back to article Suggested Actions fails to suggest its own survival as Windows 11 feature killed

The Microsoft axman just claimed another victim. Less than three years after it appeared in the Windows Insider Dev Channel, the Suggested Actions feature is being deprecated. Microsoft quietly confirmed, via its Deprecated Features list, that Suggested Actions would not be pursued in Windows. Its addition was spotted by a …

  1. Andy Non Silver badge
    Coat

    Suggested action:

    Deprecate (or defecate) Recall and CoPilot.

    1. Mentat74
      Linux

      Re: Suggested action:

      Install Linux...

      1. b0llchit Silver badge
        Linux

        Re: Suggested action:

        I can time travel... Installed that 25 years ago :-)

      2. LBJsPNS Bronze badge

        Re: Suggested action:

        Haiku is surprisingly close to being a daily driver for a lot of tasks as well.

        (Been using Linux on everything at home and business for the last 10 years. But it's good to see another alternative.)

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Deprecate (or defecate) Recall and CoPilot.

      Nah. Deprecate Windows 11 first.

  2. m4r35n357 Silver badge

    Erm . . .

    _axeman_

  3. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge

    "New Features"

    Microsoft keeps broadcasting to everyone that the folks creating these "new features" don't use them themselves. One sees this most clearly everytime something in the OS (or Office) that used to take one mouse click (or one right-click) gets changed to requiring 2 or 3 clicks.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: gets changed to requiring 2 or 3 clicks.

      Yep. The MS Standards on 'Ease of Use' are somewhere deep in the Redmond Basement in a drawer marked 'Beware of Bigfoot'.

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: "New Features"

      Who comes up with this sh*t?

      Seriously...an OS, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program...these are all quite basic office tools and not too hard to implement. Sure, the first few releases are going to need some improvements, but after, say 5 or 10 years, barring any quantum leaps in processor features (for the OS), they should be fairly stable. Microsoft, however, seems to delight in adding what I would call "fluff features"...e.g.: The Ribbon, Clippy, rearranging the screen layout, introducing new and incompatible scripting languages and file formats.

      I suppose, when you can't do anything more to improve the basic product, the only way to sell more of it, is to intentionally crapify it, then announce a "new, improved" version.

      Honestly, if Windows wasn't so deeply embedded in business, we'd all be looking for alternatives.

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: "New Features"

        Who say we aren't / have?

      2. ITMA Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: "New Features"

        "Who comes up with this sh*t?"

        To put it bluntly, people trying to justify their jobs because they have eff all else to do.

        Far better the were redeployed to testing. That other thing Microsoft have become utter shite at.

  4. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    Deprecate Start Menu "Recommended" too!

    Variant 1: Allow us to completely turn it off, giving us two more rows of icons space.

    Variant 2: Restrict is to local history only, never ever anything fro theee webs.

    Variant 2.1: Make it one row, save the space for word "Recommended", giving us one more row of icons. There is too much white-space anyway, see control panel.

  5. LBJsPNS Bronze badge

    So... Clippy minus Clippy?

  6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    I can imagine anyone working on any sort of history would get very, very tired of "make an event" very, very quickly.

    1. veti Silver badge

      I'm pretty sure that was only offered for future dates.

  7. sarusa Silver badge
    Devil

    Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

    Every single time Microsoft tries to do something 'helpful' it's worse than useless, so predictably nobody uses it and eventually it dies. The only exception I can think of is the Windows Update Diagnostic Wizard (or whatever they called it) that would find out why Update wasn't working and fix it. It actually usually worked! And then they killed it because not enough people used it because they didn't know it existed.

    This didn't start with Clippy, either, it started with Microsoft Bob (and possibly earlier). Nor did this end with Clippy, they learned nothing. Suggested Actions was just one of the latest abominations before Copilot and Recall came along.

    It was also quite obvious that the people at MS who are foisting this shite on us are not using it themselves because, again, worse than useless. In particular, every single one of these bad ideas should have a 'never show me this twaddle again, you twat.' It's interesting to compare to iOS/macOS where the new stuff can be annoying but it's also obviously used by the people making it and there's (almost?) always a way to turn it off.

    1. Ropewash

      Re: Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

      "not using it themselves"

      Not so sure about that. The accuracy, efficiency and aptitude of their work suggests they use these tools all the time.

    2. CountCadaver Silver badge

      Re: Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

      Ditto their troubleshooters which on 7 at least would have a reasonable chance of trying to unbork a setting gone wrong

      Now they are neutered and about to be deprecated...

    3. Is there anybody out there?

      Re: Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

      I've got a copy of Bob running on an XP VM. I assumed it was some sort of 'escape room' game. Hilariously impossible to do anything.

