That said, the settings I look to most often, like software updates, were in view and not buried under a submenu, reducing my time to access them. The Settings app's layout is significantly different in Windows 11.
Once you open Settings, however, the layout is significantly different, and it may initially take you a while to find where the setting you want has moved.
The icons on my home screen and my background were unchanged. Settings do not immediately pop up when you hit the Windows icon, which is still on the left but now centered with the other app icons in the taskbar. Once you get used to this new layout, it does feel more efficient. As with the default app list, the overall effect is closer to what we are used to on a smartphone. Switching to the complete app list is quick and easy, but it is an extra step from the default app list we had before. This change made it far faster for me to find specific applications than had been the case earlier. Opening up the index of applications is similar in practice, but the result is very different and much closer to what you would see on a smartphone: the apps you most use are presented in an alphabetized grid and not a list as in earlier versions of Windows. The new Start menu is centered and shows apps in a grid rather than a list. It moves the icons to the center of the taskbar rather than the left, justifying them.
#App similar to preview for windows windows 10#
Windows 11’s taskbar looks like an updated blend of the Windows 10 taskbar and the macOS dock without the animations.
#App similar to preview for windows upgrade#
If you decide to try out Windows 11, I suggest you load it overnight, as the upgrade takes several hours. I was, however, able to load the Windows 11 preview onto my Dell OptiPlex 7070 Ultra modular desktop successfully and without issues. Most of my newest desktop machines won’t yet run Windows 11 because they weren’t configured with their 2.0 Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) turned on (an easy fix) or with Secure Boot enabled (a much more complicated fix). Windows 11 is in early preview right now, and it is far from feature complete this phase of the deployment is typically focused on assuring hardware and application compatibility. Disclosure: Microsoft and Dell are clients of the author.