The Taskbar icons are now centered and smaller like in Chrome OS, but the Start button is still to the left of the other app icons. Windows get tightly rounded corners, similar to macOS. I’m still not a fan of the always-narrow Taskbar buttons. In Windows 10 you get wide taskbar buttons for running apps that contrast with narrow icons for pinned apps. The centered look may win me over, however, since it doesn't require you to move the mouse cursor across a full screen to launch an app from the Start Menu.

More subtle are the transparency, animations, and clean icon design that represent an evolution of the Fluent Design System, which, though promised, never fully took over in Windows 10. A couple of new materials join the translucent one called Acrylic: the opaque Mica, which is slightly tinted based on the background color; and Smoke, which darkens other areas to make you focus on an important input region. Dark mode, too, looks more consistent, and these materials change to reflect that mode.

Widgets are making a comeback! Apple bolstered widgets in iOS 14 and iPadOS 15, and Microsoft dabbled in bringing back desktop widgets with the News and Interests panel in Windows 10. But Windows 11 widgets further the idea. The new widgets deliver a personalized feed of news, weather, traffic, sports, and stock market data, powered by AI for customization and Edge for rendering. Later updates will let you expand the Widgets panel to fill the whole screen, and third-party content providers will be able to take advantage of this new feature.

Windows has long been unmatched in its ability to position, size, open, and close windows in the screen to your taste. Apple's MacOS only recently added the ability to set windows to take up exactly half the screen, something Windows have had for years. Now comes the latest windowing convenience: Snap Layouts. Snap Layouts let you choose from a selection of window layouts (see above), easily populating them with app windows of your choice. Maybe even more important than the extra layout choices is that these layouts are saved and accessible from the app taskbar icons so you don’t have to re-create them after doing something else on the PC.

The redesigned Settings app now features a persistent left menu. It saves you from having to back out of nested settings to quickly get to another group. Otherwise, you get most everything found in Windows 10's Settings.

Now in Windows 11 you can set a different background color or image for each virtual desktop you have, which makes a lot of sense if you have one desktop for work and another for personal use, for example. Note that you can only set the backgrounds to be pictures or solid colors. If you want a slideshow background or Theme, then that background will apply to all desktops. The Snap Layouts mentioned above can also be used separately on each desktop.

One of Microsoft’s biggest hits over the last few years is Teams, the video conferencing and messaging tool. Microsoft Teams went from having 20 million users in 2019 to more than 250 million active monthly users by the end of 2021. The company wants it to reach beyond the workplace, though, and a new taskbar button gives easy access to Teams in Windows 11. Teams is cross-platform, running on Android, iOS, MacOS as well as Windows. It also works with SMS for those who don'y have the mobile app installed, meaning you can text message anyone's phone number from your PC for free, an appreciated perk.

The feature has two parts: Teams Chat and Teams Video Conferencing, which opens a seperate windows. When you start a message to someone who doesn't have an account, they get an invitation to sign up for the free service.

With Windows 11, when you dock or plug your laptop into a monitor, it remembers the last app layout you were using (see above).