The People Bar, also known as My People, is one of those options that Microsoft put a lot of effort in to develop. But its usage never picked up, with most users not even being aware that it was there.
And as is reported, it seems that it is going away soon.
Future builds from the 19H1 development branch will see a deprecation notice upon using it soon.
Now, of course, deprecating and removing a feature are two different things. My People will continue to ship with the operating system, but Redmond will not be improving it or adding new enhancements to this feature.
And eventually, it will be removed from the OS.
Windows 10 19H1 should still have the People Bar when it ships in spring, but it could be removed in any of the major updates that follow this upcoming version.
If you are unfamiliar with the My People feature in Windows 10, it was basically created to be a central hub of the contacts a user had. It was designed to provide shortcuts to messaging applications and the likes. But a year since release, Skype and an email link were all most users saw.
The other big services just did no support it, for one reason or another.
The pitfalls of relying on third-parties to up their game!
Anyway, while Microsoft has not yet officially commented on the rumor, it does come from a fairly reliable source, and is not at all surprising. It could have been a really useful addition to the platform had other developers pitched in, but such is life.
We’ll probably hear something from Redmond on this in the coming months.
In the meantime, do let us know, whether this you used the People Bar in Windows 10? Sad to see it go?
