Microsoft is removing Windows 11’s “Suggested Actions” feature: a clever idea that didn’t quite work
- Microsoft is removing “Suggested Actions” from Windows 11, likely in light of poor performance and user frustration
- ‘Suggested Actions’ suffered from issues of inconsistency and irrelevant hints, making it more annoying than useful
- Microsoft plans to focus on reliable, AI-powered features rather than improving ‘Suggested actions’
We’ve only just begun 2025, but Microsoft is busy improving Windows 11, this time by retiring the “Suggested Actions” feature. The feature was intended to make your life as a Windows 11 user easier by recognizing details like phone numbers or dates you copied and then (hopefully) offering useful and relevant action suggestions, like letting you create a calendar event or call number. However, as seen in a recent Preview Build release in the Beta Channel Windows 11 Insider Program, the ‘Suggested Actions’ feature is now disabled.
This change will likely be implemented in a future Windows 11 update soon. Windows Latest predicts that this will take three to four weeks and that ‘Suggested Actions’ will be completely removed from the operating system (OS) by February 2025.
The feature debuted in a Windows 11 Preview Build in 2022 and became generally available to users in 2023, so it hasn’t had the longest run. Still, I appreciate that Microsoft has tried to add something designed to help people get more out of the way they use Windows 11.
Why ‘Suggested Actions’ are leaving Windows 11
Unfortunately, ‘Suggested Actions’ didn’t work very well. Sometimes it didn’t show up when it was supposed to. Even if it did, it would feel disjointed and more annoying than useful. Windows Latest reports that a user posted to Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, writing that “Suggested Actions” failed to copy a phone number after supposedly suggesting it could.
On the other hand, another user brought up that ‘Suggested Actions’ would appear when working with dates in Excel and that they didn’t need any help because they were already in an appropriate app to use that information. It seems that a combination of repeated instances of the feature simply doesn’t work as intended (and sometimes even in the opposite direction), and Windows 11 users who weren’t too keen on it are the reasons why it reared its ugly head.
Windows Latest suggests that Microsoft wanted to improve ‘Suggested Actions’ using AI, but it seems the company has instead decided to scrap it entirely. So it looks like “Suggested Actions” are going to Microsoft’s graveyard as Microsoft moves forward with features that are explicitly AI-powered and hopefully more reliable and actually feel smarter (or at least that’s how they’re presented).
Personally, I’ve never felt any huge benefit from this feature, and I imagine this will be a similar experience for many of you, and you probably won’t miss it much once it’s gone for good. I appreciate Microsoft focusing its efforts on its AI-powered assistant features, but the jury is still very much out on that as well. So far, it seems like most people (myself included) haven’t experienced a substantial benefit from AI when it comes to the way we interact with Windows 11.