Current list of Windows 10/Microsoft problems

[hamidparham]

So many inconsistencies with the design! Take title bars for example: the calculator app is always white/black; the people app has its own thing going on; the photos app turns black when viewing photos, no matter what color mode you select; the newly updated apps such as Movies & TV and Groove, as well as some others like Alarms which have their own style of title bars, do not obey the accent color, and so on. And this is just the title bars. Long enough has passed for the OS to decide these tiny things and start to at least look mature even if it may not act so.

 

[anon(1762522)]

I'd like to see a more powerful task feature in Outlook. That might get me to use it. I have paid for Office but use Google apps and Todoist as "Office" (Wunderlist is too simple).

My main complaint with Windows 10 is that Win10 apps, in my opinion, are visually unappealing. More important, they are slower to open than Web apps. As a result, I do not use any Win10 apps at all, since they slow down my workflow. I'm mostly Google-centric because Chrome and Google apps provide fast, complete services.

Another feature I'd like to see is more high-quality Themes added to the default installation, altho I guess that would take up HD space too. A nice lock screen with easy-to-configure mini apps would be good.

Having said all that, I am a fan of Win 10. I switched a few years ago to Win 7, which I really liked, after years of working on Macs. Win 8 I loathed (I won't get into that). But Win 10 is basically good enough, and I prefer it to OS X. Would just like to see some better-looking, faster native apps.

 

[Narathan]

The OS still feels so... slow, at times. It really lowers the user experience. I got a €130,- Xiaomi phone with a Snapdragon 620 in it and the OS feels really snappy. My HP Elite x3 takes 3-6 seconds to send a picture through WhatsApp. Yes, its because the app is based off of an older achitecture but how is it possible that a Snapdragon 820, with 4 GB's of ram has so much trouble running these older apps smoothly?

Groove music, when it works is amazing. But adding new songs through the pc requires a sync/update of Groove, which doesn't always happens. Sometimes I need to plug the phone to a power socket and pray it syncs. Other times I need to remove the SD card, open up Groove and watch the list go empty (takes 2-4 minutes). Then reboot, re-insert the SD card and hope it syncs.

When it comes to the Desktop experience, I'm mostly content. There's some UI hiccups here and there but as a consumer, I'm pretty content with it.

I would also like to see Cortana having some more granual control. I mean she's not supported over here in the Netherlands but why aren't I able to use basic stuff like a quick overview of the weather, my own RSS feeds, agenda events etc? Feels like they are missing a lot of chances. And pray tell, why can't I use Quiet Hours without Cortana?

 

[hamidparham]

Mobile, mobile, mobile!

 

[Pradeep Kumar Raghavendran]

Apps. For e.g. Uber, YouTube, Google Services. Like how MS has provided its services like Office, One Drive etc irrespective of platform, all should do it for Windows as well. That would be a fair competition.

 

[coffee-turtle]

I'm probably too late on the scene. In all fairness, I really like Windows 10! MS has learn from many of her previous mistakes.
My gripes right now are minor:
1) Stop resetting my default apps everytime there is an update! Just. Stop. I'm not happy with Groove and I hate having to keep telling you that MS. Not fond of someo of the other "defaults" either.
2) Look, I know you want to get more traffic on your Bing site. I would just like to have an array of options besides Bing as a search engine or go to for Cortona when she doesn't understand a request.

Other than that, thank you for a great multi-device OS!

