revealed during a recent X post that X, formerly Twitter, will be receiving a new algorithm, which the social media owner said would be made open source.

Musk took to his personal X account to announce that X is receiving a new algorithm and that within seven days it will be made open source, revealing all code that is used to determine which organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. Musk wrote that it will be made open source in just 7 days.

Additionally, the Tesla CEO also wrote that every four weeks the revealing of the code will take place, and will be accompanied by detailed developer's notes that are intended to inform the public on the changes.

ChatGPT users will soon be able to make Apple Music playlists within the app by simply asking ChatGPT to do it for them, as OpenAI's CEO of applications revealed in a recent Substack post that Apple Music has joined the list of upcoming partners that will integrate into ChatGPT.

OpenAI unveiled in October that apps are coming to ChatGPT, which opens the door for many popular apps to integrate directly into the service and enable ChatGPT users to take advantage of the interoperability. For example, Spotify, Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, and Zillow are all coming to ChatGPT as first-round partnerships, with even more popular apps being on the horizon as well.

According to Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, Adobe Airtable, Apple Music, Clay, Lovable, OpenTable, Replit, and Salesforce are also joining the list. So, how will Apple Music work within ChatGPT? Presumably, it will be very similar or even identical to how Spotify already works within the app.

Support for most Windows 10 users ended on October 14, 2025, and those who want to keep receiving security updates (primarily businesses) must purchase an Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscription. And with that, Microsoft's big push for consumers, businesses, and schools to use Windows 10 has been to either upgrade existing systems to Windows 11 or buy a brand-new Windows 11 PC.

The migration process has been slow to say the least, withStatCounter's data showing that Windows 11 only became the most popular version of the operating system worldwide in June 2025 - almost five years after its launch. And Windows 10's market share hasn't changed much in the past six months; it's at 42.7% as of the end of November 2025. In fact, when you compare October 2025's figure to November 2025, Windows 10 market share actually grew.

And in that same period, as support for Windows 10 officially ended, Windows 11's market share actually decreased from 55.2% to 53.7%. It's a surprising stat that reflects the general consumer sentiment that Windows 11, despite its focus on AI tools to enhance productivity, is an inferior OS.

Microsoft's Windows 11 is widely considered to be in a pretty rough spot thanks to ongoing performance issues, unnecessary features taking up system resources, and bloat from AI, ads, and telemetry. One notable issue that many have been pointing out, which recently got a 'fix', was the slow performance of File Explorer, the main app for accessing files and folders.

Microsoft's solution was simple: pre-load the application at startup, have it sit there in memory so that when you click on the File Explorer icon or run the app, it fires up instantly or at least a lot faster than it used to. 'Just have it load into memory on startup' is not exactly an elegant solution, and per this new report from Windows Latest, the execution sounds a little half-hearted.

With the File Explorer fix available via Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271 (KB5070307), the app's resource usage effectively doubles, jumping from 35MB to over 67MB. In the era of PC builds with 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB of memory, this isn't much and wouldn't be noticeable. However, it looks like doubling the amount of RAM used by File Explorer hasn't really solved the speed issue, as it's still slower than Windows 10's File Explorer.

Microsoft went through with the severing process from Windows 10 in October, meaning the company no longer provides security updates to the now out-of-date operating system, leaving PCs running Windows 10 to be at exponentially greater risk of compromise.

With Windows 10 now in the rear-view mirror for Microsoft, the company hoped many users would make the jump to Windows 11. However, Microsoft's latest operating system comes with much stricter requirements than its predecessor, and as always, some people won't upgrade until they absolutely need to. But, it appears the rate at which users upgrade to a new Windows operating system is slowing, as around 1 billion PCs are still running Windows 10.

Those figures come from a recent Dell earnings call where Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke said, "We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded. And we have another 500 million that are four years old that can't run Windows 11. Those are all rich opportunities to upgrade to Windows 11 and modern technology. Equally important AIPCs."

