If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This philosophy has long defined how Microsoft approaches certain features in the Windows operating system, such as the Task Manager.
While the community has been asking Redmond to modernize these base elements in the OS, the company carried on these older applets and features from one version of Windows to the next in fear of breaking compatibility or usability.
That did not deter folks from cooking up modern imaginings of features like the Task Manager, even if it was clear that Microsoft would never go with such radical changes.
Nevertheless, it was time to tweak these features, and the Task Manager was one of many to be modernized with a new look and options for Windows 11. Work has been underway since last year, and the results are now finally showing.
As we learned last week, Microsoft is adding a splash of color to the Windows 11 Task Manager.
In a recent webcast, the company discussed the new design and features coming to this key component of the OS and why they ditched the tabbed interface for a hamburger menu.
The software giant justified this design choice by saying that they wanted the Task Manager to follow the design principles set by the Modern UI framework and Windows 11. This new interface is decluttered and aligns the legacy areas with the look and feel of the OS.
Another area of improvement was UI responsiveness.
A new addition called Efficiency Mode will help you throttle CPU resources for a particular process. In the past, the only option was to terminate a process that was hogging resources, but now there is a way to throttle processor-intensive applications.
At the moment, this is only possible for apps, but the company is exploring support for memory and network usage as well, which could be enabled in a future release.
Speaking of future release, this shiny new Task Manager will be part of Windows 11 version 22H2, which is well on track for launch in the very near future.
So far, so good.