 

[Mathan Gandhi]

windows have no problem, in general it is good. but android today is like windows yesterday (win 95/98/ME). windows 9x was not stable or secure. it was just working for anybody who use it and it was readily available for free (pirated). it gave a lot of room for enthusiastic crowd to do whatever they want in the system. even the themes of windows 9x can be heavily modified, without much restrictions. system files can be replaced in case of corruption. Now all these things are applicable to android in one form or other. the enthusiast has shifted their loyalty to android. They're who help the other people when they face issues in their system. So people tend to take their advice in choice of OS as well. now windows in very stable, mature, highly restricted. nothing enthu about in it. windows has changed and most of them are not accepting. this can be cited as reason for win7 still having higher user base. it is psychology mostly rather than technical things that are reason for windows 10 not penetrating as much as android. Google won't do restrictions in android for making it secure or stable. they are feeding the enthu base with their OS who in turn help to spread it all over the world

 

[lumianok smart]

OneDrive stopped working on my Surface pro 4 a while ago... :/ doesnt sync anymore just says upload with 0,0 KB/s

 

[mymarcio]

My complaints are mostly on Windows 10 (Mobile)

• Taking a picture, Photos does not load the pictures immediately. Sometimes the app requires me to go to the specific folder to find the photo. Same thing with screenshots.
• Attaching images to a message / email / messenger does not always load the images (screenshots / camera roll / downloads) unless a user goes to photos and forces a refresh.
• Outlook Email Syncing with Exchange Server and/or @outlook.com is slow and often takes several minutes to update with an email.
• Cortana > Creating Reminders in Cortana that are "weekly" keep duplicating in the calendar. For example, if I say "Remind every Monday at 10AM of X" on my calendar it will show up as x2, then x3, then x4 as the Mondays progress.
• Random restarts - This happens to me in production and insider builds. When taking pictures while the phone is locked, during the saving picture process, the phone often restarts and the picture is not saved.
• Automatic Brightness - This setting since windows 8.1 seems to work so differently that it often becomes to dark or too bright during the incorrect brightness setting.
• Brightness Setting - I would love that the notification bar allowed brightness to have a slider instead of pre-set configuration (Similar to iPhone)
• Share to device - Sharing to Chromecast ready devices does not work. Even after adding the device via "Other devices" and finding the device. The devices are not selectable from the list when trying to use Share to screen feature.
• Notification Center - after tapping a notification the apps often don't open in the correct notification or the app crashes. It would be nice to swipe "right" to reveal recent notifications, in order to try to see what message we tried to access and failed.
• Ink Workspace - I would love the OS to allow Ink to be used (in OneNote, messaging, photos) so that when you share a particular photo or screenshot or take notes you have the flexibility of annotating.
• IE - Run in background : Windows 8.1 allowed for us to put the phone in standby and listen to a youtube video while it was playing. Now pressing standby will cut the feed.
• Outlook To Do List - Outlook.com / Outlook Client have the options to add/complete tasks however the phone version does not support this.
• Ultra Light version of OneNote - often when the phone is locked, i'd love to have the ability to create quick notes without having to unlock the phone to just write a phone number, a book name, a location, an address. However opening OneNote can be slow (20~30 second load for the App)
• Microsoft Wallet - Sometimes we receive coupons from CVS, DSW, etc. It would be really neat if Cortana worked together with Wallet to curate the list of coupons in a 3rd section to make these coupons easily accessible and remove them as they expire.
• Cross Device *Wish list* - Would love to be able to copy an image (tap > hold> menu) and have an option to say "Give to Cortana" and then on a different device allow me to Paste from Cortana so that we could avoid forwarding things via e-mail/text/Onedrive from phone <-> pc.

From the top of my head these are some of the things I wish they could improve.

 

[remmo]

