Task Manager On Windows 11 Joins Fluent Design And Loses It’s Ability To Talk To Other Apps

Hopefully The Defanging Is Only Aesthetic

CTRL-ALT-DEL was originally supposed to be a secret, but it’s existence was quickly communicated among IT professionals and eventually just about everyone knew about it; something Microsoft has never forgotten nor forgiven.  This first started to become very apparent in Windows 10, when the Task Manager process lost it’s independence and became as likely to stop responding as the very applications it was built to terminate.  This coincided with CTRL+SHIFT+ESC losing it’s ability to respawn the Task Manager process when it had frozen, though at least the dedicated shortcut still works to this day if Task Manager is still running.

In Windows 11 Task Manager not only retains the deficiencies introduced in Windows 10, it has also been made even harder to get at as Microsoft removed the ability to launch it by right clicking the task bar, you now have to find it in the long list of choices presented when you right click the Start button.  This of course assumes that explorer.exe is still up and running, for if it freezes then you’re unlikely to get any response from that right click.

The Register reports that things are getting even better, with the release of Windows 11 Build 22538, which seems to have a completely redesigned Task Manager.  Microsoft have made it match the look of their Fluent Design, complete with rounded corners and a dark mode.   What it doesn’t have is a list of running apps, merely a tab which claims to display them.  Officially released or not, Windows 11 is still very much a work in progress and so at least some functionalities will assumedly be added over time; it is the effectiveness of these functionalities which is the question.