Dear Microsoft, please fix our Windows 10 pet peeves

[digitaldd]

App default resets, the one of 2 times I have to actually see Microsoft's Movies or Music apps then rest all my default applications, seems to happen whenever there is major version update.

The app recommendations, and tips to do things like add your phone (my phone is already added).

The applications that automagically install themselves whether you want them or not, aka Paint3D, Candy Crush Saga, etc..

 

[Samuel 444]

Photos app : let us add a name to the contacts found on pictures. And group them when they are the same. And link them with the People App (for example, to use the picture of the face of the contacts directly in the People App)

 

[Samuel 444]

Groove app : create intelligent playlists based on my local MP3 files (without needing to have them on OneDrive)

 

[buffalosolja]

My biggest issue (really mine) is I try to help with the insiders edition, and always get burned with RDP not working correctly.. I can live with most everything else but when that happens causes me issues and I figured that should be one of the most stable parts.

 

[mvierling]

Edge and Internet Explorer constant crashes or not be able to display web pages at all. Forced to switch to Chrome.

Error:

INET_E_DOWNLOAD_FAILURE​

 

[order_66]

Well let's see,

Forced updates and the whole rolling release model needs to be abandoned, as it stands Microsoft can force any and all bad decisions, remove and install anything they want at any given time and the consumer has no choice but to accept it.

Spying, give an opt-out.

My desktop is not a cell phone, UWP needs to be abandoned altogether, it’s weak, dumbed-down to the level of a cell phone os.

Remember folks, windows 7 is still being used by the majority of windows users today and that's not going to change anytime soon because of the reasons I just mentioned.

 

[Biff Henderson]

Toast notifications that fly out from the lower right are at a higher z-order than dialogs that are presented when clicking on the task icon near the clock.

I have to wait for the notification to withdraw or click on the > to get it to withdraw before I can interact with the dialog for the task icon.

Annoying while trying to eject a series for external drives as the eject toast appears over top of the eject dialog.

 

[Simmo_2000]

My biggest pet peev is the start menu. Why only 1 folder deep?

I have a Gog.Com folder with 300 read me.txt, 100 graphics setup Wizard, 300 manuals, plus all the game launchers and any other files, instead of a gog.com and then a folder with the name of the game. The start menu on windows 7 was around 2 pages long, on windows 10 it is around 50 (that's using the full height of the screen for the start menu), this would shrink again down to 2 pages with the introduction of a 2nd level of folders.

At work we use a program called aspentech (manufacturing system), which on windows 7 had sub folders of various names containing all the relevant parts of that sub programme. Now all these sub folder are spread around all over the start menu.

It's just so messy, and the annoying thing is if you navigate in file explorer to the hidden path for the start menu, it is all nicely separated with proper folder structures.

Yes I can always do a search, but sometimes you just can't remember what it is you need eg afwtools really screams out aspentech security server settings!

Of the few people with windows 10 at work, this is there biggest complaint.

Rant over!

 

[kingtigre]

Counter point. I would like to see a large scale adoption of UWP. As the most used OSes in the world are now smart phone OSes, the userbase is already prepped and ready for these types of apps.

I personally give preferential treatment to apps developed on UWP as I enjoy the ease of use, lack of bloat, and easy updating.

I use Polarr over Lightroom
I use Sketchable over Photoshop even though the later is the industry standard that I've been using for over 20 years.
I use Windows Mail over Outlook 2016

I would like to see UWP expanded to allow for more advancement and improvement.

Of course, I use Windows 10 almost exclusively in tablet mode, so I'm clearly mad as a hatter.

 

[soulcancer]

How it sucks at syncing to Android. No Maps app (can't search on PC and send to phone), no Photos app (can't see your albums), no People app (outlook people app is just terrible with Android in every way) no Movies & TV app ( No reason to rent a movie when I can only watch it at my computer).

 

[agmsr]

What bothers me is the design of many Windows 10 apps. The Windows 8/Metro look has always been extremely unappealing to me (blocky layout, primary colors, too much "white space"). I've stuck with Google and other web apps because they are faster, very functional, and I like the Material design.

I do use the Windows Mail app for a couple of accounts, and it's better looking than most Win10 apps, but one odd thing is the behavior of the reading pane. I have to click on an email to make it show; otherwise the pane is blank. Seems like an odd decision (why not have it always appear?), and it doesn't seem to work fluidly.

 

[ScubaDog]

My list is far too long to ever be addressed. W10 is horrible on touch devices because Microsoft has stupidly gone to using really tiny wireframe icons and too many things require using a mouse instead of functioning easily with touch. And you can't stay in tablet mode when you have more than one screen attached, which is also stupid.

 

[Wevenhuis]

Working with Windows 10 I keep running into things that would be super easy to fix but that are somehow never addressed. These don't seem to float to the top of the Feedback Hub either, so why not list them in a thread and hope that MS sees them.

All I want for Christmas is for Microsoft to fix these.. :angel:

- start the People app. The search box is not active! d'Oh!! You have to hit 'tab' six times, or mouse all the way over to the search box and click before you can start typing. SUPER easy to fix.

- hitting the Win key and typing a name, Cortana doesn't search contacts. d'Oh! Why on earth are contacts not worth searching?

- In mail when I get ten photo attachments I want to open the first one, and swipe to the next one. That doesn't work, instead we need to open and close each image individually. Easily a weekly annoyance.

