Windows 10: Microsoft Makes Windows Easier and Friendlier for Europeans

GHacks · Jun 3, 2025 at 12:52 AM

Windows continues to be the most popular desktop operating system. While it sometimes seems that Microsoft is only interested in using Windows as a vessel for pushing its other services, those that make the company money, it sometimes is introducing useful features to the operating system as well.

Users from the EEA, the European Economic Area, get several enhancements this year according to a new announcement on the official Windows Insider blog.

These changes put a break on Microsoft tactics to get you to use Microsoft Edge, web-based searches, or the Microsoft Store and improve usability significantly, but only if you live in one of the EEA countries.

Microsoft Edge: the major changes

Microsoft used varies strategies to get users to use its Edge browser. Some of them legitimate, others annoying or close to malware-like behavior.

One of the main points of criticism leveled at Microsoft was that it is difficult to set a default browser other than Edge and keep it the default.

This should not be a problem any longer for users in the EEA, as Microsoft Edge won't prompt users anymore to set it as the default browser, if you do not launch it.

So, if you ignore Edge, Windows and the browser should not push prompts into your face anymore to make it the default.

Also, if Edge is uninstalled, other Windows applications won't prompt users anymore to reinstall the browser. The only exception to that rule is when a PWA distributed via the Microsoft Store is using the Microsoft Edge technology.

Additionally, the Start Experience app, which provides access to widgets and feeds, opens web content now using the default web browser. If you set the browser to Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi,, or another browser, then that browser will be used to render the content.

Microsoft Store

Microsoft notes that users from the EEA may uninstall the Microsoft Store app just like any other application going forward. Right-click on the app in Start or use the application listing in the settings to remove the app.

Previously, you had to run commands or use specialized software to remove the Microsoft Store application from Windows.

Good news is that any app that updates via the Microsoft Store continues to be updated, regardless of that.

Last but not least, when you run a search in Windows Search and click on web content, e.g., a link pointing to a support document or website, then this content will be opened in the default browser of the system from early June on.

Windows Search

Microsoft mixed Windows Search with results from Bing. Many users turn of web results, as they provide little value.

Users from the EEA get a new feature that makes it easier for other search providers to register their search engines as a provider in Windows Search.

This means that web-based search results will pull results from these search engines as well.

Users who do not want to see those can turn off the functionality entirely under the new Web Search preference. There they may also disable a specific provider or change the order in which results are shown.

Closing Words

The majority of searches apply to Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems. Most have started to roll out to user devices in the EEA already, but it may take some time before they reach the entire device population in the region.

Now You: what is your take on the announcement? Is there anything that you would like to see changed next to the announced changes? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Microsoft Makes Windows Easier and Friendlier for Europeans appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

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Brink · Jun 3, 2025 at 12:53 AM

Teams, Microsoft 365, and Office 365 changes for European Commission

Last month, the European Commission announced that it had opened a formal investigation regarding Microsoft’s bundling of Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers. As we said at the time, “we will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.” Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission’s investigation continues and we cooperate with it. These changes will impact our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland. They are designed to address two concerns that are central to the Commission’s investigation: (1) that customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a price less than those with Teams included; and (2) that we should do more to make interoperability easier between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites. Before offering more details, let me provide some added context. We believe that business customers in Europe and around the world expect a modern work solution to include modern communication and collaboration capabilities. That’s why, for more than a decade, we have included these capabilities in our business suites, starting with Office Communicator in 2007 and evolving and innovating over the years through Lync, Skype for Business Online, and most recently Microsoft Teams. At the same time, we recognize our responsibility as a major technology provider to support a healthy competitive environment. We appreciate the clarity that has emerged on several of the concerns from extensive and constructive discussions with the European Commission. With the benefit of this clarity, we believe it is important that we start to take meaningful steps to address those concerns. We do this not with the sense that this will necessarily resolve all concerns, whether from the Commission or our competitors, but we believe this is a constructive step that can start to lead to immediate and meaningful changes in the market. Accordingly, we plan to take the following steps in the coming months.

First, beginning October 1, 2023, we will unbundle Teams from our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the EEA and Switzerland. We will instead simply sell these offerings without Teams at a lower price (€2 less per month or €24 per year). We will do this for our core enterprise customers, which represent most of our commercial business in the EEA and Switzerland. Teams will still be available for new enterprise customers to buy standalone and separately at a list price of €5 per month or €60 per year. Existing enterprise customers who already have a suite with Teams can choose to stay with their current productivity suite or to move to a without-Teams suite. For our small business and frontline workers, we will keep offering suites with Teams but will at the same time offer a “without-Teams” option, and this latter version will be offered at a lower price. More details are available here.

Second, we will enhance our existing resources on interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365. Today, we offer extensive interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 apps and services. This work allows companies like Zoom and Salesforce to create tailored and integrated experiences across Exchange, Outlook and even Teams. However, as part of the investigation process, we have heard feedback that, given the broad capabilities of Microsoft 365, Microsoft could do more in terms of providing support and making development easier. To help address these concerns, we will create new support resources to better organize and point application developers to the existing and publicly available application programming interfaces (APIs) and extensibility in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 apps and services that connect with Teams. This will include new support resources to help address questions from customers and independent software vendors (ISVs), including providing additional content to explain how data can be removed from Teams and used in another solution.

Finally, we will create new mechanisms to enable third-party solutions to host Office web applications. While Microsoft Office file formats are documented so that any program can open, edit, and display documents created in programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, we have heard requests from competitors of Teams that they would like to rely on Microsoft’s functionality instead of building their own. To address these requests, we will develop a new method for hosting the Office web applications within competing apps and services much like Microsoft accomplishes in Teams.

We believe these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the best possible solutions at competitive prices. We also recognize that we are still in the early stages of the European Commission’s formal investigation. We will continue to engage with the Commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe.
Click to expand...

Source: https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy...microsoft-365/

ChojiTiger · Jun 3, 2025 at 12:53 AM

Taskbar bug: switching to another window -will not appear at the front

Follow either of these steps to fix the issue with the Active window hiding behind.

Method 1:
I suggest you to disable window by hovering over it with the mouse and check if it helps. To do so I suggest you to try the below given steps and check if it helps:

Press Windows key + X key and click on Control Panel.

Select or click Ease of Access.

Click or tap onEase of Access Centre.

Click on Make the Mouse Easier to Use was uncheck Activate Window by hovering over it with the mouse.

Check if issue is resolved.

Method 2:
I would suggest you to completely uninstall the touchpad driver and reinstall it. Kindly follow the below given steps.

Press “Windows key + X” and click on “Device Manager”.

In the list of devices, you should see the touchpad drivers.

Right click on the device and then select "Uninstall".

In the uninstall dialog, make sure you select the option to delete the driver package from the system. This causes the driver package installed earlier to be deleted.

In the Action menu of Device manager, select “Scan for Hardware changes” option. This will cause the device driver to be reinstalled. Once the driver is installed, close all windows and restart the computer.

Callender · Jun 3, 2025 at 12:53 AM

How to Make Better Contrast to Make Words Easier to Read

Clear type allows you to make the text on screen in Windows easier to read. You just run the tuner and pick the text that looks best in each section.

The Chrome extension allows you to override text (font) and background color on webpages for:

All sites.

Current page

All Pages

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