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6 Windows features that are going away in 2024
- Support for 32-bit Arm apps will finally be dropped in the Windows 11 2024 Update.
- Classic Windows Speech Recognition is being replaced with Voice Access for easier voice control in Windows 11.
- Windows Mixed Reality is also biting the dust this year.
Microsoft is constantly updating Windows 11, adding all sorts of new features, like Copilot and other AI tools. However, for every feature that's added, there are also many times that features get deprecated or removed altogether, often leaving users and fans upset.
2024 is going to be a big year for Windows, with Windows 11 version 24H2 bringing big changes, but it's also a bit of a bloodbath for existing Windows 11 features. Here are some of the tools and capabilities going away this year.
Support for 32-bit Arm apps
Say goodbye to your Windows 8 apps
The industry has been moving away from 32-bit Arm apps for many years now, and in 2024, Microsoft is finally officially dropping support for them in Windows 11, too. There hasn't been a 32-bit Arm processor for Windows PCs since the Windows 8 era, and by now, any apps that haven't been recompiled for 64-bit are probably just abandoned.
That means there likely isn't much being lost here. Metro apps back then were never all that popular, and any Arm apps that do exist today are already made for Arm64. Still, it might be a bummer if you still have very old apps installed on your PC for whatever reason.
Steps recorder
Just use Snipping Tool
Steps recorder was a useful tool in Windows that allowed you to record steps on your computer, so you could give someone else instructions to do something. Steps weren't recorded as a video, but rather, a series of images taken for every interaction made with your PC. It also allowed you to add comments to each step.
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With Steps Recorder going away, a possible alternative is to use the Snipping Tool, which is also built into Windows 11. Snipping Tool recently added support for video recording, so it can serve a similar purpose.
It's not completely confirmed that Steps Recorder will be removed this year, but it's officially deprecated and Microsoft started showing a banner to users in early 2024, so it's possible.
Windows Speech Recognition
Say hello to voice access
Another feature that's going away is the classic Windows Speech Recognition. This was a tool that allowed you to control your PC using your voice, but in 2022, Microsoft introduced a modernized alternative called Voice access.
This new experience features an improved tutorial for getting started, a list of all the available commands to make it easier to learn, and it has a modern UI that fits right into Windows 11. You're not really missing much with the classic tool going away.
Windows Speech Recognition is another one that isn't totally guaranteed to be removed in 2024, but it was announced to be deprecated right at the end of 2023, so there's no reason you should still be using it anyway.
WordPad
It's all or nothing
WordPad is arguably the first big loss on this list, because it did kind of fill a void. WordPad is a text editor that lives somewhere between Notepad and Microsoft Word. It's a free tool, but it provides some text formatting options so you can still write a somewhat professional-looking document, albeit with a lot of limitations compared to Word.
It seems like Microsoft wants you to either stick to Notepad or pay up to get access to Word, which probably makes business sense. You can do a lot more with Word, and the web version of the app is free, as long as you have internet. WordPad has been confirmed to be removed with Windows 11 version 24H2 later this year.
Windows Mixed Reality
A remnant of the Windows 10 era
Remember when Windows 10 launched and Microsoft was convinced that mixed reality was the next big thing? Well, while the concept is still being supported in some ways (with the Apple Vision Pro being a big example), Microsoft hasn't really done anything with it on Windows for a few years. To be fair, there also haven't been any new Windows Mixed Reality headsets in all that time, and so Microsoft is calling it quits.
You shouldn't confuse Windows Mixed Reality with Microsoft's HoloLens headset, which runs Windows Holographic. This is a different platform, and it's still being supported for HoloLens owners (even though HoloLens seems to have fallen by the wayside, too).
Windows Mixed Reality has similarly been confirmed to be removed from Windows 11 with version 24H2. If you have a headset, though, you can keep using it with Steam apps, as long as you don't install the update.
Finally, we have the big one. One of the headlining features of Windows 11 when it was first announced was support for Android apps, though it ended up making its debut a few months later, at the start of 2022. Well, just two short years after that launch, Microsoft announced that it was killing off the platform, effective immediately.
The Windows Subsystem for Android isn't just going away this year, it's already gone. The only way to (officially) get Android apps now is if you already have them installed, but if you're setting up a new PC, you no longer have that option. And by this time next year, the feature will be removed entirely.
Thankfully, there are alternatives for running Android apps, such as Bluestacks or streaming apps from your phone with tools like Phone Link.
There are reasons to be excited
It's certainly sad to see Windows features being removed, especially ones that were added as recently as the Windows Subsystem for Android was. But the future of Windows 11 is looking pretty positive with version 24H2 and all the features it's adding, especially the rumored AI capabilities. Plus. the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset is set to change the landscape of the laptop market, which is certainly exciting.
