Cross Device
The latest Cross Device coverage — news, analysis, and updates from the WindowsNews.AI desk.
macOS Tahoe’s Liquid Glass and Windows 11’s Copilot Forge Two Radically Different Futures for the Desktop
Apple dropped a visual bombshell at WWDC 2025 with macOS Tahoe, a sweeping redesign built around a new translucent material called Liquid Glass. Microsoft, meanwhile, has been quietly turning Windows...
Microsoft Silently Added a Phone Panel to Windows 11 Start Menu: What You Need to Know
Microsoft has pushed a quiet, unannounced update that fundamentally changes how Windows 11 users interact with their phones. A new Phone Link panel now lives inside the Start menu, surfacing...
Microsoft Windows 10 Maps: How Touch-First UI, Offline Maps, and HERE Integration Aims to Rival Mobile Competitors
Microsoft has completely rebuilt the Windows 10 Maps experience for touch, folding Bing’s rich local search and HERE’s battle-tested navigation into a single Universal Windows Platform app that...
Archived but Not Forgotten: The Story of Microsoft’s Facebook SDK for Windows 10 and HoloLens
The GitHub repository for Microsoft’s official Windows SDK for Facebook now sits in archived, read-only state—a silent monument to an ambitious 2015 push to make Universal Windows apps more...
Microsoft Repurposes Xbox Button for Multitasking: Long Press Opens Task View in Windows 11 Insider
Microsoft has quietly changed how the Xbox button works on Windows 11 Insider Preview builds, giving gamepad users a faster way to manage open windows. A long press of the Xbox button now opens Task...
8 Windows 11 Privacy Settings to Change Right Now: Stop Telemetry, Ad Tracking, and Location Sharing
Microsoft's Windows 11 ships with a host of cloud-connected features that, by default, share your location, app usage, and even an advertising ID with Microsoft and third-party apps. While these...
Microsoft’s Project NEON Became Fluent Design—While the Surface Phone Remained a Rumor
Project NEON was never just about pretty effects. When the first leaks spilled out of Microsoft in early 2017, the internal codename stood for an ambitious cross-device design overhaul that would...
Save Hours and Headaches: The Three Secret PowerToys Features Every Pro Should Use
PowerToys boasts two dozen utilities for window management, file renaming, and mouse tricks, but its most overlooked features—backup, diagnostic logs, and a plugin system—are the ones that save...
Microsoft Kills Local Android Apps on Windows, Pushes Phone Link Streaming
On March 5, 2025, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows Subsystem for Android, ending the only native way to run Android apps locally on Windows 11. The move marks the final pivot in a seven-year...
Samsung's Vision AI Companion Brings Copilot, Perplexity to TVs in Multi-Agent Push
Samsung is turning its Televisions and smart monitors into multi-agent AI hubs, with the announcement at IFA 2025 that Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity will join Google Gemini as onboard assistants...
Microsoft PowerToys 0.95 to Deliver Automatic Light/Dark Theme Switching for Windows 11
Microsoft is finally plugging one of Windows 11’s most glaring personalization gaps, using its PowerToys utility suite to add scheduled automatic theme switching. The feature, teased alongside the...
Windows 11 Insider Preview Adds Native Clipboard Sync for Android Keyboards via Link to Windows
Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 Insider Dev build has quietly surfaced a feature that instantly syncs your PC’s clipboard to an Android phone—and it works with any keyboard, including Gboard and...