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Windows 11 users, watch out – you’re in for an upgrade you can’t ignore thanks to mandatory adverts
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Microsoft seems intent on making ads disguised as recommendations a fact of life in Windows 11, and the tech giant has apparently begun testing promotional recommendation pages that take up your whole screen, urging users to install Edge and other services – similar to the page you see when you first set up your device or install Windows 11.

Thinking back, I recall a few times when this screen appeared on my own Windows 11 PC after an update, and it caught me off guard as my PC is already set up to my liking. Like myself, some users would be greeted with “Let’s finish setting up your PC” automatically after a Windows Update had been installed. Before this, this sort of notification might appear if you bought a PC and set it up for the first time, but now it looks like anyone already up and running could also see it. 

Man sitting at a table and looking at a laptop, holding one hand in the other in front of his face and looking concerned

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Space_Cat)

A breakdown of the new notification in Windows 11

The new notification screens were spotted by Windows Latest following Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday update in April 2024. As shown in a screenshot provided in Windows Latest’s report, the notification screen explains that the ‘set-up’ process will involve backing up your files using OneDrive, restoring “Microsoft recommended settings” (read: setting Edge as your default browser), backing up your phone on your PC, setting up Windows Hello, as well as getting a Microsoft 365 subscription, and turning on Phone Link between your phone and PC.

You are then given two options, neither of which is to opt out of the notification if you’re not interested. You can choose to “Continue” or select “Remind me in 3 days,” and the pop-ups will eventually return. Windows Latest tried the ‘Continue’ option, which led to a “Let’s customize your experience” page which prompts users to customize their Start menu’s ‘Recommended’ section. As shown in a provided screenshot, users would be given some control over the apps that appear in this section. 

If you decide not to make any adjustments you’ll be guided to a page with the heading “Use recommended browser settings.” The top option, not by coincidence, is Microsoft Edge – Windows 11’s default browser. This is accompanied by Bing as the default search engine, which again no surprise. Enabling these also pins the Edge icon to the taskbar and creates a desktop icon (if you’ve removed these). Luckily, if you’re not interested in using Microsoft’s web browser and search engine, you can click on “Don’t update your settings,” (which sounds like you’re getting left behind), and you can keep your previous settings. 

Woman standing in a room at night time with a backdrop of a city, while holding a laptop and using it with one hand

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Gorodenkoff)

A closer look at Microsoft's promotional tactics

This isn’t the first of Microsoft’s heavy-handed attempts to get people to use its software and services, and not the first to be met with distaste from users. As Windows Latest points out, Edge already comes preinstalled, and it’s difficult to remove for users running Windows 11 outside of Europe. 

If you make it through all of these option screens and have any patience left, you’ll be met with more promotional pages for other Microsoft services, like the offer to try Microsoft 365 Family with a free trial. You could forgo this and subscribe to Microsoft 365 Basic, which includes ad-free OneDrive and Outlook, along with 100GB of cloud storage. In the screenshot that Windows Latest includes, no prices are stated – just a ‘Continue’ button. After this page, users are urged to set up Microsoft’s Phone Link app, which works in a similar way to Apple’s AirDrop feature, and allows you to access data on a linked Android phone on your PC.

Each page does at least have an option to skip that particular step and finish the PC setup process, but this is strange wording, because as I mentioned earlier when I saw the notification, and as Windows Latest stated while documenting this process, our PCs were already set up to our liking.

This has been happening in parallel with Microsoft adding ads disguised as recommendations in the Start menu and experimenting with adding Xbox Game Pass ads on the Settings page. I don’t like this direction for Microsoft, and if it’s not careful, it could end up annoying users rather than encouraging them to try out the software.  We live in a time when people’s attention spans can be short, but frustrations and annoyance can live in people’s minds for a pretty long time. 

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OneDrive finally catches up to Google Drive and iCloud with an offline mode – here’s how to set it up
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Microsoft OneDrive has finally introduced a feature long considered a staple of Google Drive and iCloud: an offline mode. The mode will be rolled out to students and professionals from today onwards, allowing users to save and edit work whether they have an internet connection or not. 

Offline mode for the web version of OneDrive will now let you open your files in the various sections of the program, like your shared folder and meeting views, as well as edit your documents, rename them, and sort them – all without needing an internet connection. 

