Why did Microsoft Remove these Windows Features

Over the years, Microsoft has quietly removed a lot of Windows features that most people probably never even realized were gone, such as the Windows People Bar. This was a special feature introduced in 2017 for Windows 10 in your taskbar that allowed you to pin your contacts directly to your taskbar. And the People Bar feature is located right here in the right bottom corner. No new suggestions, check back later, I don't actually have any friends. Pin contacts to your taskbar. And from this bar, it seems like I can also launch People app, okay, it's like a separate application. New contact, I can actually create a new contact. Something like that, okay. Yeah, there I have a contact. Let's pin him. That seems to have made like a separate button on my taskbar. It really does suck that I can message him only using Skype or mail. The problem with this feature is that it only supported Microsoft services like Microsoft's email app and Skype. Third-party developers just never bothered with this feature. And so in 2018, Microsoft rolled out an update where the People Bar feature was no longer enabled by default on the Windows taskbar. And this feature, as it was in Windows 10, never actually made it to Windows 11. The Windows Maps app, this one is pretty self-explanatory on what it is, and it was introduced in the days of Windows 10 Mobile, and it had stuck around on Windows ever since then. So I just got the update for the application, and yeah, I can't even use it anymore. The Maps app has reached an end of support, as mentioned in a previous update. In April of 2025, Microsoft announced that Windows Maps would reach the end of support, and it was removed from the Microsoft Store in July of 2025. DevHome Microsoft Developer Home launched in 2023 as a Windows 11 application specifically for developers. It was meant to streamline the setup process of a development environment, and help make managing and coding projects much easier. If I'm not mistaken, then a lot of these features were moved into Windows Settings. Dashboard Monitor your projects using widgets. Clone repositories, install applications, generate WinGET configuration files, OK. File Explorer, adjust these settings for a more developer-friendly experience. File extensions, hidden and system files. I think these features are available in File Explorer. Pretty cool. This application was discontinued and deprecated just two years later, in 2025. Windows Mail and Calendar apps. And on this one we actually have Outlook and we have Mail. We have both of them. So for some reason, the Mail application I cannot sign into. Probably the servers are not really working for this one anymore, so let's just not touch this one, I guess, then. Calendar. This one did open. Oh, and there's like a specific button that just opens up Mail. And I guess this one has a lot of standard features, like probably there's reminders. Where do you do that? Switch to Doodle. I would kind of prefer to be like all in one application, not separate applications. However, Microsoft discontinued these applications in 2024 and wanted people to move to Microsoft Outlook instead. And now we have to, of course, check out Cortana, everyone's favorite virtual assistant. I'm just kidding. And with this one is that if you used Windows 11, then we actually have Cortana and we actually also have Microsoft Copilot. Cortana in Windows as a standalone application is deprecated. Okay. Yeah. This one we can't even check out. I think we should be able to check out it in Windows 10, which I'm gonna boot up in just a second. We just have to check out one more feature. Microsoft WordPad. I have heard a lot of people describe this as the middle ground between Notepad and Microsoft Word. Let's see. WordPad. Yeah, there we have it. And it does kind of resemble Microsoft Word. I typically write my scripts in Microsoft Word, but this is about all I need. All I need is to write some text, make some text bold, and that's about it. I don't even need the most advanced features. And by the way, this is a completely free pre-installed application that came with all Windows versions before this one. So I guess this one was maybe undercutting Microsoft Word. So I have just logged back onto Windows 10 and let's see. I want to see the applications that didn't work. Cortana. Let Cortana collect and use information. Sign in. So this one needs a Microsoft account. Something went wrong. Okay, no. Yeah, so this one just straight up doesn't work for me anymore. In that case, let's also see Mail. Does this one work and does Maps work? Yeah, for some reason Mail just refuses to work. But we can see that Maps opened. Is there like Street View and stuff like that? What is this one? Show my location and zoom in, zoom out. Tilt, tilt down. Aerial. Oh, okay, yeah, there is Street View on this one. Yeah, so all of these maps haven't been updated since 2020. Why does the camera footage look so weird? It's like out of a movie or something. And I unfortunately don't have a way I could test out the accuracy of these maps. And now probably the most useful Windows feature that was removed and never made its way back. The Windows Timeline. And the way you access it is pretty simple. You just open up Task View, basically, right here. And I can see that I was searching for how to download and install macOS. I can just click on this one and it's gonna open up the website. I think Windows 11 actually had a similar feature, which was called Windows Recall, but I heard people complaining about it. So it might not be that good. And now some extras and honorable mentions, which I just found out were removed from Windows. And that is Paint 3D. I have seen this application on Windows, I just never really knew what does it do. So this one is basically like a 3D modeling application or like raster graphics. And it was meant as a refresh of Microsoft Paint. I can see that we can do like two-dimensional stuff in here. And there's, of course, all the 3D features. Let's see. So I can draw a cube. And can I make it three-dimensional? I wonder. So this one, I guess, is three-dimensional now. Oh, yeah, it is. Okay, yeah. And we have like a three-dimensional canvas. Wolverine. What is this thing? That's about all I had to talk for today. But you can check out a very similar video to this one. And I'll possibly see you there.