Microsoft appears to have ditched plans to simplify the System Tray in Windows 11. It has confirmed the rethink was down to negative feedback in public testing.

The System Tray is part of the Taskbar, the section at the bottom of the screen that's usually visible at all times. The System Tray is on the right and includes information such as the date and time, network connection details, speaker volume and (on portable devices) battery level.

Last year it started testing a new design in the Beta Channel of Windows Insider. That's part of the voluntary public testing program and is usually the last point at which Microsoft is still testing both the performance and usefulness of a new feature. It's followed by the Release Preview Channel where new features are as good as confirmed and it's just a case of finding any major overlooked bugs.

Year Removed

The new design was meant to be simplified and less cluttered. One major change was that it only showed the date and time, leaving out the year and details of whether it was AM or PM. This effectively narrowed the space taken up by the time details, leaving more room in the rest of the System Tray. (Source: windowscentral.com)

In some cases, the new design also hid the notification bell icon, though this was dependent on Do Not Disturb settings. It meant some users would have to click on the date and time to open the Notification Center, which isn't that intuitive.

Microsoft has disabled the changes in updates earlier this year, which it called a temporary measure to "address several issues." Now it appears that measure is permanent.

Feedback Unpleasant

While not 100% confirming the simplified System Tray will never return to testing, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc commented "The feedback we got about that was not pleasant. That's why [it] disappeared." (Source: x.com)

That's prompted debate about whether the people who sign up to the Windows Insider program are representative enough of the wider user base. One theory is that the people in the test program were complaining mainly about what they saw as unnecessary changes rather than the merits of the System Tray itself. However, that doesn't necessarily make sense as people using the Beta Channel are inherently signing up to see changes.

What's Your Opinion?

Does the simplified System Tray sound better to you? Should it be an optional setting? Is the Windows Insider program a good way to get feedback on whether feature changes are worthwhile rather than just whether they are bug free.