All these changes will be ‘saved’ offline and implemented once you regain internet connectivity with your changes synced to the cloud. Files will be marked as ‘available offline’ as they are in Google Drive. 

How to set it up

If you want to use the new offline mode for OneDrive, you’ll need to install the OneDrive app on your Windows or Mac device. Once you’ve done that, you need to head over to OneDrive on your web browser of choice. 

You should be prompted to complete the one-time setup for offline mode, and voila! You’re all set! You should bear in mind that there are limitations on what you can and cannot do with offline mode at present. As MSPoweruser reports, offline mode only includes support if you have 250,000 files or fewer – hopefully, you do! – and the feature is currently only supported for OneDrive for work and school (although a wider rollout is presumably in the works). 

While long overdue, this is a great chance for Onedrive users who have to work on the go and make last-minute changes to work, and it helps take the stress off those unfortunate times when your Wi-Fi crashes and you worry about losing all your progress! Hopefully, this will tempt more people to try the file management program – now that it’s finally up to speed with basically every other alternative. 

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Windows 11 fears over watermark for PCs that don’t meet AI Explorer requirements are unfounded, leaker clarifies
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Windows 11’s next big feature is rumored to be AI Explorer – indeed, it’s strongly rumored – and there’s been some controversy stirred up over how this might be implemented in the OS recently.

This was caused by a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) from well-known Microsoft leaker Albacore, who dug up clues in Windows 11 code that suggest AI Explorer checks the PC’s system components and warns if they don’t meet the requirements for the AI feature.

Some folks took this as a hint that maybe Microsoft could put a watermark in Windows 11 somewhere to enact this warning, but Albacore just tweeted again to clarify that this definitely won’t be the case.

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As you can see, the leaker clearly states that any warning about the system not hitting the necessary requirements would be purely placed within the AI Explorer interface itself. This means you’d open the AI Explorer app (it will be a standalone app, not to be confused with File Explorer), and it’d just present you with that info (“you can’t run this” essentially).

As Albacore says, there’d be no OS-wide nag flagging this up, such as a watermark or other banner elsewhere in the broader Windows 11 interface. This would just be confined to the AI Explorer app, so it wouldn’t bother you if you never went near it.

Analysis: Exploring an ARM-first strategy?

A further reminder Albacore provides here is that the requirements themselves for AI Explorer – which are, according to the info the leaker previously dug up, an insistence on 16GB of system RAM and, more controversially, an ARM CPU – could change.

That is, of course, something we pointed out back at the time when we reported on this. Not only are these requirements just in preview builds of Windows 11, but they’re tucked away in testing to boot. They could easily be altered later in the year when Windows 11 24H2 finally arrives with AI Explorer on board. (If the rumors are right – indeed, we don’t know for sure that will happen even. Microsoft could delay the implementation, after all, if AI Explorer isn’t working well enough by the time 24H2 rolls around).

Mind you, we can see why AI Explorer might have to be ARM-only to begin with – mainly because it leverages a powerful NPU (to presumably be responsive and nippy enough), and only Snapdragon X chips will have that to begin with. Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Strix Point mobile CPUs with equally beefy NPUs won’t be too far behind, mind you, and at that point, Microsoft will presumably open up AI Explorer more – if this is the path it takes in the first place.

It's not unthinkable that Microsoft might want to use AI Explorer to help shift units of its incoming Surface devices for consumers – running ARM (Snapdragon X) chips – either, at least to begin with. After all, Surface sales have been lackluster of late, and this could be a good way of firing up some enthusiasm for the range again, at least for a short time.

Yes, there are a lot of ifs and buts here, which is why we always advise a good dollop of caution with any leak. It’s good to hear the clarification that any AI Explorer warning won’t be a system-wide nag, though, even if we didn’t believe Microsoft would go that far in the first place – though some folks did, or at least theorized about that possibility.

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You’re not imagining it, Amazon Prime deliveries got even faster in 2024
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Amazon Prime continues to be a service juggernaut in the tech industry as the company has broken a new record. According to a recent announcement, Amazon revealed it managed to deliver over two billion items in the first three months of 2024 through Prime. That’s more than the total amount of packages they sent out in Europe to members last year. 

