Community & Interaction

Something I’ve noticed lately is that even when features are marked as “hot” or get a ton of upvotes in Feedback Hub, there’s still a lag—or sometimes radio silence—from Microsoft on what’s actually happening with them. Take the recent changes with the taskbar and Start menu personalization; after a lot of noise from users, small tweaks trickled through, but bigger asks (like full right-click context menu customization or real taskbar ungrouping, not just the partial stuff) still drag out. I’d love to see more clear “in development” tags or a publicly visible roadmap, because right now tracking which suggestions are making progress feels like guesswork. Transparency is still the part lagging behind, despite all the talk about listening to users.

Totally agree—Microsoft’s communication on this feels a bit like a black box: ideas go in, and on a good day, maybe a feature comes out months later. A true public tracker (sort of like what some gaming companies do with their roadmaps) would honestly clear up a ton of user frustration and set real expectations. Until then, guess all we can do is keep upvoting and crossing fingers!

One workaround I’ve seen people use is checking the Windows Insider Blog or the “What’s New” pages, since sometimes they highlight which features were directly influenced by feedback. It’s not a perfect solution, but it can help guage if a suggestion is making progress. An official tracker would still be the gold standard, though—hopefully Microsoft gets there soon.

You can sometimes spot when feedback made an impact by looking for those “Requested by Insider feedback” notes in build changelogs—that’s about as close as we get to visible breadcrumbs right now. I wish they’d expand on which user requests are under review or actively being worked on, though. Even a simple dashboard showing the stage of top feedback items would be a big help for transparency!