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Microsoft IT

Microsoft Releases Lightweight Office Taskbar Apps for Windows 11 (theverge.com) 53

Posted by msmash from the putting-bandaid-on dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar.

The Microsoft 365 companion apps, as Microsoft calls them, are starting to roll out to business users of Microsoft 365 this month. The People companion provides a browsable org chart, as well as the ability to look up anyone in your company. You can also quickly start a Teams message or call with a contact, or email them directly.

Microsoft Releases Lightweight Office Taskbar Apps for Windows 11 More | Reply

Microsoft Releases Lightweight Office Taskbar Apps for Windows 11

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  • The obvious first question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @02:11PM (#65585288)

    how do we disable this garbage?

    • install linux?
      • You don't need to, there is now bash.exe if you want Linux ;-)

      • It's rolled out to business users. Before you install Linux you will need to convince your CTO why this is a good idea for the entire company to do so. For that I can just wish you all the best of luck, but it won't be enough.

    • How about, "Isn't that already the case?". "File search" is already on the taskbar by default. "People" is the contacts app, and it used to be on the taskbar. "Calendar" is also already its own app.

      And, they already have a "widget" system! Did MS forget that they already had things to use for this?

  • What's the over/under (in months) for the "lightweight" taskbar app bloating to full heavyweight?

    • ... because what we now think of as "full heavyweight" will become bloated beyond what we can imagine and it will become the "new full heavyweight" and the current "lightweight" will bloat to something approximating the current "full heavyweight" but since it's lightweight by comparison, it will retain the monikor "lightweight."

      In short: bloat creep. Or creepy bloat. Or both.

  • It would be interesting to have a statistic on how many major feature updates out of all major feature updates for windows 11 have been in the category of "I'm a power user, there's some new garbage that just automatically starts in the background invisibly in the update, how do I turn it off?"

    My guess is that this is going to be a significant percentage, if not outright majority.

  • Didn't they already have something like this in the past that "preloaded" significant parts of office into memory at startup so when you wen't to actually open a word doc or spread sheet the bloated beast would launch almost instantly rather than waiting minutes for it to load? I remember that not going over so well since it ate up significant amount's of memory for shit that wasn't actually in use at the time. This sounds like the same thing but masquerading as stupid taskbar widgets.
    • Prefetch/superfetch. Mostly people disabled it after the jump from spinning platters to solid state drives. But apparently bloat has overtaken technology and Microsoft has to bring it back.
    • And they already had taskbar widgets for this! There was a time when "People" was on the taskbar by default. People didn't like it, so it's not there anymore. I guess nobody told the Office team.

      And let's not forget that Search is still there by default! Why add another thing to search your files with? How does that make sense?

      Oh, wait, I may have figured it out. There have been layoffs. People may be trying to justify their jobs.

  • Yet more crap no one wants, no one asked for, yet will be thrust up people.

    I'm looking forward to retirement where I'll be able to say sayonara to Windoze forever.

    • *sigh* Rolling out new features or products is not enshittification. It's actually the exact opposite by definition. Enshittification is the reduction of existing features. Words have meanings, use them correctly, and not just the way you feel about them.

  • Amazing how many people think it is totally OK to steal your screen real estate.

    Totally fine if you can make it removable, but so few people actually do this.

    My taskbar has (Things I do not want):
    PC Manufaturer 'help' button I never push
    Update alert for NVDA game drivers I neither use nor know how to load.
    Intel Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise (No idea what this is)
    One Note saying I am not logged in (Do not want to)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      Totally fine if you can make it removable, but so few people actually do this.

      You've slid down the slippery slope :-)
      It's totally fine if it's opt-in. The update could even display a tray notification with info on the new feature and how to easily enable it via a click, but, IMO, that should not be the default.

  • While I can see it might be useful to users I can't see how M$ makes more profit from this new feature? I realise some people still think the purpose of Windows is make a PC easier to use, not the true reason, to return a profit to share holders. In that sense most recent changes are easy to understand, more income for M$, but this change sounds like something that might actually be useful for some users while driving no extra income to M$. So I am surprised to see it added to Windows.
    • The whole point of this is to make office appear to be faster. In order for stupid always on widgets like these to work core libraries/APIs for office are going to need to be loaded in memory already and won't have to be loaded when you open a document. They already tried something similar about a decade or more ago with "prefetch" Perhaps they hope users won't balk at it this time because it appears to provide functionality instead of just being a memory hog.

    • The profit comes in the form of reminding companies that there's continuous "improvement" and it's worth continuing to invest hundreds of thousands every month maintaining Office 365 Business licenses.

    • it won't be long until there are ads at the top of these always running apps.

  • Just what slowdoze 11 needs - more fucking Microsoft processes sucking up ram smd eating cpu cycles.

    Fuck you, Microsoft. Even a brand-fucking-new speedy laptop with 32mb runs like shit with a few word documents open.

    • Just move to linux already.since nearly everything is cloud / web based these days you can do pretty much everything in a web browser on linux too.

      • Until you need to do something that only has a Windows program... sure, you can run it in a virtual machine... then, what's the point of installing *Nix.

        • To come here and brag about how your OS preference makes you better than everyone else?

          • Is that directed at me or others?

            • Sorry, ambiguous "you". I'm answering your question, so it is directed to you but at others. Like the person you replied to with devastating insight. Your insight, not theirs.

              I'm not doing a great job at clearing up the ambiguity. Sorry.

              I guess I could have just said, "That's a fascinating point! I'm stunned that I've never heard it before, because it seems so damn obvious now. Applause!" But if I had, I wouldn't have been able to pick a nit I have with people who act like not using Windows gra

  • Thank god, I've been waiting for years for this. Ever since Windows 7 I've been wondering why there can't be more lightweight apps running in my taskbar.

    Maybe they'll finally bring XEyes, and maybe XBiff to Windows!

  • The only change they should be making to the taskbar is re-enabling the ability to place it horizontally on the left or right.

    • Nah, makes more sense to add back things that people didn't like/use the first or second times around.

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