The Windows Forecast is a look at the future of Windows that comments on the latest news for Windows Insiders, as well as other major announcements in the Windows space each and every week. My name is João Carrasqueira, and I've been covering the world of Windows professionally since 2018. If there's something you'd like to see covered, you can reach me at joao@xda-developers.com.

Welcome to yet another edition of The Windows Forecast, this week, we talk about what's wrong with the Feedback Hub for Windows Insiders, as well as an exciting change that's going to make new laptops a little less frustrating. Let's get right into it

The Feedback Hub needs a reset

Feedback needs to be treated and taken in a more organized way

Last week, I made the first call for people to reach out with anything they'd like to see me cover on The Windows Forecast, and someone did. This person complained that Microsoft wasn't listening to their feedback left through the Feedback Hub app on Windows 11. I looked through some of this feedback and I found that most of it had no upvotes, so the lack of feedback from Microsoft isn't entirely surprising. It may not be ideal, but let's face it, no huge company getting thousands of feedback messages is going to read every single piece unless it gains some traction. So, while the frustration is understandable, this wasn't my main focus.

What got my attention was one piece of feedback that did get some upvotes and a response from Microsoft, but Microsoft's response wasn't very satisfactory. This was a piece of feedback left by a user in the Beta channel of the Insider program, running build 22621, the same build number that eventually became Windows 11 version 22H2. Same comments also mentioned it for build 22631, which was version 23H2.

But if you take a look at Microsoft's response, it's only ever acknowledged that the issue in question was fixed in builds on the Dev channel, even through multiple updates posted. Despite the original report coming from the Beta channel, Microsoft never acknowledged the user that made the original report.

In the past, Insider builds naturally went from one channel to the other, so these changes would come to the Beta channel eventually, but now that each channel Windows Insider Program is maintained concurrently with different build numbers, there's not a lot of clarity on what fixes are made available in each build.

The Feedback Hub needs to evolve to bring greater clarity to Microsoft and to users about what issues exist in what builds and in which channels of the Insider program. When filing feedback, Microsoft should register not just the build of Windows, but also the channel the user is enrolled in, and try to group feedback together based on that. Users could still upvote a piece of feedback in a different channel, but the tally of upvotes should be tracked for each channel, so Microsoft is aware of how many people are experiencing issues in different channels, and each channel can be notified when a fix is available for that specific channel.

Microsoft should also try to limit how Insiders can file feedback to improve its quality. For one thing, filing or upvoting bug reports should only be available if you have the latest build available for the channel you're filing feedback for. For example, when a user files or upvotes feedback, the app can ask if the feedback refers to the PC they're currently using, and if not, users can specify what channel they're reporting on. Then, Microsoft checks if the user has installed the latest build for that channel on any of their PCs, and if they haven't, the feedback can't be filed. To take this a step further, after upgrading to a new build, Microsoft could ask users if they're still experiencing the issue reported in a previous build. This could help Microsoft better understand the problems that are still plaguing the latest builds and get rid of old feedback that doesn't make sense anymore.

Of course, none of that would apply for feature suggestions, since those should be open to anyone regardless of the build they're using. But applying this specifically to bugs and issues would probably go a long way in making things better.

The Copilot key is finally becoming useful

Because it won't open Copilot

It's been a very slow news week for Windows Insiders, but there is one thing that excited me this week, even if it's not entirely new. The latest build rolled out in the Canary channel (build 27729) includes a new option to remap the Copilot key on 2024 laptops to any other MSIX-packaged app on your computer. This had actually appeared in other Insider builds a while back (surprise, surprise, the Beta channel got a new feature before the Canary channel), but it's great news all the same.

Copilot may have received a big update a few weeks ago, but I still couldn't care to open it or even keep the app installed on my computer. Giving me quick access to something I actually care about makes so much more sense, and I'm looking forward to doing this on my own laptop. I suspect many people already use programs like AutoHotKey to launch certain apps more quickly, so this is definitely useful, even if it's far more limited than a proper automation or scripting tool. Hopefully it comes to non-Insiders sooner rather than later.

I can't help but feel this is an hilarious admission of failure from Microsoft, though. The company made a big deal about how this was the first "significant change" made to keyboards in nearly three decades, and only a few months later, the company is having to provide a way for that key not to do what it was originally meant to do. You can put a more positive spin on it, but this is absolutely not what the company was hoping for with that key.

Snipping Tool is getting even better

You can copy whole tables now

Microsoft has been putting a lot of effort into Snipping Tool for Windows 11, and it's been really great to see. I know some people really preferred how it worked before Windows 11, but I can't really see it, and this new version has gotten so many improvements like screen recording and optical character recognition.

Well now, Microsoft is taking that even further with the ability to recognize entire tables. Indeed, if you take a screenshot of a table using Snipping Tool and use the Text actions button, you can now copy the table as a proper table and paste it in places like Word or even Excel.

This is the kind of feature I love to see being added, and it's great to see that Microsoft does keep putting in some work to add things people actually want. It's easy to complain about unnecessary things, but I'm really happy to see features like this, and I hope we can see even more of them in the future. I think an interesting follow-up would be being able to copy text with proper formatting, or at least with things like italics and bold text. But copying entire tables is definitely cooler.

Actually, Microsoft Edge used to offer a similar feature with smart selection, but that was killed off a while back, so I wonder if this is what became of that. It makes sense to have it built into Windows rather than depend on a specific browser, especially when that browser sucks.

That's it for this week

It's been a slow news week for Windows, but to be fair, the last two weeks were pretty packed, so it's good to slow down, and I had the opportunity to look deeper into what I was asked about. I'm really hoping Microsoft will improve the way Insider feedback is handled, but that will surely take some time.

In the meantime, there are some cool features to check out if you're an Insider, and hopefully more to come next week. For now, enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back next Saturday.