Worldwide Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington stated in March that almost 60 percent of Prime orders “arrived the same or next day across” 60 of the largest urban areas in the United States. In London, Tokyo, and Toronto, “three out of four items” arrived at their destination in the same time frame.

This success in the US seems to be the result of the logistical changes Amazon made in 2023. They essentially divided up the country into “eight interconnected regions” to serve specific geographic areas. These regions have a “fulfillment center” housing a wide array of items, allowing the company to quickly deliver their stock right to your door. Amazon even claims that thanks to AI, it can predict “which items [people] in various parts of the country” want and when they want them. The tech giant also works with multiple sellers, both big and small, to get those brand-name products out fast.

It’s possible Amazon will demolish its 2023 Prime delivery record. The company is certainly on the way and Herrington says they’re “just getting started.” But will they meet this goal? Most likely. Recent moves hint that they’ll do it, but there’s a chance they'll fall short.

New services

Not too long ago, Amazon made some important business updates.

They launched a new grocery delivery service for Prime members on April 23. For $ 10, subscribers can get unlimited delivery on orders over $ 35 from local and specialty supermarkets – so long as the final bill is over $ 35. That’s the only requirement. People without a Prime membership can join the program as well at $ 5 a month. However, they must own a registered EBT (also known as food stamps) card. 

Before that, the company said it was expanding its Prime Air drone delivery service to the Phoenix Metro Area in Arizona. It’s not running yet. Amazon still has to get all the “necessary permissions” from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) before it can take to the skies.

So with the grocery delivery program and a little help from a fleet of drones, the 2023 Prime delivery record could be smashed. However, we hesitate to be confident in Amazon's corner because of the layoffs we’ve seen in the past few years. The platform has taken a hatchet to its business. From 2022 through 2023, Amazon cut over “27,000 jobs across almost every area” of the business.

Granted, things have slowed down, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said they’re not done cutting costs. Layoffs could ramp up in the near future.

Memorial Day is coming up in the US and that means discounts. If you want to stay up to date on whatever Amazon is planning, be sure to follow TechRadar's Amazon Memorial Day sales roundup for 2024.

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ChatGPT Plus just got a major update that might make it feel more human – here’s how the new memory feature works
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Artificial intelligence might seem a little less artificial today now that Memory is live for all ChatGPT Plus users.

After a few months of testing in both the free and pay versions of the generative AI chatbot, OpenAI chose to enable the feature, for paying customers only, in all regions except Korea and Europe.

ChatGPT's memory is exactly what it sounds like. During prompt-driven “conversations” with the AI, ChatGPT Plus can now remember key facts about the conversations, including details about you, and then apply that information to future interactions. Put another way, ChatGPT Plus just graduated from a somewhat disinterested acquaintance to a friend who cares enough to remember that your birthday is next week or that you recently bought a dog.

You can tell the system to implicitly remember something or just state facts about yourself that it will remember.

ChatGPT Plus Memory

Cross-chat memory introduction (Image credit: Future)

I know, it's the kind of thing that could make AIs like ChatGPT far more useful or completely terrifying. Up until now, we've mostly dealt with generative AIs that had intense short-term memory loss. Systems like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft CopIlot could carry on lengthy, discrete conversations where they'd do a decent job of maintaining context (the longer the conversation, the wonkier this could get). If, however, you ended one conversation and started another, it was like meeting a completely different person who knew nothing about you or the conversation you had three minutes ago.

Unlike human memory, which can remember some things forever but easily forget others, ChatGPT Plus Memory is in your control.

Controlling ChatGPT Plus Memory

As I mentioned earlier, you can help ChatGPT Plus build its Memory by telling it things about yourself that you want it to remember. By doing so, you'll notice that when you ask, say, your age or where you live, it will be able to tell you. ChatGPT will also take those details and combine them with future queries, which could shorten your conversation and make the results more accurate and useful.

Memory is enabled by default. You can find it under Settings/Personalization. There's a toggle switch where you can turn it off.

ChatGPT Plus Memory

ChatGPT Plus Memory control. (Image credit: Future)

To see all of ChatGPT Plus' memories, you select the Manage button, which sits right below the Memory description and toggle. Initially, even though I told ChatGPT Plus to remember things about me, my memory box remained empty. If I had found any in there, I could clear all of them or select only the ones I wanted to remove.

