Windows 11 has had a rocky lifespan, and with the ending of Windows 10 support fast approaching, users are increasingly reluctant to upgrade. Microsoft has been bombarding users with the enforcement of new hardware requirements, effectively bricking old machines, the wide rollout of Copilot, and an ever more pushy Bing browser. You'd be forgiven for feeling like the Windows of recent years has warped from a tool that enables you to get work done, game, or organize your life, to lately becoming more of a platform for Microsoft to push its services.

Windows has certainly improved in some ways over recent years. Microsoft has taken action to correct issues and improve stability. Overall performance and driver support have never been better on Windows. But in plenty of other ways, I find myself wishing we could return to the Windows of old. Here are five main ways that Windows has gotten worse.

5 Windows Search is absolutely useless

Need to find a local file? Good luck

This one has been extremely well documented, and is increasingly weird to me. Windows has never had the best search on the market. Early versions struggled with knowing when to index files to avoid annoying performance degradation while you're working, but in recent years the search has gone from 'meh' to borderline unusable. Microsoft's decision to prioritize web results over local results, as well as the lack of a clear and transparent algorithm for search rankings, makes anticipating what search will turn up a gamble at best. You might search for a system setting you need to access, and end up searching the web for 'Wi-Fi' instead. Anyone who attempts to use it totally knows just how bad it is.

In my mind, this has always seemed like a weird aspect of the user experience for Microsoft to neglect. Especially when arguably its biggest consumer competitor in the OS space, macOS, has such an established and functional search tool in Spotlight. Some engineers at Microsoft are clearly aware of this as well - we've previously covered the excellent Spotlight-esque search tool bundled into Microsoft Powertools.

4 Windows is full of bloatware

Leave me alone, MS Teams

Another serious problem with Windows in recent years is the insane amount of bloatware. Whether it's Candy Crush, Farmville, or the likes of Skype and Microsoft Teams, your fresh Windows install is increasingly packed with apps that are not essential to the core OS experience. The days of a fresh OS install from Microsoft feeling like a 'clean slate' are certainly over. Some of these apps go one step further, making themselves deliberately difficult to remove, or reinstalling themselves automatically with required updates. Teams in particular has become an almost running joke, due to the difficulty in completely removing it from your system.

Thinking back to the days of Windows 7 and XP, this was much less of an issue. The OS felt far more barebones, but also more lightweight, and certainly less opinionated on how you should be using your computer. If you're looking for a lightweight version of Windows, we've previously covered how to make your own minimal Windows install ISO.

3 Data collection and advertising

Windows is known as a data collection machine

One of the serious changes Windows has undergone in the last decade is a switch effectively from a 'buy it once' perpetual license model to an almost freeware model. While users do still need to pay for their Windows license, Microsoft gave away thousands of free upgrades to the latest versions of Windows 10 and 11, and licenses are now tied to customers' Microsoft accounts - making them much easier to port and reinstall. It's difficult to understand this model because I suspect many of us have simply had a licensed, working Windows 10/11 for years without necessarily knowing where it came from.

The downside of this has been an increasing focus inside the operating system on advertising, as well as data and telemetry collection. This has come with other downsides for users, including the (now very difficult to avoid) requirement for a Microsoft account when setting up your Windows machine, which in turn is tied to a unique advertising ID in the background. Adverts can be seen on everything from the login screen, to the start menu and even the occasional notification. All these ads can be disabled, but Microsoft has a reputation for re-enabling them via updates periodically. Thankfully, there are some third party tools to the rescue that can help you disable most of Windows 11's ads.

2 Settings management has got worse and worse

Control Panel is still here in 2024

Controlling your settings in Windows has been getting worse for years now. The new settings menu, designed to replace the much-loved and perfectly functional Control Panel, has been a work in progress since it was first introduced with Windows 8. However, it still misses essential settings and configuration options that power users rely on. Even as recently as August 2024, Microsoft is still publicly on the fence about whether Control Panel will ever be replaced - leaving users with settings split across two 'central' locations. This also speaks to a wider problem within Windows of late, which is the inconsistency of the UI as a whole. Depending on the application, you'll encounter a mix of modern UI elements alongside the occasional file-browser straight out of Windows XP. Some of these changes aren't simply cosmetic either. I have a constant personal frustration with the way that each application seems to use a different version of the File Explorer, as each one seems to handle Libraries and Favorites folders in an entirely different way.

1 Customization has declined

Making Windows feel like your own isn't as easy as it used to be

The level of customization offered inside Windows has also tailed off, with users increasingly feeling like there's less meaningful customization in Windows 11 than for any version of Windows since pre-XP. Windows XP and 7 both had strong built-in themes, alongside extensive Start menu customization. Windows 8 had its infamous live tiles system, which I wasn't personally a fan of, but some people swear by Windows 8.1. Other functional elements of customization have also shrunk, like easily managing context menus, as well as control over the updates, drivers, and software you install.

Microsoft has gone some way to rectifying this recently, improving Start menu customization on Windows 11. But it's increasingly feeling like these elements are an afterthought for Microsoft in 2024, instead of the key features they were once seen as. Many of the features we've listed do exist in some form in Windows 11, but they increasingly feel so thin that they are almost not worth bothering about.

Microsoft has improved some things

We should give Microsoft some credit. There are some aspects of Windows which have improved significantly over the last decade. Security is a huge one - Microsoft Defender has effectively replaced third party antivirus, and the User Account Control system introduced with Windows Vista has slowly improved the overall security posture of Windows as a whole. BitLocker is another welcome introduction, though it could still be improved for home users. While the Start menu search is still a pain, general file searching and indexing has improved since its almost non-existent state in Windows XP. Windows systems have also been becoming increasingly efficient for years now. Driver support and management has improved, and with it overall system stability - Windows now supports all kinds of weird and wacky devices (though Bluetooth is still horrible).

Windows is far from perfect

Windows has plenty of flaws, and is now more than ever a mostly-free operating system funded by data collection and advertising, functioning as a platform to serve you Microsoft's other products, like Teams, OneDrive, or Office. But despite its flaws, it's still the only option for many people. The 'year of the Linux desktop' is still not upon us, and despite being a heavy Linux user myself, there's still no easy substitute for a lot of gaming needs (especially those that require intrusive anti-cheat DRM). In the meantime, the best we can do with Windows is tweak and customize it as best as possible, and thankfully there are plenty of great tools available for exactly that.