Windows 11’s yearly update comes to your PC: 5 new features to try
You may have noticed that your Windows PC has updated recently, whether you like it or not, because Microsoft started automatically upgrading Windows 11 PCs with its big annual update at the end of January. This is an optional upgrade since its release in September. But that’s okay: there’s a lot of new stuff to discover in the massive Windows 11 2022 Update, codenamed 22H2. The system has received a bit of spitting and polishing pretty much everywhere – you’ve probably noticed some of the more obvious interface changes, like new icons for changing the volume.
Here are five of the biggest changes you should check first in the Windows 11 2022 Update. If you want to go even deeper down the Windows 11 rabbit hole, check out our guide to the 10 Windows 11 tips and tricks we’re using. to personalize our PCs.
Clipchamp: a new free video editor
Windows now has a new default video editor: Clipchamp. As a sort of spiritual successor to Windows Movie Maker, it’s easier and more accessible than professional video editors – the kind of thing you can use for a quick cut or crossfade if you’re sharing a YouTube video with friends. . The tool includes the usual basic timeline and editing capabilities, and it can upload directly to YouTube, TikTok, and various web storage services.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
Starting with Windows 11 version 22H2, Clipchamp should be included in your operating system – just search for it in the Start menu. If it’s not there, you can download it for free from the Microsoft Store. Here’s a complete guide to the basics of this new tool.
Tabs in File Explorer
Experienced users have been waiting for this one for a long time. Tabs are a feature that more advanced alternative file browsers have been using for decades, and Microsoft has finally – finally – delivered a tabbed file explorer in the Windows 11 2022 Update. Here’s a complete guide on how to get them. utilize.
Mark Hachman / IDG
To open a new tab in any Explorer window, just click the “+” button in the topmost menu bar. Tabs work as you’re used to in any modern web browser, although you can’t (yet) click and drag them into a new Explorer window. While you’re here, check out the new, streamlined menu on the left, with faster access to system folders and your most-used locations.
If you like having lots of apps at your fingertips in the Start menu, you’ll love the new folders feature. It works more or less like folders on the home screen for Android or iOS (or perhaps more pertinently, Chrome OS). Two or more shortcuts can be combined in a folder, and any folder can have a custom name.
Michael Crider/IDG
To get started, just click and drag one Start menu icon onto another. When you see them both shrink, release the mouse button and a folder will be created automatically. Click on the new folder, then click on the title to rename it. All additional programs can be dragged into or out of the folder, and you can have as many folders as you want.
New ways to use the Snap Bar
The Snap Bar is one of the most useful multitasking tools in new versions of Windows. You may have seen it if you frequently drag windows by their title bar: it’s that thing that lets you easily move them to halves, thirds, or quadrants of your screen. But there are new ways to access it.
Michael Crider/IDG
Hover your mouse cursor (don’t click!) over the window’s maximize button, between the close (X) and minimize (_) buttons in the upper right corner. You will see the six most common layout options. Click on one of the sub-grids of this pop-up window to send the window to that location. You can also activate this view by typing Win + Z, then a number, then a number again to “explore” the options.
Revamped Notepad
Notepad is one of the oldest and simplest tools in Windows, but this basic text editor is a bit more capable than you might remember. In the most basic version, it now follows the dark or light color scheme in your customization settings.
Michael Crider/IDG
Microsoft might have even more in store for the humble Notepad. As you read this, test builds of Windows 11 are being updated with tabs in Notepad in a similar addition to Windows Explorer. Whether or not that will come to the full version remains to be seen.
Want to discover even more cool computer tricks? Check out our roundup of 10 little-known Windows features that will blow your mind.