Microsoft is upgrading its Advanced Paste tool in PowerToys for Windows 11, allowing you to use an on-device AI model to power some of its features. With the 0.96 update, you can route requests through Microsoft’s Foundry Local tool or the open-source Ollama, both of which run AI models on your device’s neural processing unit (NPU) instead of connecting to the cloud.

That means you won’t need to purchase API credits to perform certain actions, like having AI translate or summarize the text copied to your clipboard. Plus, you can keep your data on your device.

Along with support for on-device AI, you can now configure Advanced Paste to work with multiple other online models, including Azure OpenAI, Gemini, and Mistral. The tool previously only supported OpenAI.

There’s a new design tweak for Advanced Paste, too, as it now shows your current clipboard content and includes a model selection drop-down menu.

Microsoft's push to transform Windows into an "agentic OS" that allows AI agents to control PCs is drawing user backlash similar to the Windows 8 controversy, as the company marks the operating system's 40th anniversary this week, writes Tom Warren, a reporter at The Verge who has been covering Microsoft for nearly two decades. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri announced the agentic OS plans in a post on X last week and faced immediate criticism in hundreds of replies before they were locked days later. "It's evolving into a product that's driving people to Mac and Linux," one person wrote, while another asked for a return to Windows 7's "clean UI, clean icon, a unified control panel, no bloat apps, no ads, just a pure performant OS." Davuluri later responded to software engineer Gergely Orosz, saying "we care deeply about developers" and acknowledging Microsoft has "work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Dwarkesh Podcast that the company's business "which today is an end user tools business, will become, essentially an infrastructure business in support of agents doing work." The Recall feature already spooked users when it was initially turned on by default before Microsoft reworked it to be opt-in. Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows experiences, told The Verge that "every user can use [AI agents] when they're ready. It's their choice, they decide."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will start rolling out its new Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) to Windows-based handhelds on November 21st. The full screen mode for the Xbox app originally shipped on the Xbox Ally devices last month, providing a more console-like navigation experience on top of Windows 11.

While Microsoft released a preview to MSI Claw models last month, it’s now making the Xbox Full Screen Experience generally available to all Windows-based handhelds. Microsoft is also expanding Xbox FSE “to more Windows 11 PC form factors through the Xbox and Windows Insider programs soon.”

The Xbox FSE doesn’t load the full Windows desktop or a bunch of background processes, freeing up more memory for games. It’s essentially not loading the Explorer shell and saving around 2GB of memory by suppressing all the unnecessary parts of a typical Windows 11 installation.

If you decide to enable Xbox FSE on your handheld or PC, it will launch you straight into the Xbox PC app at boot, which includes all of your PC games from the Microsoft Store, Battle.net, Steam, and other storefronts. There’s also a Game Bar for navigating between games and launchers, and a task view that’s designed to be more handheld-friendly.

To turn on Xbox FSE on a compatible handheld, go to Settings > Gaming > Full screen experience, then select Xbox as your home app.

Perplexity is launching its AI-powered browser on Android. The new Comet app is available to download now, and it comes with many of the same features as the desktop version of the browser, including the ability to summon Perplexity’s built-in AI assistant while you surf the web.

It’s one of the first major AI-centric browsers to arrive on mobile. ChatGPT Atlas is still only available on macOS; Google put Gemini inside Chrome’s desktop and mobile apps, though it works more like an extension rather than a full-fledged AI browsing experience. Comet launched on desktop for Perplexity Max subscribers in July before rolling it out more widely last month.

Just like Comet on desktop, you can use voice mode on the browser’s Android app to chat about the information in your tabs, as well as ask Perplexity to generate summaries of what you’re seeing. You can’t sync your browsing history or bookmarks across Comet’s mobile and desktop apps just yet, but Perplexity spokesperson Beejoli Shah tells The Verge that it’s on the startup’s “roadmap to roll out in the coming weeks.”

Perplexity is working on adding full support for other Comet features, too, including a fully agentic voice mode and a built-in password manager. Shah notes that you can still use Android’s password manager with the browser, though.

Microsoft expanded VS Code for the Web -- Azure with new ways to open AI-generated code directly in the browser-based workspace while continuing to evolve the environment beyond its preview phases.

Microsoft announced today that it has open sourced the code for the first three Zork text adventure games along with their original documentation.

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