5 historic elements of Home windows 11 that have not been up to date in a long time

Windows 11 may’ve solely been launched to the general public back in 2021, however the technical underpinnings of the desktop working system prolong a long time into the previous. The NT kernel, which lies on the coronary heart of the Windows platform, dates again to the ’90s, and subsequent generations of the OS have all constructed over high of their predecessors.

With all these layers of code — each trendy and legacy — stacked on high of each other, it is maybe no shock that 2025-era Home windows 11 suffers from notable visible design inconsistencies. Some elements of the system, just like the Home windows Shell (taskbar, Start Menu, and different user-facing UI surfaces) are constructed utilizing up to date codebases; many different system parts, in contrast, have not been refreshed in a number of years.

Fortunately, Microsoft is slowly however certainly engaged on modernizing the whole thing of Home windows 11, with the corporate continuing to bring dark mode support and refreshed Fluent Design and WinUI 3 design ideas to previously-untouched elements of the OS. Listed here are 5 historic corners of Home windows that I hope to see be rejuvenated sooner relatively than later.

Pc Administration

Managing a PC does not should be so drab

Pc Administration is a core aspect of the Home windows 11 platform, serving as a one-stop-shop for managing system administration instruments, viewing occasion logs, scheduling duties, controlling consumer accounts, monitoring {hardware} efficiency, and far more. Admittedly, most informal PC customers have no use for Pc Administration’s characteristic set, nevertheless it’s nonetheless an essential a part of the working system that deserves to feel and appear up-to-date.

Because it at the moment stands, Pc Administration is without doubt one of the oldest-looking elements of Home windows 11 from a consumer interface perspective. Other than missing darkish mode and shade theming help, the appliance is stylized with archaic icons, it encompasses a UX that is adversarial to the touch interactions, and it is not in the slightest degree conscious of window resizing. Worst of all, the app’s textual content seems barely blurry on trendy PCs with high-DPI shows, owing to an absence of optimization for modern-day display screen resolutions.

Registry Editor

Even energy consumer interfaces should look good

The Home windows Registry Editor is an influence consumer characteristic inside Home windows 11 that lets you modify and configure varied parts of the working system’s settings and applications. By way of its hierarchical organizational construction and its use of administrative privileges, the Registry Editor is extremely highly effective (and doubtlessly harmful to fiddle with if you do not know what you are doing).

Sadly, the fashionable Registry Editor is a basic Win32-style utility through-and-through, with no darkish mode or shade theming, subpar contact help and home windows scalability, and a critical lack of animations or different user-friendly UX design issues. Certain, Microsoft would most likely want you keep far-off from the Registry Editor altogether, however that does not imply it does not deserve a recent, modern-feeling interface to name its personal.

Character Map

In want of a critical UI revamp

Character Map is a legacy a part of the Home windows 11 OS that swimming pools collectively symbols, particular characters, accented letters, and different lesser-used glyphs inside a single, centralized location. The utility can turn out to be useful when the occasional have to sort an obscure character arises, however its end-user expertise is regrettably fairly antiquated. As with different entries on this listing, Character Map’s consumer interface hasn’t been touched in years, and it stands proud like a sore thumb in 2025.

To be truthful to Microsoft, it does present a contemporary character choice device within the type of the Emojis and extra panel, which lets you choose emojis, GIFs, symbols, and extra from inside a flyout that additionally accommodates your current clipboard exercise. After all, this is not a full-fledged alternative for Character Map, neither is it attempting to be. In the meanwhile, should you’re in search of a really trendy character picker expertise for Home windows 11, think about downloading the third-party Character Map UWP app without spending a dime from the Microsoft Retailer.

Mobility Middle

Does this even have to exist anymore?

Home windows Mobility Middle is a single-windowed dashboard that gives fast entry to show brightness, quantity, energy profiles, display screen orientation, and a number of other different helpful instruments, every contained inside its personal tile. The characteristic first arrived on the scene within the Home windows Vista days, serving as an analog to modern-day fast settings panels with the intent of getting used totally on pill PCs.

Sadly, Mobility Middle did not evolve with the occasions, now present as a relic of Home windows’ storied previous. Right this moment, the characteristic has been nicely and really outmoded by the Home windows 11 Fast Settings panel, making for the apparent query: why hold this eyesore of an interface round when it serves such little objective? To be truthful, Mobility Middle does enable third-party OEMs to plug into it with further fast settings tiles; I would personally like to see an identical developer API for third-party tiles make its manner over to Home windows 11’s trendy Fast Settings expertise.

Screensavers

Misplaced however removed from forgotten

I’ve lamented Microsoft’s shunning of the Windows screensaver experience previously, nevertheless it bears repeating. The characteristic hasn’t been up to date in years, to the purpose the place the flyout shows a hilariously old style graphic of a cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor inside its consumer interface. The flyout itself is downright historic wanting, with no trendy design ideas or integration with Home windows 11’s trendy Settings utility.

Worse nonetheless, the out-of-box choice of screensavers offered by Microsoft in recent installations of Home windows 11 is downright miserable. Through the years, many iconic screensavers like Pipes, 3D Maze, Flying Home windows and Starfield Simulation have been gutted from the working system, leaving the present-day choice an emaciated shell of its former self. Certain, screensavers won’t be a technical necessity in at the moment’s day and age, however I can not be the one one who loves a good idle display animation on my PC.