It's Week D, do you know where your preview update is? 23H2 is out - 24H2, not so much! No surprises in the new features list, but are more new features on the way?

Windows

• New text actions in Click to Do - Practice in Reading Coach and Read with Immersive Reader - in Dev and Beta (24H2)
• Find cloud-based (OneDrive-based) photos using Semantic search - Comes to EEA, Snapdragon X only for now, Dev and Beta
• Voice access improvements - add words to custom dictionary - Dev and Beta
• Updated green screen UI - latest Canary build, from today
• Minor update to the Beta/23H2 channel, no new features
• Ubuntu 25.04 is out and there's a native Arm64 ISO (!) and BitLocker support
• Hands-on with WSL (which is stuck at 24.xx) and in Hyper-V on a Copilot+ PC
• Is dual-boot even possible on Arm? (Yet)
• Friday night update to identity caused accounts to be marked as leaked for 50,000 partner accounts

AI

• We're in a new wave: Microsoft 365 Copilot updated, new Agent Store and more on the way
• Copilot Vision is now free for everyone in Microsoft Edge
• Google is giving Gemini Advanced/Google One AI Premium away for free to US college students
• Google estimates its Gemini AI chatbot had 35M DAUs and 350M MAUs worldwide as of last month while ChatGPT had 160M DAUs and 600M MAUs (Erin Woo/The Information)
• Perplexity is coming to Samsung and Motorola phones - and Microsoft is apparently coming to Motorola too

Antitrust

• It's getting real - 20 years after US v. Microsoft, Big Tech is finally getting a reckoning
• Google has now lost two major US antitrust cases in less than a year
• US v. Google (search): DOJ wants Judge to break up Google
• US v. Google (ads): Google found to have another illegal monopoly
• What's the "right" outcome for Chrome and Google's ad businesses?
• OpenAI says it would be happy to buy Chrome from Google- hilarious
• Google just killed Privacy Sandbox, cites regulatory climate
• Apple, Meta fined by EU for not conforming to the DMA
• Apple Intelligence is no longer "available now" (Siri: Is it raining?)

Xbox/gaming

• Elder Scrolls IV Remastered lands on Xbox, PC, PS5 and Game Pass
• Xbox app arrives on LG smart TVs
• It's (back) on: Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders rescheduled to April 24 with no price change
• And the demand is higher than expected, Nintendo says

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: It's time to look at Google Fi again
• HARDWARE pick of the week: Microsoft keyboards and mice are back, baby
• RunAs Radio this week: Agentic AI for IT Pros with Tim Warner
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Dark Harmony No. 3 Black IPA Cask

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Paul, Leo, and Richard get into new Windows features (thanks to the Feature Tracker), hardware shifts for Microsoft/Intel/Apple, AI moves from OpenAI/Apple/Adobe, Notion Mail, a Hawaiian drink, the National Recording Registry, rice cookers, and electronic timer tunes!

Windows 11

• Feature Tracker. Since we last talked, Microsoft has announced the following new features for Windows 11:
• Semantic search can now search for Windows settings using natural language - Dev and Beta (24H2) channels, no clear stable date but guessing June
• Narrator can more accurately describe images by detailing the people, objects, colours, text, and numbers in them, Snapdragon X only, same builds as above
• Snipping Tool with "Text extraction" in the capture bar - This in Canary now, but it was in at least Dev previously, this could ship in stable at any time, it's an app
• Recall (preview) and Click to Do (preview) head to the Release Preview channel (24H2) - Expect this in May Patch Tuesday
• Narrator speech recap, Phone Link/Start integration, File Explorer Home updates, Windows Share with Edit all head to Release Preview (23H2) - Expect these in May Patch Tuesday - They were added to Beta channel (23H2) a few days earlier
• Plus, Microsoft Edge is up to 9 percent faster at web rendering and we're having a fiesta
• Also, the Windows 95 startup/logout chime has been inducted into the National Recording Registry