    4. X5-332960073452
      Happy

      Re: Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

      The 'trouble-shooters' are still there, Settings, System, Troubleshoot, Other Trouble-shooters.

      1. sarusa Silver badge

        Re: Another Worse than Useless 'Helpful' 'Feature'

        Try going to the other trouble-shooters in 24H2 - click on one to run it and you get... an AI assistant offering to help. And prior to this it would immediately warn me that they were all about to be deprecated, stop using them.

  8. xyz123 Silver badge

    MS Peon: Sir, Suggested Actions has gone completely insane

    CEO: oh god, whats it done, suggested that people should get naked and get BUSY with each others nethers?

    MS Peon: No sir, it said we should actually LISTEN to our customers and stop dicking around with the interface, taskbar layout and control panel.

    CEO: KILL IT. FUCKING KILL IT NOW WITH FIRE! KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!

  9. Lost in Cyberspace

    Driven by revenue, not usefulness

    Too many features are blatantly released to utilise a Microsoft account, Bing or MSN. Old features are often retired to make way for newer, more cloudy versions that only do useful stuff with an account.

    I remember a time when, by default, the search results would be stuff on your computer, the start menu found your apps, and the apps saved stuff on your computer. Web content happened in a browser.

    The early warning sign for me was Windows Live Mail, where it would sign you in to a MS Account to send a photo email.

    OK, there are certainly some advantages to cloud sync and cloud services - but somehow Microsoft make it feel creepy and pushy.

    1. Woodnag

      Re: Driven by revenue, not usefulness

      The features all require surveillance because the analysis is on MS systems. These types of useless features are simply to make it legally obvious to users that the minutae of their computer interactions are being monitored by MS to build a detailed profile of each user.

      Pre-crime will be interesting when the real-time analyses from, say, MS, FB, your ISP, gmail, youtube, search engines all point to a person likely to kill their spouse...

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Suggested action for copying a phone number ?

    Typical Borkzilla.

    Copying a piece of text is a select text-CTRL-C affair. You want to replace that with a bloody "assistant" that is going to take me through three popups and five mouse clicks to end up not getting me where I want to go ?

    Fuck off and die.

  11. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    "fixing what wasn't particularly broken"

    "fixing what wasn't particularly broken"

    Windows and accomplices just generally borken then?

    While I still had infrequent occasions to use a Windows box to test services I invariably installed Classic Shell for my own sanity. At other times when I was confronted with a stock standard Win 10 box I was always appalled anew by the UI.

    Being a minimalist by nature and wanting as few distractions as possible my window managers have been 9wm (hpux10.2), oroborus (hpux,linux) and now openbox with cwm being a contender - the contrast is stark - windows is just one enormous monolithic distraction.

  12. MickeyLane

    I wish they would depreciate File Explorer's habit of constantly moving the left pane around. I've lost count of the times some file got misdirected because just as you were clicking a destination, everything moved. For no reason.

    1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

      Use a better file explorer - my preference is XYPlorer

      1. blu3b3rry
        Windows

        I recently discovered that the old WinFile software is available on Github, although they also have downloads available through the M$ store and Chocolatey.

        It might be old, but at least the UI is consistent and shouldn't change with new "features"

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge

      Yes, this!

      Can't count the number of time I've inadvertantly saved a file to OneDrive when I intended to save it locally. This "deck shuffling" seems to have started after COVID...certainly wasn't there when I was on Win7, and not at the release of Win10, IIRC. It's pretty clearly an attempt to drive up use of OneDrive and get you used to using it instead of local storage...perhaps part of a slow but determined push to get everyone onto Office365?

      Retired, and happily using my Linux system at home, so thankfully this crap isn't an issue for me.

      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

        Re: inadvertantly saved a file to OneDrive when I intended to save it locally

        Which, of course, is the underlying intention.

        "Accidentally" hoover all your stuff into OneDrive, then, once critical mass has been reached, charge for access and jack up the price every 6 months.

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: inadvertantly saved a file to OneDrive when I intended to save it locally

          Which could happen in the insider versions of Server 2025. As domain admin. With file server shares mounted (of course not production, throwaway test environment). I think they fixed that in the release versions since the feedback on the forums on that were still in a civilized tone, but exactly what you imagine.

  13. Blackjack Silver badge

    So basically they did a Clippy and people didn't like it so it is getting axed? They really didn't see that coming?

    1. blu3b3rry
      Devil

      Clippy, Cortana, take your pick. I would say MS are like a reverse Midas, turning gold into shit - but it was shit to begin with.

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