However, when I told ChatGPT “I really love houseplants,” I saw a little notation appear right above its response that said: “Memory updated.” When I selected that, the memory, “Loves houseplants”, appeared below it, and right below that, a link to Manage memories.

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ChatGPT Plus Memory

(Image credit: Future)
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ChatGPT Plus Memory

(Image credit: Future)
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ChatGPT Plus Memory

(Image credit: Future)
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ChatGPT Plus Memory

I made ChatGPT Plus remember my love of houseplants (Image credit: Future)

Later, when I asked ChatGPT Plus how I might liven up my home, it answered, in part (I bolded the relevant bit), “Adding some houseplants is a great way to liven up your home! They not only beautify the space but also improve air quality and can enhance your mood. Since you love houseplants, you might consider diversifying the types you have….”

As noted, Memory is not free. A ChatGPT Plus subscription, which gives you, among other things, access to the GPT-4 model, costs $ 20 /£20 a month.  I asked OpenAI if any version of Memory is coming to non-paying ChatGPT users and will update this post with their response.

Sure, ChatGPT Plus Memory nudges the generative AI in the direction of humanity, but there is, as far as I know, no way to go into anyone's mind and delete some or all memories.

ChatGPT Plus Memory

Temporary Chat will turn off memories for that that. (Image credit: Future)

While you can turn off Memories, you might like the middle option, which uses the new “Temporary Chat” to introduce short-term amnesia to the system.

To use it, choose the ChatGPT model you want from the drop-down menu and then select “Temporary chat”. Now, nothing you share with ChatGPT Plus during that chat will be added to its memory.

Come to think of it, a real friend, who only remembers what you want them to, could come in handy.

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The latest Windows 11 update is riddled with bugs, but Microsoft has finally addressed the problem
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If you’ve been keeping up with Windows 11 news you’ll know that there’s been a lot of turbulence with the latest optional update – Windows 11 version KB5036980 – and the introduction of ads into the start menu. Happily, Microsoft is finally doing something about it – but it might be too little, too late for some users.

The update is currently available for users running Windows 11 version 23H2 and 22H2 and can be installed manually from the Update Catalog. Besides the annoying pop-ups of ads in your start menu, it seems that users are also getting error messages when trying to change their profile photo. 

Spotted by Windows Latest, some users who installed the update are getting an error message when they try to change their account photo. This seems to only be happening on people’s local system accounts and not their actual Microsoft accounts, meaning that it’s definitely a Windows issue rather than something to do with Microsoft’s online account systems.

Playing the waiting game 

Microsoft has updated its Feedback Hub to say that it’s aware of the reports and has already started to make changes in the internal builds. So, the May 2024 optional update is expected to fix the current issues. 

Windows Latest received comments from Microsoft support staff that it is investigating the error and confirmed that the issue affects the mandatory KB5036893 update and the optional KB5036980 update that put ads in the Start menu. The profile pic bug is expected to be fixed soon, along with some other bugs that have been plaguing Windows 11 as of late.

So if you are currently experiencing this issue, you’ll likely just have to wait for the May patch for Microsoft to issue a fix. Until then, you may be stuck with your profile picture for a while – I hope it's cute!

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A cheaper Apple Vision Pro might not land until 2026 – and Samsung’s XR/VR headset could steal its lunch
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The current Apple Vision Pro is a fantastic bit of mixed reality kit, blending impressive hardware and an innovative user interface. But as you’ll see in our Apple Visio Pro review, it’s far from perfect; throw in a $ 3,499 price tag and other early-adopter woes, and the headset isn’t something for most people. 

As such, Apple has been tipped to be working on next-generation and potentially cheaper versions of the Vision Pro. But Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who’s a renowned and accurate Apple tipster, has said the Cupertino crew is some 18 months away from releasing a ‘Vision Pro 2’, with a roadmap that reportedly won't see a second-generation model ready until the end of 2026. 

Apparently, Apple will try and bring the cheaper version to the market before then, but Gurman says, per his sources, that Apple is “flummoxed” about how exactly to bring the headset's cost down. 

