Windows 11 is due for another monthly update in a week, and this February release will include some notable new features.
This next update, rolling out on February 10, promises functionality that allows you to resume using multiple apps from your Android phone on your PC desktop, and a smart security feature has been made more viable to use, among other additions.
1. Smart App Control finally works as it should for activation
As previously seen in preview builds, Windows 11 gets the ability to turn on (or disable) Smart App Control at will.
If you’re not familiar with Smart App Control (SAC), it’s a security feature that examines every app installed on the PC and checks the software against Microsoft’s threat intelligence database. If the system finds anything suspicious about an app, it will flag this and block you from installing it, possibly saving you a lot of malware-related heartache later.
The problem with this feature was that if you ever turned it off, you couldn’t re-enable it – not without reinstalling Windows 11. Why? I explain it in more depth here, but needless to say, if you weren’t aware that this was the case, you could end up losing a useful feature when you temporarily disabled it to bypass a false positive (an app that’s been detected as potentially problematic, but one that you’re sure is actually safe).
After the February update, you’ll be able to turn this feature on or off at will, in a much more sensible way than was the case before. This is important as SAC is a useful safety feature and being able to accidentally “drop” was a mystifying stab in the tail for this capability.
2. Cross-device CV is coming to more apps
As the name suggests, this is a feature that lets you pick up where you left off and resume what you were doing in an Android app when you get to your Windows 11 PC.
Cross-device CV is already available for Spotify, Office apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) along with certain browsers. In the latter case, on your smartphone, Microsoft Edge was already supported (obviously) along with Samsung’s browser, and now with the February update, Vivo Browser is too.
Those using Samsung smartphones, as well as Honor, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi phones, will also be given the option to resume any files opened in the Copilot app (files saved online, that is).
These are useful extra powers, and I expect the option to resume using files on your PC in this way will grace many more apps this year.
3. Voice access and input strengthened
Voice Access gets a new wizard that makes it easier to set up this powerful Windows 11 feature, which will be helpful for those new to this feature. Additionally, with voice typing, the February update brings the ability to let you specify the wait time before a voice command is run (so it can be near-instant if you want, or you can have a longer pause before execution).
4. File Explorer gets a niche speed boost – but I honestly take all the boosts
While this is an improvement rather than a new feature, I think it’s worth mentioning that File Explorer – the app behind your desktop files and folders – is getting a performance boost.
File Explorer is known to be one of the most problematic parts of Windows 11 in terms of sluggishness – I know I’ve experienced this myself on one of my PCs in particular (an older laptop). So any speed boost is welcome, and while all we’re getting here is faster performance when accessing folders over a network in File Explorer, it’s still worth having for some people.
On top of that, I’ll take the positive indication that Microsoft is more broadly working to spice up various facets of File Explorer.
Other goodies
In the February update, Microsoft is also introducing new ‘device information’ cards to the home page of the Settings app, which show you at-a-glance highlights of your PC’s main specs (CPU, GPU, RAM and storage).
And for those with a musical bent, Windows 11 will also receive MIDI improvements, including “full WinMM and WinRT MIDI 1.0 support with native translation, shared MIDI ports across apps, custom port names, loopback and app-to-app MIDI”.
There are some other little things too, but note that these features aren’t guaranteed to land next week – even if they’re expected, it’s always possible that something could be hit with a last-minute delay. It’s also worth bearing in mind that some changes will roll out gradually, so you might not get everything immediately after downloading and installing the February update, but it’s coming in the pipeline.
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