- minor gripe: Hitting Winkey-S and typing 'remind me to start a thread at noon' nicely shows the reminder I want to make, but I can't just hit enter to complete setting the reminder. I need to hit tab five times and hit enter.

- using Cortana to set a reminder, and then mouse-clicking the time field we get a touch control to change the time. This is cumbersome to use with the keyboard. Please allow us to type in the time field directly (as well).

- Hitting the Win key to open Start and doing anything other than typing immediately disables the search-as-you-type option. Example, hit Win, then touch-pan the start menu, and then type. At this point nothing happens. Why disable typing?

- The surprise Cortana web search. Type "remind me to <something embarrassing> at 1 pm tomorrow". Cortana struggles, and boom, your private request is sent to bing.com. I really want the web search put behind a button, or at least add a toggle to disable web searches by Cortana.

OK, those are my gripes for now, anybody else have Win10 annoyances that are easily fixed?

I've been wondering the same thing these last three years in insiders, despite feedback. It's like they get lost in translation. There are so many!

For me many gripes are with a lack of fit and finish of the tablet experience.

-two snapped apps in tablet mode, landscape orientation still won't rotate to portrait mode automatically. I have to toggle desktop mode, then rotate the device, then reengage tablet mode. Crazy!
-Many app are not snappable left or right in tablet mode with touch. I actually have to use the long press (=right click mouse) to open the context menu to choose place left or place right to snap them. A mouse gesture for touch input. Crazy!
-In tablet mode we still can not snap apps vertically, currently only horizontally. This makes multitasking in portrait orientation unusable often for certain app combo's, due to the narrow widths of the apps.
-For many apps I can't drag and drop explorer into one snap and then a second into the other. Explorer always wants to stay fullscreen when snapped first. I often first have to snap the second app first in place, before snapping explorer. Frustrating.
-windows search is often not active when I want to start typing in tablet mode. I have to press windows search twice (windows key + text box) to start typing directly. In windows 8 this happened effortlessly all the time. Strange to see access to search work less ideal in windows 10 than 8.
-In windows 8 we can edit multiple live tiles. In windows 10 we still can't after 3 years.
-I saddened we can't customize/personalize live tiles any more than the current limits of themes and a few minder tweaks in settings. Ik think in windows 10 consumers and end users should be allowed to personalize live tiles to a greater degree. Live tile customization is left at the control of the developers, but I think more controls should have been there, at the control of the end user, from the start. Live tiles 2.0. For me this was easily the next step, coming from windows 8 and windows 10 mobile. Things like control of tile color, transparency, hue and text size of all live tiles should have been there.
-A major annoyance is that there still aren't more Cortana languages and supported regions. Cortana is being updated in features, yet many people don't or can't use them for the more basic reasons.
I could go on, but will stop here.

 

[WinOMG]

Ok so in the personalization options in Settings you can choose to change the accent color based on the desktop background. If you have a slideshow, the color will change along with it. So whenever the color changes, all File Explorer windows refresh and the scroll bar goes back to the top. Super annoying.
It also bothers me how context menus are so unorganized. The fact that they let developers add buttons to it makes it horrible as developers are not consistent. I wish that MS would treat all context menu entries differently and have them display under one area grouped together instead of all over the context menu.

 

[Chris Turek]

Edge was fully functional and worked really well in the Creator's Update. Something they did to it in the Fall Creator's update has made it extremely inferior to Chrome. It stays on top of other windows wherever it is, unless I minimize it, it can't handle most video streaming formats anymore, it's slow to open links, it doesn't let me upload to Facebook, it doesn't do anything after pasting a link and pressing enter in the address bar, etc. The only reason I use it anymore is because I want these bugs to reappear so I can report them in the feedback hub so they get fixed.

 

[Chris Turek]

Toast notifications that fly out from the lower right are at a higher z-order than dialogs that are presented when clicking on the task icon near the clock.

I have to wait for the notification to withdraw or click on the > to get it to withdraw before I can interact with the dialog for the task icon.

Annoying while trying to eject a series for external drives as the eject toast appears over top of the eject dialog.

That's why my PC has been on quiet hours for the past year. I can't stand opening my laptop and getting bombarded with notifications. If I see that I get one, the action center icon fills white and I click on it. Makes things much easier.

 

[Chris Turek]

Ok so in the personalization options in Settings you can choose to change the accent color based on the desktop background. If you have a slideshow, the color will change along with it. So whenever the color changes, all File Explorer windows refresh and the scroll bar goes back to the top. Super annoying.
It also bothers me how context menus are so unorganized. The fact that they let developers add buttons to it makes it horrible as developers are not consistent. I wish that MS would treat all context menu entries differently and have them display under one area grouped together instead of all over the context menu.

I have this same setting and I've never had an issue with file explorer losing my place when the color changes.

 

[Saskat]

Please do not automatically put OneDrive under This PC.

 

[Ron Gramann]

How about...

1) Make Power Settings reliable (e.g. it does what I tell it to do)
2) Stabilise the network stack so I don't have to reset my adapter every hour
3) Ridiculous Edge CPU and Memory usage

 

[Freddie Johson]

Lack of mobile love thanks to the gutless, visionless, inept, incompetent, pathetic, disgraceful Satya Nadella

Oh wait..Liar too.