So that arguably leaves a gap in the mixed reality (or XR for extended reality) market, one that Apple has injected interest into for others to join in. Enter Samsung. 

Samsung, Sony and Snapdragon

The South Korean tech giant is working on an XR headset that's likely to come with some impressive specs. We’re talking about a Sony-made micro-OLED display with a resolution of 3,840 x 3,552 pixels, 90Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 1,000-nits; those are Vision Pro-challenging screen specs. A Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 chipset is set to power the Samsung XR/VR headset, which could arrive at some point this year.

While Apple has a knack for creating slick interconnected product ecosystems, Samsung has got a lot better at building out its device ecosystem, in addition to having its phones, tablets and other gadgets play nice with Windows 11. So it could make an impressive XR headset that arguably has more flexibility that the Vision Pro by working with more devices and a wider range of laptops.

Now that’s all speculation on my part, but Samsung has made VR headsets in the past and worked closely with Microsoft, which could give it an ace up the sleeve by working well with Microsoft MR platform and perhaps Steam VR; the latter would arguably give it a gaming advantage over the Vision Pro.

The Samsung Gear VR headset on a red desk

The Samsung Gear VR – you needed a phone to operate it (Image credit: samsung)

Working with a more open-ended platform like Windows 11 could potentially make it easier for more developers to get on board with making XR/MR apps and services. That would make jumping into XR a more appealing prospect if would-be buyers could be assured of plenty of apps and software compatibility.

Furthermore, Samsung is potentially closer to supply chains than Apple – not least of all because it has its own display arm – so could stand to make a high-end XR headset that undercuts the Vision Pro.

While I need to be convinced that extended and mixed reality (which blends virtual and augmented reality) has a viable spot in the future of computing, I’m keen to see Apple have some clear competition in the area – there are other MR headsets but they haven’t really grabbed the limelight or developed a system to compete with Apple’s visionOS; that’s not counting the likes of the Meta Quest 3. 

Samsung basically competes with Apple in the smartphone arena, so I see no reason why it can't lock horns in the XR world, and with a reported wait for a next-gen Vision Pro, Samsung could take a bite out of the MR pie for itself.

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Worrying bug is kicking people out of their Apple ID accounts – here’s everything you need to know
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It appears that some Apple users are being signed out of their Apple ID across their devices for no apparent reason – and are subsequently locked out of their accounts if they try signing in with their current passwords. 

According to 9to5Mac, the issue has been ongoing since Friday, April 26, and is forcing users to reset their passwords despite entering the correct ones to get back into their accounts. This also creates a headache for users who have Stolen Device Protection enabled, as they’ll need to be in a trusted location and have access to all of their devices at once. 

Users have taken to social media to report their experience with this annoying bug, which seems to happen completely at random. Twitter user @MaxWinebach posted that he was in the middle of a FaceTime call when he was suddenly locked out of all his Apple products. 

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A Mastodon user said they were told by a member of Apple Support that “sometimes random security improvements are added to your account”, which may have prompted the random booting. Still, it seems unlikely this would impact so many users, and we can’t be sure of anything until we hear official word from Apple itself. 

So, what do you do?

Overall, as an Apple user who frequently forgets passwords, I’m pretty nervous about the prospect of being locked out of my beloved TikTok-watching device. Thankfully, there seems to be no immediate need to panic if this has happened to you (or like me, you’re anxiously waiting for it to happen to you). It could simply be a harmless bug, and from what we can tell so far, it doesn’t seem related to the recent phishing attack that could lock you out of your device. 

So, what can you do to protect yourself from this bug? Honestly, not much. Since everything seemed to kick off on Friday, if you’re yet to have it happen to you, there’s a good chance you’re in the clear. If you do find yourself locked out, it seems like all you have to do is reset your password and go through the tedious task of logging into all your other Apple devices as well. While this is an annoying bug it doesn’t seem too serious. Make sure you’re not reusing passwords, though – that’s a recipe for disaster. 

We have reached out to Apple for comment and will update this article if an official statement is released.

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Fed up with Windows 10 search being slow, wonky, or crashing? Microsoft’s fixed search with its latest update
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Windows 10 has received a new optional update and it comes with some much-needed fixing to cure problems some users have been experiencing with the search function in the OS.

