Windows 11 has gotten a lot of hate in the media and culture, and if we’re honest, some of those criticisms are fair. Windows 11 is supposed to feel like the future, but sometimes (OK, a lot of times) it just feels kind of sluggish instead.
Applications take just a tick longer than it feels like they should to start opening when you click on them. (That’s before any loading times you have to deal with for the software to actually start fully running.)
Visible screen elements refresh ever so slightly too slowly. Settings windows are too sluggish to respond, too.
All the while, Microsoft seemed for a while like it couldn’t stop itself from injecting new AI features that users may or may not be interested in.
For many, it felt like Microsoft was losing track of the fundamentals while it chased more and more AI features.
Thankfully, Microsoft seems to be listening.
The company has been quietly investing in numerous quality of life enhancements and efficiency improvements. And the next one — though it definitely lives behind the scenes — could finally fix the “why is this so sluggish” aspect.
Microsoft Updating WinUI
WinUI is a forgettable name for a background framework you’ll never interact with directly. This is what Windows uses when it’s trying to build user interface elements — things like app windows, tool panels, buttons, the little animations when you open a folder in File Explorer, and so on.
WinUI gives Windows 11 its modern look. But the processing requirements within that framework may be part of the problem. It may be running silently in the background, but if it’s taking up too much of your processing power, you’ll feel it in slight ways throughout the OS.
So now Microsoft is improving how the WinUI framework operates, tinkering with it so it uses less system resources.
Microsoft says it’s been specifically testing WinUI performance in the tools everyone uses every day, like File Explorer and Notepad.
Because WinUI is powering, well, just about everything you see on your screen, these changes add up quickly. Switching between apps, opening folders, accessing files — all of it speeds up ever so slightly.
Potentially Next Up: Low Latency
Possibly the next new behind-the-scenes update after WinUI is focused on latency. That’s the amount of time between when you initiate something and when that thing happens.
Think double-clicking a file in File Explorer: there’s always that pause before anything actually happens. Some of that is a UI processing thing, where the system isn’t trying do to the thing; it’s trying to draw the animation of it doing the thing.
Latency is the other part of the delay, the part actually related to doing the thing.
By reducing latency, even by a few milliseconds, Microsoft can make Windows feel snappier overall. That’s a good thing for your user experience and makes tiny improvements on speed and response time that can add up over the course of the day.
Changes Point to Better Cohesion Between Teams
One more thought: these changes point to a Microsoft where teams work more closely with one another.
That sounds small and maybe obvious. But at the scale of these giant tech companies, it’s a big deal. Google often gets teased for how various features or ecosystems seem unaware of each other, like its dizzying array of similarly-named apps for messaging and texting.
Microsoft has the same types of struggles, where the team behind WinUI and the team behind processors and resource allocation maybe haven’t always coordinated as well as they could. The changes we’ve covered here suggest that these teams are now coordinating at a deeper level, which is a good sign going forward.
That’s it for this week. If you have any concerns about the way IT is running at your business, we’re here to help. Reach out now to schedule a call.