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Posts tagged "annoying"

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Windows 11’s new passkey feature lets you talk to the hand (or face) and kiss those annoying passwords goodbye
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Windows 11 is now introducing a new feature to the OS, which allows users to replace passwords with passkeys instead.

A recent Windows 11 Insider Preview Build (23486) lets you “use Windows Hello natively to create and sign in to supported applications and websites using passkeys, where you’ll be asked to prove your identity using a PIN, fingerprint, or face scan,” according to The Verge. 

Basically, this means that if you choose to log in using any of those three methods instead of using a password, two cryptographic keys are created instead. One is stored in your device and the other is stored in your choice of cloud storage service, which combine and grant you access to your device. These keys aren’t known to anyone, including yourself. You would simply use the login method of your choice and it does the rest.

Passkeys could truly be the future 

Though making a sound password with a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols is usually an excellent way to safeguard accounts, in recent years identity thieves have gotten much better at cracking passwords. Not to mention that many people don’t apply best practices when it comes to creating passwords.

The concept of passkeys is a great one. Using either a PIN or biometric login method, you have two passkeys created, letting you access your device safely and without having to memorize a complicated string of characters or risk having them discovered by a bad actor. 

What’s also great about them is that you have a nice variety of choices involved in your login method. Some people feel more comfortable using biometric authentication, while others like myself prefer the classic method of using a PIN instead. Regardless, the passkey functions the same way, circumventing a password in the process.

Microsoft Edge, Apple, and Google Chrome have either already supported passkeys or will later in 2023, but this Windows Hello rollout means that people can manage logins on the OS level. However, according to Bleeping Computing, there are still plenty of kinks to work out with this system right now. But hopefully, as tech giants become more accustomed to working with Windows Hello, it will eventually become a seamless feature.

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Google Docs is finally fixing one of its most annoying pain points
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Google has revealed it is adding a new update for its office software that will make customizing and moving tables in Google Docs much more intuitive and easier to do.

A new post in the Google Workspace update blog outlines how the software is introducing “improved table positioning options” for documents.

Google says the update will add more flexibility and control over the layout of text with tables in Docs, letting you craft your documents just how you like.

Google Docs tables

While Google Workspace includes its own spreadsheet software in Sheets, many people prefer to use Docs to add inline tables to their documents.

The new changes will primarily allow users to drag tables in a document and place them exactly where you want, giving much improved customization.

Google Docs table moving

(Image credit: Google Workspace)

The update will automatically wrap the contents of your document around the table, but you can also customize this by choosing the wrap direction (left, right or even both sides) as well as the specifying margin from the surrounding text.

Users will also be able to set a fixed position for a table on a page , and Google Docs will also now provide quick layouts to instantly move a table to a preset position on a page.

In a bid to improve cross-platform usability, Google Docs has also improved how it works when importing and exporting Microsoft Word documents with tables, so your documents remain consistent.

This new update is rolling out now and will be available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts.

Analysis – solving a huge pain point

Tables have long been a bane for many office software users, with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace having issues for some time.

Fortunately, today's news should help solve the problem for many users, finally making it easier to add in and move tables around.

The update follows Google's earlier change, where it added a sidebar to Docs to make it easier for users to manage a table's rows, columns, alignment and other properties. The company also added an intuitive button for creating new rows or columns in a table that will appear as an overlay as you hover over a table in Docs.

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Microsoft tries to make Windows 11 less annoying
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Shortly after the rollout of the major Windows 11 Moment 3 update, Microsoft is testing features that’ll clear out notifications clutter and make viewing your saved Wi-Fi passwords a lot easier.

The Moment 3 update is full of useful features, with one of those being the ability to copy and paste two-step authentication codes directly from notifications. However, notifications can get really spammy very quickly. I spend at least five minutes each morning clearing out notifications from my desktop to try to keep things clean and manageable, so the company’s proposed fix looks promising.

Notification spamming will be detected so that if you receive numerous alerts from any app and don’t interact with them, Windows 11 will trigger a final alert suggesting you turn off notifications for that particular app. By only muting notifications from the specific spammy app, it allows you to silence the pop-ups without stopping notifications from every app (so no blanket ‘turn off all notifications’), so you can keep in the loop and not deal with spam. 

I can now forget all my passwords in peace 

Windows Latest notes that the feature isn’t based on artificial intelligence, but uses a rather simple algorithm to sort out whether or not a user interacts with notifications. 

In a screenshot taken by Windows Latest, you can see a message pop up with a suggestion to turn off notifications from a particular app, which says “You haven’t interacted with notifications from (specific app) in the past month.”
Additionally, Microsoft is testing a new way to simplify viewing saved Wi-Fi passwords. Users will be able to access the Wi-Fi passwords of their networks via the ‘Network and Internet Wi-fi’ section of their device settings and click ‘Manage known networks’ section. 

This incredibly useful feature will let you share Wi-Fi passwords with friends and family or set up new devices a lot easier. Rather than messing around trying to find the password either on a notepad on your phone or going all the way to the router, you can just click through your settings. 

I’m personally excited about this feature because it would let me keep more secure passwords for my Wi-Fi networks, rather than having to consistently rely on something short and easy to remember. If I know I can look up the password in an instant I’m much more likely to use an actually hard-to-guess password.

These new features are expected to ship with the Windows 11 23H2 update, rolling out later this year.

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Microsoft finally fixes annoying Windows 11 file copying bug
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Windows 11 is about to get the full fix for a bug that causes serious aggravation to some users when trying to copy big files.

This problem has been around for some time, but Microsoft has finally got a handle on it, because as Windows Latest points out, the cure is bundled up with the freshly revealed ‘Moment 2’ update for Windows 11 22H2.

That update is already available as an optional offering – still in preview, in other words, but up for grabs to all Windows 11 users (not just testers) – and it’ll be fully rolling out with the final deployment of Moment 2 which happens next Tuesday (March 14).

So, if you’ve been hit by this bug, the resolution is imminent, thankfully. The issue badly slows down the copying of larger files, with some reports we’ve seen in the past saying that hefty copy operations can actually take twice as long as they should. Nasty indeed.

Windows Latest made this discovery thanks to readers who informed the site that file copying had reverted to normal speeds following the installation of patch KB5022913 (Moment 2 preview).

A tech consultant told the website: “We ran into this problem in December when we upgraded our 100 devices to Windows 11 22H2. The files were taking a lot longer to copy over than they should. We noticed some file transfers were almost twice slower. Our users confirmed this is no longer the case after the KB5022913 update.”

Analysis: A long time in the making

As mentioned, this problem has been around for a while – indeed a fix was applied in testing way back at the start of December 2022. That means it will have taken three and a half months for the test patch to actually reach the release version of Windows 11. (Assuming that it is included with Moment 2 and doesn’t get ditched at the last, erm, moment, if problems have been encountered with the optional preview update).

When we first reported on this, we were keeping our fingers crossed for a swift fix, but that didn’t happen, so presumably this was a knotty problem that took quite some untangling. Granted, the bug mainly affects those on enterprise networks, but folks running small office or home networks have also been hit.

The Moment 2 update fixes a bunch of other bugs, as you might expect – including File Explorer glitches and a flaw with Bluetooth keyboards – and it adds a whole pile of features to Windows 11. That includes Phone Link for iOS (finally), improvements for touchscreen devices, and much more (we’ve got a deep dive on all the additions right here). Oh, and it’ll also usher in the Bing AI to the taskbar (sort of, from time to time – we talk about this further here).

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WhatsApp could soon fix the most annoying thing about group chats
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WhatsApp could soon be adding expiration dates to group chats so you no longer have to deal with so much clutter in your inbox.

If you open up your Whatsapp right now we expect you’ll find a backlog of defunct chats for group projects that have long been handed in, coordinating for events that happened years ago, and communicating with school friends you haven’t seen in a decade. Most of these you'd probably long forgotten about, with the unnecessary chats clogging up your smartphone’s storage with messages and images from chats you no longer need.

