Microsoft quietly released the Windows 11 25H2 update with changes that are actually useful for everyday users, instead of the usual AI bloat. The update brought a more customizable Start menu, a battery indicator that now shows remaining charge on the taskbar, along with improvements to the Photos app and more control over privacy settings.
These are all surface-level changes that are easy to notice. However, buried in the same update, Microsoft has included a set of quality-of-life features that I wish I’d found sooner, because they are so good.
AI actions
Right-click AI tools that are actually worth using
I’m not a fan of Microsoft pushing Copilot and AI into every corner of Windows 11. But AI actions in File Explorer are one of those rare cases where the AI integration actually makes sense. Instead of opening a separate app to remove a background from an image or summarize a document, you can now right-click a file and access these tools directly from the context menu.
When you right-click a supported file, you’ll see an AI actions submenu with different options depending on the file type. For images, you get options like Bing Visual Search, blur or remove background, erase objects using Generative Erase in Photos, and generate a text description. For documents like DOC, PPTX, PDF, and TXT, you can summarize the content or extract key insights if you have Microsoft 365 installed.
The actions don’t run inside File Explorer. They pass the file to the relevant app, and the processing happens there. To enable them, go to Settings > Apps > Actions and turn on the ones you want.
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Run a speed test from the taskbar
Check your internet speed without opening a browser tab
Windows 11 now has a speed test shortcut built right into the taskbar’s network panel. Click the network icon in the system tray, and you’ll see a speed test option at the bottom. Click it, and it opens your default browser with a Bing-powered speed test page that runs on Ookla’s Speedtest under the hood.
It’s not a fully native tool since everything still runs in the browser, but it saves you from bookmarking or searching for a speed test site every time something feels off. The results show download speed, upload speed, and latency, which is enough to check if your ISP is delivering what you’re paying for.
Cleaner voice typing
Fluid Dictation cleans up your speech as you talk
Voice Access on Windows 11 used to transcribe everything verbatim, including your “ums,” “uhs,” and broken sentences. For this reason, I switched to Typeless as my voice dictation app because it could filter out filler words, fix grammar, and add punctuation automatically. It made voice-to-text actually usable for writing longer notes and messages.
With the 25H2 update, Microsoft has added Fluid Dictation to Voice Access, and it does much of the same thing natively. The system now uses an on-device AI model that interprets your speech as a whole sentence and writes what you meant, not what you literally said. It strips filler words, auto-fixes grammar issues, and inserts punctuation based on your pauses and sentence flow.
The result is text that looks closer to something you’d have typed and lightly proofread. You can turn it on from Voice Access in Settings or the accessibility icon, and it works anywhere text input is accepted.
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Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
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TYPELESS
Typeless is an AI voice keyboard that turns natural speech into clear, polished text in real time, letting you dictate, edit, and translate messages across apps faster than typing.
Automatic system recovery
Windows can now fix boot failures on its own
Windows 11 has a new Quick Machine Recovery feature that works as a built-in self-repair mode for when your PC won’t boot. Instead of dumping you into the generic recovery screen and hoping you know what to do, Quick Machine Recovery connects to Microsoft’s cloud to diagnose the problem and apply known fixes automatically.
When Windows detects repeated boot failures, it drops into the Windows Recovery Environment and tries to connect to the internet. With cloud remediation enabled, it sends diagnostic data to Microsoft’s servers, checks for a matching fix, and downloads the remediation through Windows Update, all without you having to sit at the machine.
To enable it, go to Settings > System > Recovery and turn on Quick machine recovery. It only works for known issues that Microsoft has published fixes for, requires internet connectivity in recovery mode, and doesn’t restore user files. But for the kind of boot loops that used to mean hours of troubleshooting or a fresh install, this is a solid safety net.
Smart App Control is now useful for everyone
No more clean install just to re-enable this security feature
Smart App Control is a Windows 11 security feature that blocks untrusted apps using cloud intelligence and code signing. It checks whether an app has a valid digital signature and a good reputation before letting it run, and blocks anything that doesn’t meet either condition. The idea is to stop malware and shady installers before they can do damage.
The problem was its all-or-nothing design. Once you turned it off, the only way to get it back was a clean install of Windows 11. This made it impractical for anyone who occasionally needs to run unsigned or niche software.
With recent 25H2 updates, you can now turn Smart App Control off and back on again without reinstalling Windows. That said, users still report it blocking legitimate apps like qBittorrent and various CLI tools, and some have noticed slower performance when running installers. If you use a lot of unsigned utilities, you may still want to keep it off and rely on Defender and SmartScreen instead.
Other small but meaningful changes
Quality-of-life tweaks that add up
Beyond the bigger features, 25H2 also includes smaller changes that are easy to miss. File Explorer now has a version control section under Settings > System > Advanced settings (previously called For developers) that lets you add Git repositories, so Explorer can show commit info like last change date and commit message directly in columns.
There are new keyboard shortcuts for en and em dashes: press Win + – for an en dash and Win + Shift + – for an em dash. The sharing menu now lets you pin your favorite apps to the top instead of relying on an auto-generated list. And you can move the hardware indicator overlay (the volume, brightness, and airplane mode pop-ups) to top left, top center, or bottom center through Settings > System > Notifications > Position of on-screen indicators.
None of these are headline features, but they’re the kind of tweaks that make daily use smoother.
A quiet update that’s better than it looks
The 25H2 update is technically an enablement package that activates features already present in 24H2’s codebase rather than a ground-up overhaul. The underlying framework is unchanged, and the update simply unlocks what was already there. That’s not a bad thing, though. It means less risk of the kind of breaking changes that major updates tend to bring.
Not every feature here will matter to every user, and some, like the speed test shortcut, are more convenience than necessity. But collectively, these changes show Microsoft paying attention to practical, everyday improvements that don’t make for flashy announcements but do make Windows 11 better to use.
