Microsoft Edge is cluttered, and the company is taking steps to simplify the browser. It’s unclear what all the changes are on the horizon for “decluttering” Edge, but Windows Latest understands that the Sidebar feature is the first casualty. In a support document and a recent version of Edge, Microsoft reconfirmed that the Sidebar is being phased out.

Microsoft Edge’s Sidebar retirement shouldn’t surprise anyone, as we saw it coming in November 2025 when we spotted the deprecation message in the Canary version. However, I find the updated wording in the support document particularly interesting, as it suggests the Sidebar is being removed to simplify Edge.

“We’re simplifying Microsoft Edge,” Microsoft warns.” “The sidebar app list will be retired in the near future, starting with Microsoft account (MSA) users. There is no confirmed retirement date at this time,” Microsoft said in an updated support document spotted by Windows Latest.

Microsoft has never officially confirmed that it’s trying to declutter the Edge browser, so this is a first for the company.

Users are not happy with Microsoft Edge’s Sidebar removal

While I am all for decluttering Edge or even Windows, I do not understand why leadership decided to remove the Sidebar feature, which is one of the elements that differentiated the browser from other Chromium clones. In fact, dozens of users told me that they might stop using Edge if Sidebar is entirely removed, and they have fair reasons to quit.

With Edge’s Sidebar, you could add your favourite web app as a mini app that loaded inside the panel. I personally added Outlook, Bing, and a few other shopping-related web apps, so I could access my favourite or important web apps while browsing the internet. Sidebar actually made Edge’s browser fun, and split screen isn’t even close to the experience.

In our tests, Edge’s Sidebar still works, but it’s only a matter of time before it disappears into thin air. Right now, you can no longer add apps to the Sidebar in Microsoft Edge, but you can continue to use apps like Outlook if you’ve already added them.

“We’re simplifying Edge. New apps can no longer be added, and the quick access list will be removed gradually in future updates. Copilot is not affected—this helps us focus on making it even better,” the company noted in a new alert displayed inside Microsoft Edge when you try to access the Sidebar.

By default, the Sidebar always includes ‘Bing/search,’ so it’s very likely that the Sidebar will still show up for most of you, but only for Bing and other mini apps that were previously added.

In the next few weeks, the Sidebar in Edge will eventually stop working, and when that happens, you’ll no longer be able to access Outlook and other mini-apps without switching tabs. But this change does not affect Microsoft’s favourite Copilot.

Copilot also runs inside the Sidebar, but it’s not being removed, so Microsoft is willing to maintain parts of the Sidebar, but only for Copilot.

Satya Nadella has confirmed Microsoft Edge is not being ignored

During the Q3 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella confirmed Microsoft wants to win back Windows fans, but that isn’t necessarily limited to Windows or Xbox.

In fact, Nadella clarified that Edge is also being focused on by Microsoft, and there are plans to increase engagement with the browser alongside other products like Bing.

In Satya’s own words, “when it comes to our consumer business, we are doing the foundational work required to win back fans and strengthen engagement across Windows, Xbox, Bing, and Edge… In the near term, we are focused on fundamentals, prioritizing quality and serving our core users better.”

Microsoft also added that Edge is doing better than ever, and it gained market share for 20 consecutive quarters, but it won’t tell us how many users prefer the company’s browser over Google Chrome or even Firefox.

“Our Edge browser has taken share for 20 consecutive quarters, and Bing monthly active users reached 1 billion for the first time,” Nadella noted during the Q3 earnings call.

It’s interesting that Microsoft is trying to focus on the Edge browser, but at the same time, it’s doing away with features like Sidebar, which were actually celebrated by the core audience of the browser.

Do you think it’s a good call to remove Microsoft Edge Sidebar? Let me know in the comments below.

The post Microsoft says it’ll simpilify Windows 11’s Edge browser by removing features like Sidebar, pledges to win back users appeared first on Windows Latest

Microsoft is finally retiring the decades-old File Explorer Properties dialog box in favour of a new one powered by WinUI 3 as part of the company’s efforts to improve the performance and reliability of Windows 11.

With all its WebView2 UI elements, Windows 11 looks incredibly sleek and modern on the outside, but anyone who has dug just a little deeper knows that legacy interfaces are hiding everywhere.