According to a leak, WhatsApp is set to get a feature that will help unclog your inbox called 'Expiring Groups' (via WaBetaInfo). If the feature is added you should find it on the group’s info page; using it you’ll then be able to set when you’ll be prompted to 'clean up' the group choosing either one day, one week, or a custom date. You could also remove the group’s expiration date.

Leaked WhatsApp menu showing Expiring Groups from WeBetaInfo

(Image credit: WaBetaInfo)

Based on the leaked screenshot, each user would have to set their own expiration date for the group, and it looks like WhatsApp won’t automatically delete the group. Instead, it will seemingly remind you that it might be time to leave the group or delete it, but the decision will be yours.

We’d suggest taking this news with a pinch of salt, though. WaBetaInfo has noted that the Expiring Groups feature is still in development – so not only is it apparently not ready for a full release, it’ll likely be some time before the feature makes its way to the WhatsApp beta. As such there’s a chance we’ll never see the feature launch – the developers could decide to scrap it – or by the time Expiring Groups launches, it could function differently.

You don’t have to wait for this Expiring Groups feature to launch if you want to remove old WhatsApp groups. In your Inbox long press on the chat you want to remove and then tap the menu button in the corner (the three dots) that appears, then Exit Group. Alternatively, you can Archive the chat so that it’s no longer in your Inbox but you can return to the chat later if you choose to.

You can also send self-destructing messages if you just want the chat's content to disappear, not the whole group chat.

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WhatsApp is ready to help most of you silence annoying spam calls
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WhatsApp is taking a more proactive approach to filtering out spam as it may soon begin automatically silencing calls from unknown numbers.

The feature is fittingly called Silence Unknown Callers, according to WABetaInfo, giving users the choice of whether or not they want phone calls from people outside of their contacts. It’ll find its home in the settings menu where it can be toggled on or off at any time. Once activated, WhatsApp will no longer alert users to calls from random numbers, but the Caller ID can still be found in both the calls list and notifications center if you really want to know who it was.

As WABetaInfo points out, Silence Unknown Callers could also be addressing a flaw in WhatsApp’s Communities feature. The problem is anyone in a group can get other people’s numbers pretty easily either by contacting the Community creator or an admin to then start spam calling everyone. On the flip side, the full list of participants in a Community and their numbers are visible to the creator so even they can take advantage of the situation. Reporting and blocking certainly work, however, there’s nothing in the way to stop the first wave of spam; at least for now.

You can try out Silence Unknown Callers yourself by downloading the latest WhatsApp beta for Android which you can do by joining the Google Play Store beta program. It’s unknown at this time whether or not the feature will make its way to iOS nor do we know its official launch date.

In the works

Alongside Silence Unknown Callers, WhatsApp is currently testing a variety of other new features for Android. The big one is a new split view on tablets allowing the chat list to appear when opening a chat, status tabs, or making a call. It looks similar to the browser version of WhatsApp. Additionally, the beta will allow users to try out the redesigned Status tab now supporting Newsletters, the platform’s other big upcoming feature. 

There are a few changes for WhatsApp for iPhones, but they’re a lot less impactful. Arguably the biggest change in the iOS beta is the redesigned chat attachment menu which is already present on the Android app. And a new sticker maker tool that turns images into stickers. Not much for iOS owners right now, but at least you recently got an exclusive picture-in-picture mode for video calls.

Be sure to check out TechRadar’s recently updated list of the best antivirus apps for Android if you want to know how you can boost security. 

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Annoying Windows 11 bug finally gets fixed
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Windows 11 has hampered some users with a slow-performing right-click context menu for a good while now, something Microsoft has previously admitted – but the speed of the menu has been improved with the most recent preview of the OS.

