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Microsoft in their infinite wisdom has replaced the Hide Desktop icon with Copilot.
(programming.dev)
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From Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1as1yjk/microsoft_in_their_infinite_wisdom_has_replaced/
I noticed this bullshit a few days ago on my Win 11 desktop! I found if you go check the settings of the start bar, you can hide the copilot icon in the lower right, and then there's a check box to enable the lower right hand corner to work as show desktop again. The functionality can be restore to exactly as it was, but what the hell were they thinking.
Enshitification, plain and simple.
I genuinely do not get the hype of integrating LLMs fucking everywhere. There are places it makes sense, like word processors and email clients. Then there are places it doesn't make sense, like as an aside in my desktop environment. No one's going to use it. It's Cortana all over again.
The whole tablet UI switching had huge potential - particularly for 2-in-ones and to a lesser extent, mobile devices, but Microsoft absolutely butchered it in its infancy with atrocious execution, and by having the hubris to hobble their primary use-case (desktop) for the sake of pushing their half-baked nonsense into the mobile market. Users didn't do themselves any favours by not understanding that you could just hit start then type the first couple of letters of what you want to launch (what kind of website double-clicking weirdo clicks through the whole start menu without pinned links or search anyway?).
To me, it all reeks of designers/PMs/devs putting forward a super-promising concept, which was ruined by a bunch of overpaid MBA dipshits that thought they knew better.
So-called "muscle memory" runs deep with seasoned users. With Windows, if they started with Win95 there's a lot of that to push back against.
Also, a lot of people who use computers daily are doing so by rote, sometimes to the point of sheer minimalism. Not everyone has turned thousands of hours at a keyboard into a deeper understanding of the system they use.
I get putting it here but it should probably just be in the normal search. Search is shit on every os in general. LLM could theoretically help it find actually relevant stuff (and filter out the kink it usually surfaces).
Except I used Cortana all the time on my windows phone before they trashed that idea
I don't wanna defend Microsoft here cause yk fuck them but I'ma guess most people didn't even know the show desktop was there tbh or if they did use it but then again I've never understood why it was there I never use it
Hide desktop is useful if you have many non-minimized windows and you don't want to minimize each one. I can vouch for that button 😎.
Yeah, I hink its super useful too. But i usually use win+d.
Or if you're a psychopath with a desktop full of icons and files. Shudders
To be fair it's not like there's an icon showing what it does. Maybe it should have? I haven't had issues with overcrowded task bars since Windows XP.
I've known it was there but never used it.
Not enshitification, cause they're not jacking up the price to put Show Desktop back. Just bad UI.