Updated: 26-Mar-17

• Outlook 2016 still doesn't support 2-step auth natively for outlook.com/Microsoft accounts, after 3 office versions.
• There is still no outlook task list syncing in windows 10, even tho its a primary feature of office and given as training advice by Microsoft to use it for the last 10 years and everything up to windows 8 had it.
• Windows 10 doesn't support account syncing of settings on normal workplace domains. Windows 8 supported this fine.
• UWP apps still require a store to deploy normally, even after Microsoft insisted the uwp platform isn't tied to the store. E.g You cant have a community site with list of uwps that can be downloaded directly and install it, without having to change system settings. A developer cant even just give people an app to install without the users having to change these system settings. UWP is never going to be a replacement for win32 while it still has this walled garden.
• Cortanas internet reliance, Cortana is the new "search" and "voice recognition" in windows 10, and nearly all the tasks that should not require an internet connection to perform, fail when there is a bad/no internet.
• Skype preview still isn't a share target after a year (and is now released). The primary ms chat service should be one of the primary use cases for sharing.
• Edge in general. Edge still crashes like mad, doesn't support things in websites that firefox/chrome does, doesn't have basic features like a half decent favourites manager.
• Cortana/bing region feature locks. Cortana/bing have many features that a restricted by location. This is after ms said that Cortana and bing have had a lot of work done on them to not have to lock features to regions. The reasons given for region locking features are usually "to make sure they are up to quality", which goes against their own
  "fail-fast" development philosophy, what they said before, and the insider program in general.
• Not having libraries as the default pictures/music/videos etc locations. The current setup is like the old xp "my pictures", where win7 gave a much needed overhaul of the system by allowing a system that was human and program understandable, supported multiple folders but with visual separation, allowed a default save location to be change easily, new locations could be added easily, automatically index the other folder locations for search, etc. The windows 10 system is like a 10 year step back in time. Libraries don't have any disadvantages compared to the old/current system, and even people who don't know anything about libraries wont be confused about them,
• Drop in quality of touch device support from windows 8.
• No swipe keyboard support on windows 10 desktop.
• The confusion that having both a desktop and start tiles brings. Start tiles are essentially just desktop icons with an updating icon. So what is the expected use case of having both? When should I be making a start tile, and when should I be making a desktop shortcut? Why not just replace desktop icons with the tiles?
• No ability to tell windows what locations to include in search. E.g. You cant create a folder on a 2nd hard drive and have windows search that folder. The normal search index locations arnt respected by Cortana.

It looks like MS have no idea what the hell they can do to make Win10 as good as Win7.. or even WinXP.
They're just adding and removing stuff here and there. The whole OS feels like an eternal beta.

 

[AV2RY]

Skype is the major problem for me. I don't want it to have my phone contacts in it. And there is no really working-option to delete them. Buy that I mean they come back there later

 

[hamidparham]

The people app messes up the contacts and can't handle duplicates well. Every once in a while you have to sign in to the live website and manage your contacts from there, then just sit and hope that it syncs with people app on your devices.

 

[uselessrobot]

I realize this is an aesthetic problem and not anything critical, but I can't stand the XP-era system icons.

 

[ScubaDog]

The list of complaints I have about Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile is ridiculously huge. And, sadly, mostly irrelevant because I am clearly in the minority of users. I love Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. A LOT. I love Metro, I LOVED the fact that the old desktop and the Metro environment were separate, particularly running two monitors on a PC. I Love the Pivots. I hate the hamburger menus. I hate the tiny wireframe icons. I hate Aero. I hate not having a REAL Start Screen and the fact that you CANNOT configure the Start Menu in W10 to remain on a screen after bringing up an active window on another monitor. I hate that live tiles are much less 'live' on W10. I hate the Notification Center, I hate the way toast works now. I hate the emphasis on stupid keyboard shortcuts. I miss being able to swipe from the left to either flip through background apps or bring them forward (you are forced to look at large thumbnails of apps and then choose). I hate not being able to swipe from right to bring up Charms. I hate that I can't get all apps to ALWAYS run full screen by default. I hate that when you have two screens (thus you can't stay in tablet mode) that you can't drag apps down to exit them, that it just causes you to wrestle with placement of the window because it changes you from full screen to windowed-mode of that apps. I hate the nearly complete loss of real integration--the People Hub is now a virtually useless apps. I miss the Me Tile, which was a central way I followed activity of people I cared about and communicated across multiple platforms by. I hate the emphasis on the stupid TASK BAR, which I almost never used even in the old Windows 7 days. I hate that, even now, Microsoft appears to exert any influence on developers to bring their apps up to parity with competitors (for example, note that you STILL cannot engage Facebook Live on the mobile app). I hate that Microsoft completely DESTROYED pen input for apps in W10---on W8 you could switch to pen input and it did a quick and comfortable-to-use job of transcribing input. Now it's a MUCH more cumbersome process and not nearly as useful. Cortana is now hit-or-miss on both mobile and the PC, particularly over Bluetooth (we're using the latest insider build, 15063), and Cortana really doesn't work at all over locked screen. We usually have to click the Cortana app a few times to "wake up" the interface and then it seems to work for a bit. Also, I hate that synchronization is all but non-existent--on Windows 8 I could synchronize everything about the Start Screen between devices. Now, none of that is true. You basically can synch the colors and background pic---lame things to synch, relatively speaking. I could keep going, but I'm sure most of you will find that the things I'm complaining about are actually things you like about W10/W10M. As I said, I'm in the minority.