Build 22572 was released last week with a bunch of improvements and fixes, including work to resolve the bug with the sluggish right-click context menu which appears when you click the right mouse button in File Explorer (meaning anywhere on a file or folder on the Windows 11 desktop, where this menu offers quick access to some core options).

As Windows Latest flagged up, Microsoft software engineer Jen Gentleman clarified on Reddit that right-click performance had been juiced up. In a response to a Windows 11 tester who noticed that the context menu felt faster with the latest preview build, Gentleman noted: “We did some work with 22572 to improve the context menu performance, so glad to hear it feels faster now.”

Elsewhere another eagle-eyed Redditor pointed out that the release notes for build 22572 state that Microsoft “made some more improvements to help with context menu invocation performance.”

Previously, some Windows 11 users had complained of delays of as much as one or two whole seconds when right-clicking before the context menu actually appears – which is bound to make the OS feel horribly unresponsive.

Now this sluggishness appears to have been largely remedied going by Microsoft’s official announcements, plus multiple reports on that Reddit thread.

Analysis: Better late than never – but test builds are shaping up promisingly

As ever, it’s good to see Microsoft fix a problem in Windows 11, particularly one as aggravating as this must be for affected users. Still, we can’t help but feel that it should have been tackled more quickly, seeing as this problem has been around since the launch of Windows 11 (more or less; or at least the first complaints emerged not long after the OS came out).

The fix seems to work for the majority of admittedly anecdotal observations that we’ve seen, and there is evidence of an optimistic outlook for the improvement of Windows 11 performance overall going forward. Another Redditor on the above highlighted thread commented that “overall the dev channel builds are a lot faster than the 22000 builds” and that “22H2 will be amazing”, so let’s keep our fingers crossed on that score.

Windows 11 22H2 is due in the second half of 2022, naturally, and it’s expected to further work on the design and appearance of the OS, with various important interface tweaks – like bringing back drag and drop functionality to the taskbar – as well as introducing that much-awaited support for Android apps on the desktop (that’s currently available in limited fashion for public preview, meaning testing).

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Annoying Windows 11 bug finally gets fixed
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Windows 11 has hampered some users with a slow-performing right-click context menu for a good while now, something Microsoft has previously admitted – but the speed of the menu has been improved with the most recent preview of the OS.

Build 22572 was released last week with a bunch of improvements and fixes, including work to resolve the bug with the sluggish right-click context menu which appears when you click the right mouse button in File Explorer (meaning anywhere on a file or folder on the Windows 11 desktop, where this menu offers quick access to some core options).

As Windows Latest flagged up, Microsoft software engineer Jen Gentleman clarified on Reddit that right-click performance had been juiced up. In a response to a Windows 11 tester who noticed that the context menu felt faster with the latest preview build, Gentleman noted: “We did some work with 22572 to improve the context menu performance, so glad to hear it feels faster now.”

Elsewhere another eagle-eyed Redditor pointed out that the release notes for build 22572 state that Microsoft “made some more improvements to help with context menu invocation performance.”

Previously, some Windows 11 users had complained of delays of as much as one or two whole seconds when right-clicking before the context menu actually appears – which is bound to make the OS feel horribly unresponsive.

Now this sluggishness appears to have been largely remedied going by Microsoft’s official announcements, plus multiple reports on that Reddit thread.

Analysis: Better late than never – but test builds are shaping up promisingly

As ever, it’s good to see Microsoft fix a problem in Windows 11, particularly one as aggravating as this must be for affected users. Still, we can’t help but feel that it should have been tackled more quickly, seeing as this problem has been around since the launch of Windows 11 (more or less; or at least the first complaints emerged not long after the OS came out).

The fix seems to work for the majority of admittedly anecdotal observations that we’ve seen, and there is evidence of an optimistic outlook for the improvement of Windows 11 performance overall going forward. Another Redditor on the above highlighted thread commented that “overall the dev channel builds are a lot faster than the 22000 builds” and that “22H2 will be amazing”, so let’s keep our fingers crossed on that score.

