5 New Features in Windows That Are Actually Useful

Windows 11 is constantly being updated with new features. I'll be sharing with you those they added this year that I think are quite useful. I'll be starting with the basic features first, and ending with those that are great for power users and system administrators. First up, they added an Internet Speed Test shortcut to the taskbar. To open it, in the taskbar, right-click on the Internet icon and select Perform Speed Test. In your default browser, it doesn't have to be Microsoft Edge, it will open the search results in Bing for an Internet Speed Test. If you get a sponsored result, scroll down, and you'll see an integrated Internet Speed Test powered by Ookla's Speed Test. Clicking on Start will test your ping, download, and upload speeds. We pay for 1GB upload and download speeds, but since this PC is a good distance from the router, it should be quite a bit less. While this is more useful than having to go to a browser, enter in the website to do a test, hopefully in the future they just integrate this directly in the taskbar without having to open a browser. They've made improvements to the Start menu. It still has the pinned apps, some of which you may not have installed, that are instead advertisements. For example, I don't have Prime Video installed on this PC, but it's still pinned for some reason. Below that and Recommended is files you may have recently had opened. One of the bigger changes is they now give you more control how to view to see what programs you have installed on your PC. For Category on my PC, they're grouped by Accessibility, Creativity, Entertainment, Information and Reading, Music, Other, Productivity, and Utilities and Tools. The other views are Grid, and this is what that looks like. And the last one is List. While the Start menu is far from perfect, at least, and Microsoft has confirmed this, that more changes are coming soon. You can also make changes to what is seen in the Start menu in the Settings app. To open it, the keyboard shortcut is the Windows key plus I. In the left pane, select Personalization. Scroll down here on the right and select Start. Here you can enable or disable Show Recently Added Apps, Show Recommended Files in Start, Recent Files in File Explorer, and Items in Jump Lists. And the last one here, Show Recommendations for Tips, Shortcuts, New Apps, and More. The only one I have enabled here is the second one. Staying in Settings, they've made improvements to Quick Machine Recovery. In Settings, to find it, select System here on the left. Then scroll down here on the right and select Recovery. In Recovery Options, click into Quick Machine Recovery. It's now enabled by default, which is a change. This feature helps to recover your PC from problems booting up. In the drop-down menu for Look for Solutions, it used to endless loop checking for a solution every 30 minutes. They've since added Once, which is the recommended and default, instead of endlessly looping. Or you can select anywhere from every 10 minutes up to every 12 hours for it to look for a solution. This can reduce headaches when troubleshooting. My recommendation is their recommendation, Once. For this next one, let's go to Smart App Control in the Security app. In Search, to get to it quickly, type Smart App Control. Select it. The change here to this feature will be minor for most, but a major change for developers, power users, and IT admins. The security feature actively blocks untrusted, unsigned, or potentially dangerous apps and scripts to protect your PC from malware, ransomware, and unwanted software. Prior to April of this year, this feature could only be enabled on a fresh install of Windows. That meant turning it off when installing Windows meant that it was permanently disabled. Now it can be turned on or off at any time without having to do a fresh install of Windows. This can be extremely useful for those times for those who need to temporarily allow unsigned or custom applications. Sysmon, which is short for System Monitor, is a powerful utility for power users and system administrators. It monitors your system activity and will log it to the Windows Event Log. For many years, it was only available if you installed the entire Sys Internal Suite. Now it's built into Windows. To enable it, go to Search in the taskbar and type Turn Windows Features. Select Turn Windows Features On or Off. Scroll down here and check the box next to Sysmon. When you're done with that, click OK. When it's done with that, which takes around 30 seconds, click on Close. To get it installed and running, we'll need to open PowerShell. So go back to Search and type PowerShell. Here on the right, select Run as Administrator. Type the following command, capital S-Y-S-M-O-N, add a space, minus I. Then press Enter on your keyboard. It's now installed and running. To see what's been logged by Sysmon, open the Event Viewer. To easily get to it, right-click on the Start menu and select Event Viewer. Navigate to Applications and Services Logs, Microsoft, Windows. Scroll down here and look for Sysmon. And there it is. Now select Operational. I'll expand this out here a little bit. I know it's quite the navigational process for this one, but it's worth it to see, as an example, security-critical system activity like process creations, network connections, and file modifications. Thanks for watching. If this video was useful for you, give it a thumbs up and share it with others. Let us know in the comments any new features you're using that might be helpful for others to know about. 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