Microsoft Planning Windows 10 UI Overhaul in 2021: Report

Microsoft is reportedly planning to give Windows 10 a UI facelift late next year. According to a new report onWindows Central, the project is codenamed ‘Sun Valley’ and it involves modernizing several Windows 10 UI elementssuch as the Start Menu, Action Center, and File Explorer.

Sun Valley will apparently have user experiences closer to whatWindows 10Xwill offer. The Redmond giant will also allegedlyupdate the taskbar of Windows 10through this effort. As far as the overall UI is concerned, Microsoftwill adopt rounded corners, including in app windows.

From the report, it is clear that Microsoft is not ready to drop the outdated/legacy components of Windows 10 yet, which is just disappointing. Instead, thecompany will offer dark support to legacy UI areasin an effort to make the overall experience more consistent. You could also expect a wider adoption of WinUI in the interface.

Separately, Mary Jo Foley ofZDNetreportsthatMicrosoft is internally calling project Sun Valley as ‘Windows 10++’ too. In addition, the report suggests that all these changes are expected to show up onWindows 10X for single-screen devicesby Spring 2022 as well.

As mentioned earlier, Sun Valley is expected to ship next year. However, itwon’t happen in the first half of 2021. It is part of Microsoft’s Cobalt development schedule, which refers to the timeframe from January to June 2021. If everything goes well,you could expect the update in October next year. There are also rumors thatMicrosoft may skip Windows 10 feature update in the first half of the yearto prioritize Windows 10X development.

With all that said, it is worth mentioning that Microsoft doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to UI overhauls and all the aforesaid changes are not even officially promised just yet. Hence, there is a possibility that Microsoft could either stop or delay the changes and we would recommend taking this with a grain of salt.

Subin B

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.

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