Windows 11 22H2 is due in the second half of 2022, naturally, and it’s expected to further work on the design and appearance of the OS, with various important interface tweaks – like bringing back drag and drop functionality to the taskbar – as well as introducing that much-awaited support for Android apps on the desktop (that’s currently available in limited fashion for public preview, meaning testing).

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One of the most annoying Microsoft 365 flaws could finally be fixed
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Microsoft 365 may finally have sorted out one of the most irritating aspects of using its web apps.

Previously, users looking to work across different Microsoft 365 accounts, whether work or personal, had to sign out and then sign back in when they wanted to switch.

Now, a new update looks set to banish this problem by adding account switching for Microsoft 365 web apps, saving huge amounts of time and lowering blood pressure across the platform's global user base.

Microsoft 365 account switching

In its official entry in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the company notes how the update will simplify working across different accounts going forward.

Users will now be able to sign into multiple work and personal accounts on Microsoft 365 web apps in the same browser, with Microsoft saying they will be able to “seamlessly switch” between accounts without needing to sign out and sign back in again.

The feature is currently in development, but has a predicted release date of April 2022, meaning users could see it within just a few weeks. Upon release, Microsoft says account switching will be generally available to all Microsoft 365 web users across the world.

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> Microsoft Office 365 is getting a handy upgrade that will streamline your workflow

> Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is taking no chances with dodgy attachments

> Microsoft wants to make sure you don't get caught out by Office 365 email scams

Microsoft 365 has been pushing hard to attract new customers in recent months as companies around the world look to adapt their technology stack as they gradually return to the office.

The company has aimed to poach customers from Google Workspace or other Microsoft Office alternatives with the promise of cheap deals and more flexibility, especially as some users are unhappy at Google's move to end a free tier of its software.

It has also made several moves to boost the security of Microsoft 365, adding a new layer of email security to make sure all emails sent through Exchange Online will only be delivered through connections that have both authentication and encryption. 

The company also allowed Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to customize a new authentication mechanism in a bid to further extend its anti-spoofing protection.

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Gmail may have solved one of its most annoying flaws
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Being plagued with annoying Gmail notifications could soon be a thing of the past if a new feature being tested by Google comes to fruition.

9to5Google has spotted a new addition to Google's email service that allows users to pause mobile notifications while the Gmail desktop client is being actively used.

This should mean that users won't get pinged for every new email message they receive if they have Gmail running on a desktop PC somewhere.

Gmail silence

The site reported seeing the feature on a test account, where it was advertised in a pop-up alert.

The feature would allow your browser to “detect if you're active or away”, meaning Gmail would be able to identify when a user is actively using the service.

9to5Google notes that it doesn't appear that the service can be enabled or disabled through Gmail settings, but instead has to be accessed through the Google Chrome settings menu itself, potentially meaning it is a closely-linked tool between the company's browser and email platforms.

The tool doesn't appear to be rolling out publicly as of yet, with no sign in the Google support pages, so it may be part of a beta test ahead of a wider launch later this year.

The news comes as Google is in the midst of rolling out a major overhaul for Gmail which brings together Google Chat, Spaces and Meet into a new, integrated view to provide users with a one-stop shop for all their communication needs.

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> Gmail on mobile just hit a massive milestone

> Exclusive: Most people use Gmail but don't know how full their inbox is

> Google Workspace is getting a major upgrade to rival Microsoft 365

As well as this integrated view, the new Gmail will allow users to view specific app menus in a collapsible panel, and get alerts for new Chat and Space messages through notification bubbles. 

Going forward, all Google apps in Gmail will be situated in a single menu on the left of the screen. Users can switch between them by clicking on an app's menu, or point to an icon to see a preview, with the new collapsible panel able to be hidden or displayed with a click at any time.

Google also notes that individual and group chat messages can be accessed from the Chat tab, including opening into a small pop-up window at the bottom of your screen.

Google is currently rolling out the updated Gmail to select users now, with a wider rollout taking place over the next few weeks. Scheduled Release domains will reportedly begin receiving the new look from February 28.

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