 

[Wevenhuis]

Currently I see a growing backlog of issues growing in that blet expereince. Microsofts focus may be business and OEM related, but its mission statement is also still the cloud and mobility. In my work and surroundigs I have only seen the mobile workspace grow, and touch and pen input has become a more relevant input method for business. More OEM hardware is still expanding with increase touchscreen support as well. For over 12 months I've been seeing a growing backlog of issues with the windows 10 tablet expereince. It makes windows 10 look half baked. For me despite a recent more polished desktop, mouse and keyboard roadmap (which was highly necessary!), windows 10 in my experience has only recently become well rounded enough to carefully consider upgrading. But for touch screen and surface devices I don't consider windows 10, I can't recommend windows 10 fully for 2 in 1 and surface devices.
Issues that still need work and polishing:
1. Be able to snap more than two apps at recommend screen resolution. (Similar degrees of freedom to snap app (up to 4) as desktop mode)
2. Be able to rotate two snapped apps between portrati and landscape orientation. (still disabled after more than 12 months of windows 10 existence. Currently 2 app rotation is locked to desktop mode (odd!!!))
3. support for more live tiles sizes. (would allow for more and better personalization and management options to pin apps and files to the startsccreen)
4. support the option to pin all file types as live tiles to the startmenu (current limited to office mobile only. pdf via workaround with MS Edge only, not directly from an app or file manager. Would complete a more complete feature set similar to pinning file icons to the desktop).
5. support to select and edit multiple live tiles (supported in windows 8. Forgotten still in windows 10, despite recent folder tile update???!!!)
6. Standardization of antiomation of apps and task switchter between tablet and desktop mode (desktop has a fancy zoom animation, desktop a dysfunctional looking exlosive experience)
7. better and more choice in Edge live tile design options. I use these a lot. They all look the same, tekst wraps incompletely for many websites, which makes picking the right webtile from a crowd on the startmenu sometimes a "finding waldo" affair.
8. No swipe support for windows 10 virtual keyboard. Use it a lot on mobile. Would make the experience better and more pleasurable if the experience was the same on pc for touch screen devices. I use keyboard swpe a lot. Invidual keypress on a large keyboard with poor tactile feedback doesn't work for me. One needs to look at the keyboard anyway, so might as well be swipe support. Would ergnomically also be better as I would need two hands to operate a large virtual keyboard (personal experience).
9. With folder tile support, having tile groups for me is overkill. I can manage my apps better with just a clean full screen start screen dashboard and organize with live tile sizes and folder tiles, just like in mobile. Having to take groups into account as well just overfragments the layout. Would be nice to have an option to turn it off in tablet mode.
10. Edge swipe is still incomplete. Transition page is grey. Difficult to see/predict the next/previous page. Should be like IE11 metro app in windows 8.
11. Still lack of personalization of the live tile color/vibrance/transparency. Inconsistent experience between mobile and pc.
12. A visual indication (possible with timestamp) that live tiles are not updating. Currently they regularly seem to "hang" as if their broken. Difficult to tell if it is due connection or live tile programming error.
13. instant typing on the keyboard in tablet mode in start menu doesnt automatically call up windows search/cortana search to open.
14. No option to hide the side bar in start (except for power and apps, has little value and purpose and value in tablet mode what the start menu and taskbar and action center can provide. Arguably more room for the start menu and live tile).
15. Be able to choose the scroll direction of the start menu. (Currently vertically oriented. Arguably nothing wrong with horzontal scrolling either (windows 8)).
16. Expand palette of quick actions in action center (arguably missing power, screen brightness slider, volume slider, time/date amongst others (similar to windows 8))
17. An explorer with more touch friendly layout, UI anf functionality in tablet mode (explorer mobile different from pc. Onedrive app layout different from explorer design and functionality))>
18. Several apps would work better in portrati orientation if snappable one on top of the other in tablet mode. Currently snapping is limited to longform side by side snapping. For video and browsing for example this setup doesn't work. Other platforms arguably do offer this).
19. poor to no syncing of the start screen tile layout when reinstalling windows 10 or settings windows 10 up on other devices.