One of the most glaring examples is in File Explorer. While the app itself has received tabs, a modernized address bar, and a sleek Gallery view with smooth scrolling, right-clicking a file and selecting “Properties” throws you straight back into the Windows 95 era.

If you use Windows 11 in dark mode, the stark white background of the legacy properties dialog is practically a flashbang if you dim the lights in your room, as I do. But it seems Microsoft is finally doing something about it.

According to new findings in recent Windows 11 Insider builds, the software giant is actively working on a completely modernized, WinUI 3-based file properties dialog.

A modern WinUI 3 File Properties dialog is in the works

The discovery comes from prominent Windows watcher phantomofearth on X. After digging into the code of recent Insider preview builds, he spotted that several new strings for “DeletedFileProperties” were added to the MicrosoftWindows.Client.FileExp (which is the modern File Explorer framework) resources.pri file.

Crucially, these strings match the exact text found in the existing, legacy deleted file properties dialog. The fact that Microsoft is actively migrating these specific strings into the modern File Explorer resource package is a massive giveaway that the old properties dialog is finally getting replaced.

To get a clearer picture of what this means for the OS, Windows Latest reached out to phantomofearth for more details. When asked if it is almost confirmed that a WinUI 3 dialog is on the way, he told me that a modernized file properties dialog built with WinUI 3 is indeed what we are meant to get.

“At the time of tweeting, this was more of an educated guess, based on how I would genuinely be shocked if it ships and it isn’t WinUI 3,” he explained to me. “Given that the modern File Explorer bits (address bar, search box, command bar, details pane, home page, gallery) already use it, it makes no sense to use something else.”

He also made a very compelling point about the core development logic: “If there was no plan to modernize properties dialogs, there would be no reason to add their strings to the modern [File Explorer] bits.”

Solving the mystery of dark mode in File Explorer

I believe this finally answers a question that power users have been asking for years. Why doesn’t the File Explorer properties dialog support dark mode?

While other legacy parts of Windows 11 have received simple dark mode toggles or visual updates, the properties menu has remained stubbornly bright white. As phantomofearth pointed out to me, there is absolutely no reason for Microsoft to waste development time retrofitting dark mode onto a legacy Win32 properties dialog when the entire component is slated to be replaced by a native WinUI 3 version.

Windows Latest previously also confirmed that Microsoft is replacing old Windows 8 UI elements in Windows 11. Seeing Microsoft actively move these strings into the modern framework proves they are finally cleaning up the OS’s past.

Windows 11 is getting a major performance boost in 2026

A modernized WinUI 3 properties dialog untangles the messy, hybrid codebase that currently bogs down File Explorer.

Right now, File Explorer is a mix of old Win32 foundations layered with modern XAML and WinUI components, and this hybrid rendering is what causes the app to feel sluggish or display white flashes during navigation.

As we recently reported, Microsoft is keeping its promise to fix Windows 11 by rolling out sweeping foundational architectural improvements to File Explorer throughout 2026. The company plans to give consistent improvements in File Explorer performance, essentially meaning we’ll be seeing more WinUI 3 elements introduced incrementally.

Of course, transitioning the legacy properties dialog over to native WinUI 3 lines up with Windows Insider lead Marcus Ash’s recent commitments to deliver real performance, reliability, and craft improvements.

If the recent update to the Run dialogue box is anything to go by, I am hopeful that the Properties dialog will also have a modern, fluid look.

While the modernized properties dialog is still hidden deep in the Insider builds, its presence in the resource files means extended testing isn’t far off. We will likely see it roll out to the Experimental channel alongside other upcoming UI refinements later this year.

Are you eager to finally say goodbye to the glaring white legacy properties dialog? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Windows 11’s Windows 95-era File Explorer Properties dialog is getting replaced with modern version and dark mode appeared first on Windows Latest

For nearly 30 years, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has worked alongside journalists, researchers, and the public to ensure that the web—and the news it carries—remains part of our shared historical record. Today, on World Press Freedom Day, that mission faces a new and urgent challenge.

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and USA Today, are blocking their sites from being preserved in the Wayback Machine over unfounded concerns about AI scraping. As Andrew Deck from Nieman Lab noted noted in Marketplace, “None of the publishers were able to point to a particular AI company or other kinds of direct evidence that their content had already been scraped by the Wayback Machine.” As a result, important journalism is at risk of disappearing from the public record. More than 200 journalists have added their support to keeping the news in the Wayback Machine.

