These are my five favorite features in Windows 11 version 22H2

After more than a year of testing with Windows Insiders, Microsoft finally released Windows 11 version 22H2 – also known as the 2022 Update – to the general public on September 20th. There’s quite a lot in this update to improve various parts of the experience, whether it’s simple visual changes, adding new features, or bringing back old ones that were removed in the original Windows 11 release. Having tested the update for a few months prior to launch, I’ve developed some opinions, and I’d like to highlight my five favorite features in Windows 11 version 22H2.

Almost all the changes made in this update are worthy of praise, and to some extent, I like most of them. These are just the ones that stand out the most to me during my time with Windows 11, and they aren’t listed in any particular order.

Start menu folders and personalization

The first item on this list is, funny enough, something that’s being brought back from Windows 10. In the original release of Windows 11, you could no longer create folders in the Start menu, so your apps were either spread across multiple pages, or you’d have to go into the All apps list to see them all. Folders make it much easier to organize my apps, and I like keeping them in groups based on what kind of apps they are, such as social apps or media-related apps. I also have a folder for my Android apps on my main laptop.

Windows 11 Start menu with folders and an expanded Recommended section

Having folders on the Start menu also helps me save space for another new capability in Windows 11 version 22H2, which is the ability to adjust the size of the pinned area and the recommended area in Start. I like seeing more recommended items because it’s pretty common for me to have a recently-downloaded file I was to get to quickly, and having a longer list of recent files readily available really helps in those cases.

These two things combined make the Start menu feel much more mine, and much more useful, too. It may be a small change for some, but it’s certainly one of my favorites.

Touch gestures

I believe that Microsoft got the wrong message when Windows 8 failed to gain traction in the PC market. It’s not that users didn’t necessarily want an experience optimized for touch, it’s that they didn’t want an experience that was so inconvenient for everyone else. So it was always unfortunate to me that the company treated touch users so poorly during the entire Windows 10 generation. Don’t get me wrong, it was usable, and there were obviously elements that helped with that, but it didn’t have a UI that was really designed with touch support in mind. I love convertible laptops and the versatility they give you, so it’s fantastic to see Microsoft finally investing in that touch-based experience with Windows 11.

The initial release already had a couple of interesting gestures for touch screens, which let you switch desktops and apps more easily, but Windows 11 version 22H2 adds so much more. I love that I can swipe up from the taskbar to open the Start menu, or swipe up from the system tray to access the quick settings panel. I also love that – finally – the animation when you swipe in to bring up the notification center follows your finger, instead of being a fixed animation. This is all great to see, and it gives me renewed enjoyment when using my laptop as a tablet. Oddly enough, that animation update doesn’t apply to the Widgets panel, but we can hope Microsoft will fix that eventually.

There’s also a long overdue addition of a “grabber” for full-screen apps. Essentially, this is a safety mechanism that prevents you from accidentally triggering a swipe gesture that covers your game, or a movie you’re watching. You now have to swipe twice if you want to make use of those gestures while using a full-screen app, kind of similar to how it is on Android, and it makes a lot of sense.

All in all, the new touch gestures might be my favorite update of the bunch. I’ve covered the touch gestures in Windows 11 more extensively if you’d like to learn more.

File Explorer tabs (and other improvements)

This one isn’t officially available just yet, but we couldn’t not mention it. Support for browser-like tabs in File Explorer has been a requested feature for many years, and Microsoft even teased us with it back in 2017 with a feature called Sets for Windows 10, which sadly never left the preview stage. That would have turned all apps into tabs, which was an interesting idea in its own right. But now, after a few major bumps on the road, we finally have tabs in File Explorer coming with an update at the end of October.

File Explorer with multiple tabs open

File Explorer tabs work similarly to how they do on browsers in many ways. You can open a new tab with Ctrl+T – which defaults to the File Explorer Home page – you can right-click a folder and open it in a new tab, or even middle-click it to do it instantly. The shortcuts for closing a tab are also similar to other browsers. This makes it much easier to manage your open folders, since you no longer need to have a dozen separate File Explorer windows open to see everything you want.

