- Windows 11 had a change in the test to streamline the taskbar
- Tweak made the date and time in the system tray more compact
- Microsoft trembled the idea due to negative feedback from testers, but this seems short -sighted and I’m not sure why no choices had been chosen here
Windows 11 does not get a simplified date and time panel in the taskbar, an idea introduced in Preview -Builds in the past, and the reason is simple – testers hated this more streamlined look (apparently).
The shrimp of the date and time display dropped the year, so it only showed the day and the month as well as also to ditch the AM or PM mark from time. The result was a space -saving measure in the system tray – released around the width of an icon – which worked quite effectively, I thought that streamline this part of the taskbar (bottom right of the desk).
Windows Central’s Zac Bowden remembered that this change had been paused in the test – and then never reintroduced – and asked about X about when it could possibly return and received a response from Microsoft’s Brandon Leblanc (Senior Product Manager for Windows).
The feedback we got about was not comfortable. Therefore, disappeared disappeared.July 12, 2025
As Leblanc indicates, there was clearly a lot of negative feedback about this idea and therefore it was abandoned.
There was another space -saving fine -tuning that accompanied this change, causing the messages Bell did not appear in the system tray when ‘not disturbed’ state was turned on. It has also been scrapped.
Analysis: A middle road not worth doing?
Do we need the year shown on the clock’s display on the taskbar? I would like to argue very much (although it may be convenient for time travelers, maybe – newspapers are more difficult to find these days for the very important year disclosure). As for the indication of whether it is morning (AM) or afternoon (PM), there may be more a case for it, although again I do not think it is necessary (and I use the 24-hour watch anyway, which makes it superfluous, of course).
I appreciate that some people may not like the look of the new, slim watch and date info, and that’s fair enough. So my question to Microsoft is: Why not just have a choice of which configuration you want? It seems that a simple enough compromise to let people choose, and in fact an opportunity to have the more compact affair or the standard date and time were present in the test back when. (You could switch ‘Show time and day in the Systembakken’ under Date and Timing Settings in the Settings app).
Choosing what you want – isn’t that the best of both worlds? And if Microsoft was concerned about the changes that confused people, the company could simply have made the traditional form of standard – and the compact state to a change you needed to sign up (by switching the relevant setting).
I do not see how this was not the path that was chosen honestly, unless Microsoft thought so few people would have the new (abandoned) layout that it was not worth striving to implement the fine -tuning (or that it unnecessarily bulked up the task line, since there is already a great deal).
Even if it was the case among testers that the change was largely universally hated – which I can only assume was the case – Microsoft must remember that these Windows insiders are more hardcore enthusiasts whose views may not reflect the wider computer audience. Looking at some of the reaction online, it is clear that there is a feeling that the compact view of the date and time was appreciated in some quarters (and yes, still shot down in others, to be fair).
Am I just nit-picking here? Yes, to some extent, and of course this is far from the biggest problem with Windows 11 – this is a comparative little fry, of course – but it still feels strange to me that Microsoft did not at least compromise here and gave a choice.
