This week, Microsoft is balling out a taskbar notification system to its Windows 11 widgets. While the weather widget yielded to Windows 11 earlier this year, it’s mainly been a static experience that depicts a sunny icon when the climate is good and an umbrella icon when it’s raining and sucks to be outdoors.
That’s all transforming this week, as Microsoft is now adding live animations to this taskbar widget. In addition, the notifications include weather and stock alerts.
All Windows 11 users will begin to notice these new widget notifications in the coming days and weeks, gratitude to an update to the Windows Web Experience Pack that strengthens Microsoft’s widgets feature.
The notifications seem like live animations on the taskbar weather widget and have alerts for thunderstorms and even ticker alerts when commodities you’re following go up or down.
“When something important occurs related to one of your other widgets, you may notice an announcement from that widget on your taskbar,” describes Microsoft in a support article. “These announcements are told to be short and glanceable, and if you don’t interact with them, the taskbar will return to guiding you to the weather.”
You’ve recently seen some of these notifications on your Windows 11 machine, which can be somewhat distracting, especially if you have the Taskbar centered. While the climate ones are useful to forewarn you of thunderstorms and other components of nature you’d instead bypass, the alerts for stocks are far less so in our experience. Of course, you can ignore the notifications, and the taskbar widget will return to the static weather one. Still, the animations catch your engagement if you’re in the center of a meeting or you’re busy gathering why your VLOOKUP table isn’t operating in Excel.
Microsoft doesn’t appear to present a way to disable these notifications either easily. Of course, you’d like to keep the weather alerts, but ditch the stock animations and other notifications, so your Taskbar is a little less distracting. Given that we can fine-tune news content inside the main widgets panel, you hope a setting to fine-tune widget notifications is on the way.
Regarding future Windows 11 updates, Microsoft is also planning to release its next major OS update on September 20. Windows 11 22H2 will include drag and drop on the Taskbar, new app folders in the Start menu, new touch gestures, and much more.
Windows 11 is an influential variant of the Windows NT operating system boosted by Microsoft that was proclaimed on June 24, 2021, and is the inheritor to Windows 10, which was released in 2015. Windows 11 was released to the masses on October 5, 2021, as a free uprise/update via Windows 11 Installation Assistant and Windows Update on eligible appliances running Windows 10.
Windows 11 features noteworthy changes to the Windows shell influenced by the canceled Windows 10X. It includes a redesigned Start menu and substituting its “live tiles” with a distinct “Widgets” panel on the Taskbar. In addition, it can build tiled sets of windows. Finally, it can be minimized and restored from the Taskbar as a group and the latest gaming technologies inherited from Xbox Series X and Series S.
Windows 11 has gained a diverse positive reception; pre-release operating system coverage centered on its sterner hardware requirements, with arguments over. It is done over whether they were legitimately planned to improve the security of Windows or a plot to upsell users to newer devices and over e-waste associated with the transformations.
Microsoft increased the hardware requirements compared to Windows 10. Microsoft only supports the operating system with updates on devices using an eighth-generation Intel Core CPU or newer (with some exceptions) AMD Ryzen CPU based on Zen+ microarchitecture or more modern, or Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 ARM system-on-chip or more latest.
As part of the new security features noted for Windows 11, Microsoft Defender SmartScreen will be revamped with improved phishing detection and security when users enter credentials on a malicious app or website. In addition, to save users from one of the most effective attack vectors — untrusted software. With Smart App Control, Windows 11 is being revamped to guarantee that only trusted applications are conducted on a computer, using code signing and the company’s AI intelligence models.
Windows 11 will also accept updates aimed at hybrid work users, and Microsoft will submit a rescheduled File Explorer app with a tabbed interface and approval for pinning files. The operating system will also be revised with improved accessibility features.
It has Focus Sessions for Voice Access for dictation and control, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and systemwide Live Captions for users. In addition, it has hearing disabilities or those comprehending a new language.
Microsoft updates Windows 11 with new components for enterprise clients, including Microsoft Edge, Autopatch for automated Windows, and Office updates. Workers will also be able to securely access corporate resources with Microsoft Edge application management.
Meanwhile, according to the company, Microsoft will make it more comfortable for users to switch between Windows 11 and 365 with Windows 365 Switch and Windows 365 Boot.