Copilot+ features, and annoying “features”
Microsoft continues to roll out AI features, particularly to PCs that meet the qualifications for the company’s Copilot+ features. These betas enable “agent-powered search” for Intel and AMD Copilot+ PCs, which continue to get most of these features a few weeks or months later than Qualcomm Snapdragon+ PCs. This agent is Microsoft’s latest attempt to improve the dense, labyrinthine Settings app by enabling natural-language search that knows how to respond to queries like “my mouse pointer is too small” or “how to control my PC by voice” (Microsoft’s examples). Like other Copilot+ features, this relies on your PC’s neural processing unit (NPU) to perform all processing locally on-device. Microsoft has also added a tutorial for the “Click to Do” feature that suggests different actions you can perform based on images, text, and other content on your screen.
Finally, Microsoft is tweaking the so-called “Second Chance Out of Box Experience” window (also called “SCOOBE,” pronounced “scooby”), the setup screen that you’ll periodically see on a Windows 11 PC even if you’ve already been using it for months or years. This screen attempts to enroll your PC in Windows Backup, to switch your default browser to Microsoft Edge and its default search engine to Bing, and to import favorites and history into Edge from whatever browser you might have been trying to use before.
If you, like me, experience the SCOOBE screen primarily as a nuisance rather than something “helpful,” it is possible to make it go away. Per our guide to de-cluttering Windows 11, open Settings, go to System, then to Notifications, scroll down, expand the “additional settings” drop-down, and uncheck all three boxes here to get rid of the SCOOBE screen and other irritating reminders.
Most of these features are being released simultaneously to the Dev and Beta channels of the Windows Insider program (from least- to most-stable, the four channels are Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview). Features in the Beta channel are usually not far from being released into the public versions of Windows, so non-Insiders can probably expect most of these things to appear on their PCs in the next few weeks. Microsoft is also gearing up to release the Windows 11 25H2 update, this year’s big annual update, which will enable a handful of features that the company is already quietly rolling out to PCs running version 24H2.