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, commonly referred to as BOM by Australians, is a website that receives more than 2.6 billion visits every year and could be joining the list of the most expensive website upgrades in internet history.

It was revealed that the make-over for the BOM website cost about $96.5 million AUD, which is about $62.3 million USD. That figure is 20 times the original estimation for the website upgrade, which was $4.1 million AUD ($2.7 million USD). While that is an astronomical figure for a website upgrade, BOM has since gone live, and the response from users has been far from good, with the hashtag "#changeitback" going viral since the new website went public.

Users took to social media to criticize the new website, including the new color scheme for the rain radar and the reduction in functionality, specifically the inability to enter GPS coordinates to obtain forecasts for specific locations. Farmers and fishermen commonly use this feature. According to reports, that feature is now gone.

Microsoft recently ended official support for Windows 10, prompting a significant push from the company and its partners to move people to newer devices or upgrade their existing hardware to Windows 11. Well, it's looking increasingly like the Windows 11 transition has been moving at a slower pace than expected, with Dell chiming in on the status of the PC refresh and upgrade cycle as part of the company's recent Q3 2025 earnings call.

As spotted by Windows Latest, the transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for Dell's customer base has been slow. Jeffrey Clarke, the Vice Chairman and COO at Dell, says, "If you were to look at it relative to the previous OS end-of-service, we are 10, 12 points behind at that point with Windows 11 than we were the previous generation."

According to Dell, the Windows install base sits at around 1.5 billion. And with that figure, there are still 500 million Windows users with systems that can be upgraded to Windows 11 who haven't been upgraded. This means that these users are sticking with Windows 10 even though official support for things like regular security updates has ended.

Google could soon bring customization to your YouTube homepage, with the company currently testing a new feature it calls "Your custom feed."

Google has briefly explained the new feature in a recently posted thread on a support page, where a company employee wrote that its new experimental feature enables users to "customize recommendations for your Home feed."

Adding more explanation to the feature, the post states that for those who are part of the experiment, they will see "Your Custom Feed" appear on the Home page as "a chip besides Home", and after clicking it, they will be able to update Home feed recommendations by entering a "simple prompt".

Microsoft's Notepad is one of those simple legacy apps that has been around for decades. It has been a go-to app for countless Windows users because it offers fast and straightforward text-based editing and note-taking. That said, the Notepad in Windows 11 is a version of the app that has seen several functionality updates, including tab support, text formatting for links and headings, and AI-powered rewrite and summarize tools.

As part of a new update available to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11, Notepad (version 11.2510.6.0) now supports creating tables. The new option appears in the toolbar, and, in keeping with Notepad's lightweight, fast theme, it's a simple drop-down menu that lets you create a Table by selecting the number of rows and columns using a grid.

There's also some right-click functionality to add or remove rows and columns; however, the initial response to the update has been mixed, as the general feeling is that Notepad's basic text and note-taking functionality is what keeps it lightweight. And the more Notepad features Microsoft adds, the more it's going to lose sight of its original intention and become another unoptimized Windows app with too many unnecessary features.

Last week, we shared a story that involved Microsoft's Windows boss, Pavan Davuluri, posting on social media that Windows is "evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere." Basically, it refers to a plan to turn every major component in Windows into an AI agent that you can interact with using speech, text, and natural language.

As expected, this announcement didn't go down well, with the post quickly getting hundreds of negative comments from Windows users, engineers, developers, and PC enthusiasts. Although a big slice of the comments were along the lines of "no thanks" (with more colorful language), many were constructive, detailing why Windows 11's current state felt like a mess of inefficiencies, telemetry, bugs, and other issues.

It got to the point where Pavan Davuluri turned off the ability to comment on his post about Windows becoming an "agentic OS," but not before the message was received loud and clear. In response to a separate post by technology writer Gergely Orosz, who discussed how this new direction would see software engineers ditch Windows as a platform, Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri said, "We want developers to choose Windows."