Non tablet expereince issues:
1. Lack of quality app support in the store.

2. Lack of UWP app support in the store (going to be a problem for continuum)
3. multiple calendars in windows store (outlook) calendar app is hideous. Designated color labeling. Week and month view is a chaotic rainbow layout, hardly usable and not easy to look at. There should be user definable color labeling of calendars and events by the end user.
Would improve glanceability and management of multiple calendars.
4. still no good native alternative to microsofts reading list app (windows 8; briefly windows 10). Reading list could still greatly improve with functionality of folder management and support for saving webpages (actual page content) for offline reading. (convenient for travel business or mobile business on the go with poor metered or internet connection)
5. Fragmented file management experience. Explorer and onedrive shoudl be one by default (not as now a onedrieve folder seperate from the other folders or management seperately from onedrive.com or onedrive app. Confusing!)
6. Secretive file managment operation for onedrive files on pc. Explorer tilebar menu has no functionality built in to manage onedrive folders. The user has to use the (right click) context menu for that (huh??!!)
7. Lack of Cortana language support (and thus regional access lock for cortana in many regions. Experiene for many users outside the US is half baked).
8. Still issues with searching indexed external connected drives in windows/cortana search. I have surface pro devices with microsd storage expansion, checked in the list for search index list, but windows search fails fot find files on external indexed drives (issue for months).
9. Further efforts to unify a single settings location for settings and control panel. (This would arguably help with helping others troubleshoot windows. It is confusing my language to talk about the translated "control panel" and "settings' as the difference is semantic....so for practical reasons...UNIFY!

problems related to other posts:

5. I do agree with the UWP app platform to be store dependent. For me it helps discoverability, no more endless bing or google search for some a hidden website or endless link clicking to get to the right backoffice darkweb type environment website to find a beta app. I can understand developers problem with sharing beta invites and direct discoverability on the www. I don't the right answer to this problem for many developers. My expereince is though that if a user wants your app he/she will find it either through the store, web, windows central or other blog outlet. The world is very talkative and share-minded these days.

