Naturally, the most obvious changes are the visual ones. Unspecified changes have come to the welcome page, settings page, widgets, and context menu. It’s difficult to pinpoint all the differences, but the letter search down the right-hand side of the widgets page appears to be smaller for easier reach. Another UI improvement is the ability to hide the page indicator on the home screen. The option is available in personalization settings and gets rid of the largely pointless circles that indicate which page you’re on. You can also remove pages in the overview mode by dragging into the bin at the top of the screen.
Family Features and Cortana
Microsoft Launcher has tweaks to its family features, too. With 4.11, parents can show or hide kids in the Family card, reducing clutter and making it easier to see relevant information. For the unfamiliar, the card lets you stay up to date on your children’s whereabouts and app activities and released last week. Cortana has also received an upgrade, with support for multi-turn SMS conversations and calling. Microsoft hasn’t revealed what its SMS feature does, but we assume you can continue SMS conversations without invoking the assistant multiple times. Last but not least, Microsoft has made improvements to article reading using Edge. We have no idea what these include, so it’s likely performance increases or other small changes. If you like the sound of the additions you can download the update from the Play Store and sign up to be a tester here.