In response, Fight for the Future has launched a public petition calling on news leaders to work with the Internet Archive to ensure their reporting remains accessible for generations to come.

Take action

On this World Press Freedom Day, we invite you to stand with journalists and with the future of the historical record. Add your name to the public petition and join the call for news organizations to work with the Internet Archive to keep the news in the Wayback Machine.

David and Stephen take stock of where AI is actually useful right now. They cover dictation, browsers, agentic workflows, MCP, and Apple Intelligence, plus the real projects each runs today, including email triage and a customer-service robot.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

• Mercury Weather: Forecasts, beautifully done. Download now for free.
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Links and Show Notes:

Credits

The Mac Power Users
Stephen Robles
David Sparks

The Editor
Jim Metzendorf

The Fixer
Kerry Provanzano

More Power Users: Ad-free episodes with regular bonus segments

Submit Feedback

MPU on YouTube

Claude.ai

Google Gemini

ChatGPT

Perplexity

Dia Browser | AI Chat With Your Tabs

Comet Browser: a Personal AI Assistant

Robot Assistant Field Guide | MacSparky Field Guides

Wispr Flow | Effortless Voice Dictation

Whisper Memos - AI voice recorder app for iPhone & Apple Watch

ChatGPT Images 2.0 vs Gemini Comparison

Mastodon Post

🎙️ MacWhisper

Transcriptionist for Mac and iOS

The Master Engineer Taking Over Apple (and Why It Matters) - YouTube

Apple Home Devices - Stephen's Website

Made by Claude

OWC Envoy Pro FX

SaneBox | Dashboard

Cloudflare

Platformer

Six Colors – Apple, technology, and other stuff

Gling - AI Video Editing Software for YouTube

Free AI Voice Generator & Voice Agents Platform | ElevenLabs

‎Coffee Finder by Beardfm App - App Store

coffee finder

‎The No List App - App Store

Kagi Search

Marvin the Paranoid Android - Wikipedia

Max Schoening is head of product at Notion, where he’s been especially effective at getting designers and PMs to ship code, prototype in the terminal, and launch extremely successful AI products. He was previously a PM at Google, ran design at Heroku, was VP of Design (and a part-time engineer) at GitHub, and is a two-time founder. He’s one of the most AI-forward product leaders out there and one of the deepest thinkers on how AI changes how we build and use software.

We discuss:

1. What’s most worked in getting designers and PMs to embrace AI

2. Why agency—not skills—is the thing that separates people who thrive from those who fall behind

3. How the first 10% of every project is now “free,” and what that means for product development

4. Max’s “tiny core” theory of great products: iPhone multitouch, the GitHub pull request, Notion blocks, Dropbox’s menu bar icon

5. Why the SaaSpocalypse is overstated

6. Why the amount of software has exploded but the quality hasn’t, and why that gap creates opportunity

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Brought to you by:

WorkOS—Make your app Enterprise Ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny

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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-cultivating-agency-matters-more

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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

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Where to find Max Schoening:

• X: https://x.com/mschoening

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-schoening

• Website: https://max.dev

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Max Schoening

(01:55) The origin story of designers coding at Notion

(06:30) How much designers and PMs are shipping today

(08:24) The balance between shipping code and strategic work

(10:32) Why agency will help you thrive in the AI era

(11:49) Examples of high agency at Notion

(13:52) What we might lose as roles merge

(15:56) Advice for developing agency

(17:42) Malleable software explained

(20:43) The Dieter Rams video and design philosophy

(24:00) The SaaS apocalypse debate

(28:25) How product building has changed in the past two years

(30:27) What’s next in how we build products

(34:16) Token spend and ROI conversations

(37:39) Getting people to change how they work

(39:04) Max’s AI stack

(41:41) Which roles AI will transform next

(44:26) When companies will start caring about ROI

(48:38) Why Notion AI is so successful

(51:47) How to ship more quickly while maintaining quality

(56:40) Building taste through iterations

(1:00:09) What matters most in building successful products

(1:05:06) Using the jobs-to-be-done framework

(1:07:28) Hot take on universal basic income

(1:09:26) What Max would do with AGI

(1:10:53) Contrarian corner

(1:13:14) Failure corner

(1:16:20) Advice for young people in Silicon Valley

(1:19:20) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Referenced: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-cultivating-agency-matters-more

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.