8. I have been able to use Edge as the main browser withoug much fus in windows 10. Granted running on insiders slow build 15058 right now. But I have found it quite reliable and stable enough to use on a daily basis. Only dependence on google for me is to double check map local search results for completeness and high quality academic papers. I think it will work fine with creators update. I think Edge has a decent favorites manager.
9. I agree microsoft has a too strict policy on regional locks for Cortana. The odd thing is Cortana is also promoted as a productivity and main feature for windows 10. But once installing 10 the user has to change regional/language settings to one of the few supported languages. This causes problems with system label translations not being able to stay in the native regional language. And certain apps are regionally locked, making them inaccessible in the store. Lastly Cortana fails to understand languages that are not part of the shortlist of languages supported. Cortana also has advanced system functionalities related to apps and services, but outside the US , basically they don't work, making Cortana a redundant feature.
11. see above.
12. I think this is a transition period. As I see it the delivery of windows 8 was in many ways too advanced and forward thinking for its time in an age where the pc and mouse and keyboard input method domanted the workspace. Many workspaces still had a workflow and pc devices mainly dependent on the mouse and keyboard (+ trackpad) input method. whilst the OS had a touch inputcentric design first to it. Ironcally in a relatively short timespan the workflow has changed greatly. The mobile workflow adoption is increasing, touch and pen input are becoming more relevant input methods. Businesses are becoming more efficient where keystroke textbox UIs are incresingly being replace with objects (buttons, checkboxes). I think we will see a change where the desktop enivironment will slowly phase out in favor of a more multifunctional live tile and start menu environment as user discoverablility of windows 10 grows. I think we will see this already in rs3 with project neon and Composable shells. From a desktop perspective live tiles can be seen as improved multifunctional icons and desktop links. From a tablet experience I have come to use live tiles as a more efficient way to plan my workflow with relevant inforamtion at a glance and a richer organizaion of information, files and apps to work with without even having to open an app or search more

 

[vzczc]

Microsofts inability to get regional settings, language and formats correct is the most disappointing thing about Windows 10. There are thousands of feedback items that relate to this fundamental problem in Windows, yet not one of them have receeived any attention from MS.

Let me explain. This is a problem rooted in MS mistaken assumptions about how region, language and various formats are related. In classical windows, say Windows 7, think control panel, things were mostly right. You had region, you had languages and formatting. Complicated, yes, but very flexible. You could pretty much combine these settings as you liked.

Enter Windows 10. Here, regional settings in the control panel, are ignored by most UWP apps, think weather, alarms, skype app, etc. If you, like many, prefer your UI, to be in English US (I can not stand using my native Norwegian for this, absolutely hate it), but you region is somewhere in Europe, in my case, Norway. Then windows assumes that it can safely ignore my regional settings that specify 24 hour clock, ddmmyyyy date formatting decimal separator etc. I am forced between, suffering through apps server in Norwegian or US formatting.

Make this travesty go away.

 

[sunnybyday]

Performance is bad for Mobile. The "Resuming".. issue and time it takes to load apps, even MSN apps on Lumia 950 XL is simply unacceptable in this day and age - this is even more glaring after I started using iPhone as my primary device (due to app support from work) - the iphone runs circles in terms of performance of apps and how quickly they launch and resume. day and night. MS needs to fix this asap, this was WP 7.5 / WP 8 USP and its sadly lost now.

 

[Ronald#WP]

Deletegated as 2nd class citizen (stuff ain't getting fixed.)

 

[kmarcel]

My 1st problem is reliability (in production) from Windows and updates. Which is now literally missing.
My 2nd problem is the core OS. When an engineer from Microsoft explains how hard it is to get audio out, WiFi drops daily, and windows - lock each other or pop as "Always on Top" on each other in production... you start wondering if you should be looking for other solutions.
My 3rd problem is experimentation. One out of tens i found: Most insiders on insider versions (15xxx), now have Bluetooth issues. Guess what, 14393.latest from production now has Bluetooth issues, the same as insiders, that were not present.

And after these, i have BIG problems...
And i can complain for hours, but i'll wait until Windows core gets fixed, or i get tired of waiting.

 

[kmarcel]

I know, but this is happening in all Windows.
I also know there is no more QA and is it handled by devs. However, this doesn't explain all issues.
My newest assumption is:
1) The app teams is ONE team for ALL UWP apps in Windows (explains a lot - basic features, no actual updates, no UX as in any Win32 app, the assumptions you talk about, etc).
2) The UWP API and presentation is limiting even Microsoft and it knows it since 2015 at least. (app hibernation, no access to system for integration (like Win32), user UI with 5% info and pages of scroll, etc)
3) Since forever (and months now) they are all waiting for a change that will come sometime... in the future (UWP API changes, project Neon, etc...), so they don't bother making changes.