For every Windows feature that’s grown into a daily necessity, there’s another that seemed intriguing at first but dissolved into little more than noise. Over the years, Microsoft has quietly trimmed away at these misfires—sometimes announcing their demise with fanfare, other times slipping them out the back door so subtly that most people never noticed.
You probably never used these features much, if ever. But Microsoft decided it was time to let them go (for reasons that aren’t hard to understand).
7
Live Tiles
Live Tiles appeared with Windows 8 as Microsoft’s bold play for a touchscreen future, transforming the Start menu into a mosaic of bright, animated squares. The idea was clever enough: app icons that doubled as mini-widgets, showing emails, weather updates, calendar events, and stock prices at a glance.
However, it was more trouble than it was worth. I remember thinking the tiles felt unreliable, resource-hogging, and oddly inconsistent. Some would update, others wouldn’t, and half the time the information they displayed wasn’t useful anyway. And really, if I wanted quick access to the apps I used every day, I’d just pin them to the taskbar or drop a shortcut on the desktop. The whole setup felt unnecessary and redundant.
Microsoft kept Live Tiles around through Windows 10, but by the time Windows 11 arrived, they were gone. The Start menu shifted to clean, static pinned icons with a calmer, more predictable layout.
6
Timeline
Timeline arrived with Windows 10 and lets you scroll back through your recent activities, such as documents you’d edited, websites you’d visited, and apps you’d opened. Even better, it synced across devices, so you could start writing a report on your laptop and pick it up seamlessly on your desktop.
I barely touched it. Between browser histories, cloud storage, and the good old “recent files” list in Office, the gap Timeline was meant to fill didn’t feel all that wide. And when I did give it a spin, it felt clumsy. The activity feed was often a flood of irrelevant entries, and half the apps I actually cared about never showed up. To make matters worse, the Task View used to switch between virtual desktops seemed slower with Timeline tacked on.
And apparently, I wasn’t the only one shrugging at it. While writing this, I took a quick dive into Reddit and found plenty of people grumbling about the same frustrations—or, more often, not caring about the feature at all. Microsoft clearly noticed, too. By 2021, cross-device syncing was gone, and by the time Windows 11 landed, Timeline had quietly vanished altogether.
5
My People
Do you remember that little two-heads icon on the taskbar, tucked just to the left of the system tray? That was My People, a Windows 10 feature meant as a hub for your top contacts via Skype, Mail, and the People app. You could pin up to three people for quick access, mainly for integration with those three apps.
It wasn’t the worst idea, but I never warmed up to it. Every time I set up a fresh installation of Windows at the time, My People was one of the first bits I disabled or removed. I didn’t see any reason to keep it when I already had WhatsApp, Teams, or Slack handling conversations. Even worse, the feature had almost no real integration outside Microsoft’s own apps. Third-party support was supposed to expand, but it never really happened.
By the end of 2019, Microsoft quietly started phasing it out in Windows 10 updates. And when Windows 11 arrived, My People was gone without ceremony.
4
Cortana
In what seemed to be a Windows-native answer to Siri and Alexa, Cortana made its debut in Windows 10 in 2015. And to be fair, it came out swinging. Early on, Cortana could pull off some genuinely impressive tricks, like setting reminders based on your location, opening apps and settings, and even surfacing helpful suggestions straight from the taskbar search.
But over time, I noticed that features quietly disappeared, responsiveness slipped, and simple commands like “set a timer for 10 minutes” were often met with the frustrating reply: “Sorry, I can’t help with that yet.” Eventually, it became little more than a glorified voice-powered search bar—and not even a particularly reliable one.
Eventually, in 2023, Microsoft officially discontinued it, shifting focus to newer AI toys like Windows Copilot. If you never used it, trust me, you didn’t miss much.
3
Windows Mixed Reality
Windows Mixed Reality was Microsoft’s virtual reality and augmented reality platform for PCs, launched in 2017 alongside headsets from Acer, HP, and Lenovo. It was meant to compete with Oculus and HTC Vive, with native support built into Windows. Once inside, you could launch apps, browse the web, and play games.
For a short time, Windows Mixed Reality looked like an affordable entry point into VR. With built-in support for SteamVR, it let Windows users try virtual worlds without buying expensive headsets. However, the hardware never sold well, developer support dried up, and Microsoft shifted its mixed reality ambitions to HoloLens (and later to enterprise partnerships).
In addition, it seemed almost no one was interested in using it. And even if they were, platforms like Oculus (now Meta Quest) offered smoother setups, wider support, and, frankly, far better experiences. Adoption never really got off the ground.
In December 2023, Microsoft deprecated it, then removed the feature from Windows 11 version 24H2 in 2024. The Portal app, SteamVR integration, and everything else are gone. If you still own one of those Windows Mixed Reality headsets, they’ll work with Steam until November 2026. But after that, updates, support, and basic functionality will dry up.
Meta and Valve now dominate VR on PC, and Microsoft has effectively bowed out of the consumer VR space.
2
Tips
The Tips app came preloaded with Windows 10, and it was Microsoft’s attempt at guiding users through the OS’s endless list of features. However, I barely came across anyone who actually used it. Most folks either Googled their way to a solution or fumbled around until they figured out what to do via trial and error.
Eventually, Microsoft seemed to realize the app was taking up space for no real reason and quietly retired it in Windows 11.
1
Maps
The Maps app was Microsoft’s shot at giving Windows its own built-in navigation experience—kind of like a desktop alternative to Google Maps. It came with surprisingly thoughtful features, too, such as offline downloads, 3D cityscapes, and even Cortana integration back when she was still part of the picture.
However, I can’t remember a single time I thought to open Maps on my PC when I needed directions. Like most people, I just reached for my phone. The app never carved out a place in my daily habits, and I suspect it never did for the majority of users either.
Starting with Windows 11 version 24H2, Maps was no longer preinstalled. In April 2025, Microsoft officially deprecated the app, and by July 2025, it released a final update that broke functionality and removed the app from the Microsoft Store. After that, you couldn’t reinstall it anymore.
Most of these Windows features faded away, not because they were terrible ideas, but because hardly anyone ever touched them. Microsoft is clearly trimming the fat, and quite frankly, you probably won’t miss what you never used in the first place. And if you did use these tools, you know firsthand why Microsoft decided to get rid of them.