Windows Latest noticed that in the latest preview update just released for Windows 10 (KB5036979), there’s been some work to improve the search functionality.

Microsoft tells us that: “This update makes some changes to Windows Search. It is now more reliable, and it is easier to find an app after you install it. This update also gives you a personalized app search experience.”

As Windows Latest describes, for some Windows 10 users, search has become a somewhat hit or miss affair particularly around trying to quickly fire up an app. Such as, for example, searching for the ‘Recycle Bin’ and not getting the icon for that returned, but other functions instead.

On social media, there have been a number of reports about wonky search experiences, too, such as this one on Reddit where Windows 10 refused to find a commonly-used app.

In more extreme cases, search is locking up and crashing, which is the pinnacle of irritation for this part of the UI.

Analysis: Wait a little longer

Hopefully, this kind of behavior should be a thing of the past when this update is applied. However, note that this is just an optional update at this point, so it’s officially still in testing – meaning there’s a slight chance the fix may not be fully working. Or that the KB5036979 update might cause unwelcome side-effects elsewhere in Windows 10 (it wouldn’t be the first time, certainly).

The safest bet is to wait it out, let early adopters test this preview update, and install the finished cumulative update when it arrives in May (on Patch Tuesday, which will be May 14).

At least we know this piece of smoothing over is now incoming, so those who’ve been frustrated with iffy search results now know that – with any luck – their woes should soon be over. Or at least, they’ll face spanners in the search works with less regularity.

Elsewhere with this update, Microsoft has also improved the reliability of widgets on the lock screen, with a more “customized experience” and more visuals available, so these should be better all-round, too.

The downside with KB5036979? That’s a new initiative to introduce notifications about your Microsoft Account in the Start menu and Settings app, which will doubtless consist of various prompts to sign up for an account, or to finish that process.

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Turns out the viral ‘Air Head’ Sora video wasn’t purely the work of AI we were led to believe
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A new interview with the director behind the viral Sora clip Air Head has revealed that AI played a smaller part in its production than was originally claimed. 

Revealed by Patrick Cederberg (who did the post-production for the viral video) in an interview with Fxguide, it has now been confirmed that OpenAI's text-to-video program was far from the only force involved in its production. The 1-minute and 21-second clip was made with a combination of traditional filmmaking techniques and post-production editing to achieve the look of the final picture.

Air Head was made by ShyKids and tells the short story of a man with a literal balloon for a head. While there's human voiceover utilized, from the way OpenAI was pushing the clip on social channels such as YouTube, it certainly left the impression that the visuals were was purely powered by AI, but that's not entirely true. 

As revealed in the behind-the-scenes clip, a ton of work was done by ShyKids who took the raw output from Sora and helped to clean it up into the finished product. This included manually rotoscoping the backgrounds, removing the faces that would occasionally appear on the balloons, and color correcting. 

Then there's the fact that Sora takes a ton of time to actually get things right. Cederberg explains that there were “hundreds of generations at 10 to 20 seconds a piece” which were then tightly edited in what the team described as a “300:1” ratio of what was generated versus what was primed for further touch-ups. 

Such manual work also included editing out the head which would appear and reappear, and even changing the color of the balloon itself which would appear red instead of yellow. While Sora was used to generate the initial imagery with good results, there was clearly a lot more happening behind the scenes to make the finished product look as good as it does, so we're still a long way out from instantly-generated movie-quality productions. 

Sora remains tightly under wraps save for a handful of carefully curated projects that have been allowed to surface, with Air Head among the most popular. The clip has over 120,000 views at the time of writing, with OpenAI touting as “experimentation” with the program, downplaying the obvious work that went into the final product. 

Sora is impressive but we're not convinced

While OpenAI has done a decent job of showcasing what its text-to-video service can do through the large language model, the lack of transparency is worrying. 

Air Head is an impressive clip by a talented team, but it was subject to a ton of editing to get the final product to where it is in the short. 

It's not quite the one-click-and you-'re-done approach that many of the tech's boosters have represented it as. It turns out that it is merely a tool which could be used to enhance imagery instead of create from scratch, which is something that is already common enough in video production, making Sora seem less revolutionary than it first appeared.

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