- Microsoft has simply launched a brand new replace for Home windows 11
- Sadly, it brings an advert for PC Sport Go into the Settings app
- Not everybody will see this, although, and this replace applies a raft of helpful bug fixes, notably for File Explorer
Home windows 11 simply obtained its newest replace, and as is very often the case, there’s good and dangerous information – vital fixes for File Explorer is the previous, and yet one more advert being formally launched to the OS is the latter.
Sure, in case you didn’t understand, yesterday was ‘Patch Tuesday’, and the March cumulative replace for Home windows 11 was launched.
Let’s get the doubtful transfer out of the best way first, then: the talked about advert is positioned within the Settings app, on the house web page panel, and consists of promotional exercise for PC Sport Go.
The optimistic information right here is that it’ll solely seem for sure Home windows 11 customers – those that are PC Sport Go subscribers – the reason is that it’s an advert that provides a referral for pals who may wish to be a part of the service, too.
In different phrases, this provides you the power to ask pals to strive PC Sport Go at no cost (for a 14-day trial, or not less than that was the case in testing).
Proper, onto the File Explorer fixes, which, for many who could be uncertain, is the app that powers the very folders that you simply use each day (almost certainly) to cope with your information.
As Bleeping Pc reviews, there are fairly a couple of cures for varied File Explorer blues, together with an vital one, whereby Home windows 11 now gives much-improved efficiency ranges when opening folders which have a big amount of media information inside them.
An issue that meant the right-click context menu was additionally sluggish to seem with cloud-based information has been resolved, too. Additionally, relating to information within the cloud (OneDrive), the thumbnails for these now present correctly in Home windows 11 search outcomes (whereas some thumbnails beforehand wouldn’t be displayed).
On prime of that, a difficulty with the deal with bar overlapping information when in full-screen mode with a File Explorer window has been remedied (and URLs entered manually within the deal with bar are assured to work, whereas some have been failing beforehand).
There are fairly a lot of bug fixes on this patch, in truth, together with some work on the Begin menu (the place the colours have been mistaken within the Account Supervisor flyout), and a treatment for an odd sound-related concern. The latter noticed the PC’s quantity improve to 100% when the system woke from sleep (a impolite awakening certainly for some unsuspecting Home windows 11 customers, little question – and one other in an unlucky assortment of latest audio bugs).
Additionally, a glitch that induced some apps to not acknowledge a linked scanner has been smoothed over, too.
There are the standard safety patches right here, as you’d count on, and in addition some work on options, together with helpful new shortcuts for the scan mode of Home windows 11’s display reader device, Narrator.
Evaluation: Advert aggro and File Explorer stays wonky – but Microsoft deserves some credit score right here
So, one other advert has made it right through testing into the completed model of Home windows 11 – and I can’t say I’m impressed with that. Okay, so this advert may really be helpful, I don’t dispute that – it’s not less than focused at PC Sport Go subscribers, they usually may genuinely wish to give their pals the prospect of a free trial (to check out some coop gaming with them).
That mentioned, that is nonetheless an out-and-out advert – not some form of ‘suggestion’ or extra delicate prod to make use of a Microsoft service – and the extra of this that’s introduced into Home windows 11, the extra I really feel that Microsoft is crossing strains it actually shouldn’t be crossing. (Not in a paid-for working system).
To offer Microsoft credit score the place it’s due, we’ve witnessed some suggestions (in testing) of late that would show genuinely helpful, so the corporate isn’t going totally within the mistaken course with Home windows 11’s varied nudges and prompts.
Moreover, it’s positively good to see the work on fixing File Explorer, though there have been a number of bugs affecting it, and a few annoyances nonetheless stay. Notably, solely final month, the February 2025 replace induced chaos with File Explorer falling over for some people.
That is an space Microsoft clearly wants to totally clean over, because it’s a central a part of the Home windows 11 interface, so it actually doesn’t look good if there are glitches hanging about within the works.
