San Francisco: In order to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the European Economic Area (EEA), Microsoft has made several changes to the operating system (OS), which now lets users choose between providers and uninstall most in-box apps.
The changes include the ability to uninstall the Microsoft Edge web browser as well as remove Bing Search from the Windows Search pane, reports Windows Central.
It joins the growing list of in-box apps that can be removed by the user. The only remaining system apps are File Explorer and Phone Link, which cannot be uninstalled.
In addition, Microsoft is releasing an update to the Widgets Board that will allow users to disable the Microsoft News and Ads feed while still retaining widgets for those who want to use them.
The company describes these changes as being specific to Windows 11 PCs in the EEA, so it’s unclear whether users outside of this region will be able to use them, the report said.
These changes will be available in preview on Windows 11 through the Insider Beta Channel in the coming weeks, before becoming generally available early next year.
Microsoft claims that Windows 11 will be fully DMA compliant by March 6, 2024. Many of the same changes will be made to Windows 10 by then.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has introduced a new text-to-speech feature with vision capabilities, that enables users to create talking avatar videos with text input and to build real-time interactive bots trained using human images.
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