Microsoft has now released the shipping version of the Windows 11 2024 Update (24H2), the year’s major feature update for Windows 11. But there’s a price to pay: when Microsoft begins installing Windows 11 24H2 on your PC, some older applications and features will be gone forever.
Microsoft has signaled some of the changes previously. But well-known apps like Windows Mixed Reality, Tips, and Wordpad will still be removed from your PC. Fortunately, there are alternatives for the applications Microsoft is removing. Microsoft will also take several weeks to roll out Windows 11 24H2, leaving you with time to make the transition.
Microsoft has detailed the changes in a list of deprecated Windows features. While the decisions can take place over a period of months, they’re usually made with one target in mind: “the release of the next version of Windows.” Put another way, some of these features were targeted for deprecation (removal) a long time ago, but are being implemented now with the release of the Windows 11 2024 Update.
In some cases, Microsoft won’t even wait: Cortana, which (like Copilot) has moved from part of the operating system to a standalone app, has already been turned off. While the app remains (as of early October 2024) it doesn’t do anything. However, Cortana functionality is still a part of Outlook Mobile, Teams Mobile, Microsoft Teams Display and Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Like Cortana, other deprecated apps are reminders of what could have been. Microsoft spent an incredible amount of time and effort promoting Windows Mixed Reality, the virtual reality counterpart to its augmented-reality headset, Microsoft HoloLens. The HoloLens 2 has disappeared into a will-they-or-won’t-they effort with the U.S. Army, while the device itself has been canceled. Microsoft said in December 2023 that Windows Mixed Reality apps like the Mixed Reality Portal apps and Windows Mixed Reality for Steam VR are deprecated in the Windows 11 2024 Update.
There’s a wrinkle, however. If you’ve invested in Windows Mixed Reality and want to keep downloading apps from Steam, you shouldn’t update to the Windows 11 2024 Update (24H2). “Existing Windows Mixed Reality devices will continue to work with Steam through November 2026, if users remain on their current released version of Windows 11, version 23H2,” Microsoft says. “After November 2026, Windows Mixed Reality will no longer receive security updates, nonsecurity updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates.”
WordPad might be another disappointing disappearance, if only because it was Windows’ rich text editor, a step up from Notepad but without the subscription requirements of Microsoft Word or Microsoft 365. “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf and Windows Editor for text-only documents such as .txt,” Microsoft says. “Wordpad will be removed from all editions of Windows starting with Windows 11 version 24H2 and Windows Server 2025.”
But there’s a trick to get WordPad back! Our article details how you can copy the WordPad files to a USB stick before upgrading, to preserve WordPad into future generations of Windows.
The Steps Recorder is also marked for removal, so if you want to record problems or step-by-step instructions on your PC, you should use the snipping tool. Microsoft is also removing the scripting language VBScript.
I personally feel sad that Microsoft marked the Tips app for deprecation, if only because Microsoft doesn’t do a great job of telling users what’s new and what’s changed, within Windows. Tips served that purpose, but it’s going away, too. It will continue to be updated before Windows 11 24H2 finally removes it from the Windows user base, however.
Finally, if you were one of the earliest adopters of Arm PCs running 32-bit Arm apps, support for those 32-bit apps is going away. (The vast majority of Arm chips in the market today are 64-bit processors, including the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite.) There shouldn’t be too many customers or apps affected, but Microsoft says that you may notice a difference in the app’s performance.
You’ll find more features — including developer-specific features — that Microsoft plans to remove in Windows 11 24H2 as part of Microsoft’s list.
This article was translated from German to English and originally appeared on pcwelt.de. It was edited and rewritten to reflect Microsoft’s updates and the release of the Windows 11 2024 Update.
