Will include significant adjustments: Microsoft’s end-of-the-year update – rolling out

The update will be gradually interpreted through the means of distributing the company’s features, so not every user will see the changes already tomorrow (Wednesday). Microsoft’s December 2025 update is expected to be the last update for this year, so the company packed into it a variety of adjustments designed to add uniformity and user improvement. One of the main goals is to eliminate gaps between the components of the operating system that until now have presented different designs. For example, the search panel finally gets a height adjustment to the start menu, which produces a clearer design sequence and a clean look.

Another innovation appears on the taskbar, this time less practical. When hovering with the mouse over a reduced window, a new button appears called Share with Copilot. Clicking on it opens a conversation with the digital assistant with the content displayed in the window. This also has a management screen in Copilot’s settings window and it’s not yet clear if it will be enthusiastically received or become one of those similar functions that users immediately dismiss.

Spotlight’s dynamic images mechanism gets a new option through the right-click menu on the desktop. You can move to the next image with one click and open an information page about the image using Explore background. Microsoft also adds an option to disable Drag Tray, that floating window that appears when you drag files to the edge of the screen. It can now be turned off in the Nearby Sharing settings screen.

Significant improvements have been made to File Explorer’s dark mode. The copy, move and delete boxes are fully customizable, including progress, graphs, confirmation boxes and error messages. The company is even testing a new context menu that brings together common actions in a clearer way. At the same time, she notes that the design is still not perfect and it is possible that using the Explorer will cause a large white flash when opening it.

The settings home screen is updated with a new computer information card. The card shows processor, memory, storage and graphics card, and links directly to the about screen. According to the company, the card will initially only be shown to users in the United States who are connected to a Microsoft account.

Mobile device settings have finally been integrated into the main settings screen. You can add a new device, access the synchronization settings and remove the device from the account, all in one place. The About screen is being redesigned with a clear division into device information and Windows version information. Question and answer menus were separated into a separate screen.

A deeper change appears in the Advanced screen, where a new page called Virtual Workspaces is added. It’s a concentration of virtualization capabilities that previously could only be enabled on the old feature panel, including Hyper V, Windows Sandbox Virtual Machine Platform, and Secure Host Services. Microsoft continues to move controls from the old Control Panel to Settings. This time it is about the repeat rate of keyboard characters, control of the Print screen key and text cursor jitter settings.

The widget panel is presented in a new design with a clear transition between the widget panel and the Discover content panel and the settings screen has also moved to an internal component rather than a floating window. New alerts will be marked with a numeric character on the icon. In computers with a touch screen and a digital pen, haptic feedback is added, which includes a gentle vibration that simulates touch. When closing a window or changing its size, a gentle vibration will be felt that strengthens the feeling of control.

Copilot Plus computers get a new action menu for the Click to Do function that includes a permanent action bar and a quick command box. On screens with large images, the menu will appear automatically to speed up operations. Gamers will enjoy extending the full-screen Xbox experience to more mobile devices. The interface replaces the desktop with a console-like interface that saves about three gigabytes of memory. The activation is done through the settings screen and after activation a restart of the computer is required.

Finally, Windows Studio Effects capabilities based on it have been added to external cameras, when the activation will be done from the camera settings screen. The new Windows update is deployed using Microsoft’s gradual distribution mechanism, so it may arrive at different times for different users.