This was a feature added pretty late into the development cycle, so I haven’t had a ton of time to get used to it, but it’s a very exciting addition. Once it’s widely available and I get more time with it, it will definitely make it much easier to manage my files.

But I also want to highlight other File Explorer improvements, particularly in regards to the navigation pane. The same update that will bring us File Explorer tabs also re-organizes this pane, and to me, it looks a lot cleaner. From a logical standpoint, it isn’t a huge difference, but it feels a lot better.

There’s also the new File Explorer Home page now displaying recent files from my OneDrive, which is a nice addition. Oh, and being able to install fonts directly from the modern context menu is great, too.

The new Task Manager and other visual updates

I’m a big fan of visual consistency, which often turns using Windows into a series of “why?” when I run into yet another element that’s still a holdover from the who knows when. Thankfully, Windows 11 version 22H2 brings a few very welcome visual updates, and the biggest one of them is Task Manager. The previous iteration of the task manager had been around since Windows 8, and it’s such a common tool that it really stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s something you kind of stop thinking about after you’ve used it for so long, but when a new Task Manager finally showed up in Windows 11 previews, that was a great day.

The new version of Task Manager has a heavily redesigned interface, now fully adjusted to the Windows 11 design language. It updates the overall window design with translucent surfaces using the new Mica material, it finally supports dark mode, and it even uses your accent color, so the yellow and orange color scale in the various sections is replaced by varying shades of the color you chose. Additionally, the old-school tab design makes way for a sidebar menu with all the different sections, also represented by icons so you can more easily identify them at a glance.

I would be remiss not to mention other long-overdue visual updates in this release, though. Microsoft has finally updated the volume and brightness sliders, which had also been around since Windows 8, but actually stuck out even more. The old design used the classic Windows 8 style with a very square-ish look and flat colors. Now, it’s a flyout with transparency and a full updated look that fits Windows 11 perfectly. You’ll only see it when you change volume or brightness using keyboard shortcuts (or a precision touchpad), but it feels a lot better.

The new volume indicator in Windows 11 version 22H2

One last visual update worth mentioning is in the boot-up sequence, where the circle of dots – a holdover from Windows 10 – has been replaced with the new Windows 11-style animation. All of these changes bring the UI design together much better than before.

Clipchamp

Admittedly, Clipchamp isn’t a new “feature” and you don’t need Windows 11 version 22H2 to access it (it’s available on the web, after all), but I think it’s definitely still worth mentioning. For years, Windows has lacked a decent built-in video editor. It’s a shame because Microsoft used to have Windows Movie Maker, which was actually pretty great for a basic video editing tool. But in the Windows 10 years, we were stuck with an incredibly lackluster video editor built into the Photos app. Meanwhile, Apple’s macOS offers a very versatile option out of the box with iMovie.

That’s why Clipchamp is such a welcome addition. It’s not perfect, but as I noted in my Clipchamp guide, it’s a pretty capable editor. It supports multiple video and audio tracks, it has plenty of effects and transitions built-in, and you can even access a library of stock content, especially with a Clipchamp subscription. For someone making their own video for the first time, Clipchamp makes it so that you don’t need to go hunting for a third-party video editor, and it makes content creation that much more accessible.

When Microsoft bought Clipchamp, it was pretty bad. The free plan had ridiculous restrictions, and the premium plans got incredibly expensive for no obvious reason. But in the year since then, it’s become much better value, and the fact that it’s now installed out of the box in Windows 11 can only be a good thing. Hopefully, more improvements will keep coming so it’s an even more useful tool.

As a bonus, having a proper video editor is also giving us a brand-new Photos app that does away with the old one. It actually has a very nice redesign, too, so this is a double win.

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And those are my five favorite features in Windows 11 version 22H2, or the 2022 Update. There’s quite a lot to be excited about depending on who you are, but these are definitely the highlights for me. The number one addition might actually be the new touch gestures, though I feel I may be in the minority with that one.

What are your favorite features in Windows 11 version 22H2? Let us know in the comments!

The post These are my five favorite features in Windows 11 version 22H2 appeared first on XDA.

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