Hardware

• Surface Hub OG hits EOL this year just like Windows 10
• First major change under new Intel CEO
• What's a computer? The iPad, supposedly, but we'll see
• Everything's fine, but Google laid off hundreds in Pixel/Android group

AI

• Apple is making big changes so that Apple Intelligence will actually be intelligent
• Adobe is going agentic too
• OpenAI is creating its own social network because the world needs another social network
• OpenAI announces three GPT-4.1 models - may retire GPT-4 soon - plus now o3 and o4-mini models
• ChapGPT gets an image library and a memory
• Claude gets Research and Google Workspace integration
• Meta will start training its AI models with EU data, wink wink

Xbox and games

• Xbox app on mobile will soon let you buy games (!) and add-on content, join Game Pass, and redeem perks. Did Microsoft get a concession from Apple/Google??
• COD: Modern Warfare II (OG) and more are coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks
• Xbox announces Doom: The Dark Ages limited edition accessories
• Sea of Thieves is coming to Battle.net
• Sony forced to raise the price of PS5 in three locales

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Think like an individual, not an enterprise
• App pick of the week: Notion Mail
• RunAs Radio this week: How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
• Brown liquor pick of the week: 12th Hawaii Distiller's Reserve

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!
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Introducing the Windows 11 Feature Tracker
"From the 'I should have done this two years ago' files, the 'I have wasted my life' files, and the, 'great, I needed more work to do' files ... There is a need for this. So I made one. But it will evolve. Maybe into a web app/wiki/something else... like a Notion website?" - Paul

• Patch Tuesday brings a metric ton of new features - And what the tracker showed clearly
• Two seconds after posting the tracker, Microsoft changed the Copilot app yet again - proving the need for the tracker - And demonstrating why the Insider Program is so screwed up
• A hidden new Start menu in recent builds presents an interesting conundrum: How to handle something Microsoft has not announced?

More Windows 11

• Beta build for 23H2: File new tab/new window changes, Explorer context menu regression may be permanent
• Dev and Beta (24H2): Taskbar icon scaling is a blast from the past we all need desperately
• Intel is killing Unison app and service

Like winter, Build is coming

• Build session catalog is live - mostly AI as expected. Paul and Richard are going
• Overview of the Windows Copilot Runtime (one year after it was announced), Windows Actions, standard Kayla Cinnamon talk on Windows productivity, using your own model with WCR, native app experiences(!), Arm64 app perf, etc.

AI

• Final thoughts on Microsoft's 50th: Biggest accomplishment wasn't any tech, it was changing with the times.
• What it's best at: Democratizing tech for the commoners, an expansion on Jack Tramiel/Commodore's "computers for the masses, not the classes" schtick. And that is exactly what it is doing with AI right now
• Microsoft hosts a consumer AI event and announces a metric ton of new Copilot features
• We need a Copilot feature tracker. Copilot = every single feature other AIs have - Copilot Actions on the web, memory and personalization, Copilot Vision on mobile and Windows, AI-generated podcasts and Microsoft releases Copilot Search in Bing
• Is AI turning us all into Charly from Flowers for Algernon?
• AI is making us stupider! There are studies!!
• This is the argument against every single tech advance from the steam train to the ballpoint pen to this
• Microsoft's AI demo of vibe-coded Quake II highlights the problem nicely
• Sometimes it's the little things: AI recaps for book series in Kindle
• GitHub Copilot updated with Agent Mode, Cursor-style code overviews, more

Xbox & gaming

• Microsoft announces new Xbox Games Showcase for June
• Edge Game Assist gets new features, support for new games
• GTA V and enhanced version for PC coming to Game Pass on April 15 - In addition to the previous Game Pass titles we discussed last week
• Good: Nintendo Switch 2 supports ray tracing and DLSS
• Bad: Nintendo delays Switch 2 to figure out the tariffs mess

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Programmers at Work
• App pick of the week: Apple Music
• RunAs Radio this week: Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr
• Brown liquor pick of the week: The Heart Cut #02

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/927

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell