Windows 11 is slowly but surely getting more streamlined, with Microsoft cutting and pruning away some of the bloat in the OS.
The most recent move, as highlighted by Windows Latest, is that the Steps Recorder app is getting its marching orders.
What’s that? We wouldn’t blame you if that was your first thought, because it was ours, as we’d forgotten about the existence of this app, which was brought in with Windows 7.
Steps Recorder, as the name suggests, allows you to record something happening on your screen, and the steps you take when running into a problem – so you can send it to an expert (or support team) who can see exactly where you’re going wrong (hopefully).
This app has just been added to the deprecated features list for Windows 11, on top of a bunch of other functionality that was recently marked for axing (most notably the Tips app).
As Microsoft notes, Steps Recorder won’t be updated any longer and will be “removed in a future release of Windows.”
The reason is that it’s pretty much redundant now with other options present in Windows 11 for screen recording duties. Microsoft points to the Snipping Tool, Xbox Game Bar, and Microsoft Clipchamp as alternatives, though some will miss the lightweight nature of Steps Recorder perhaps.
Analysis: Getting serious about streamlining
As mentioned, this is just the latest move to declutter Windows 11 somewhat, including getting rid of the Tips app as recently announced.
Also of late we’ve seen Microsoft removing the Windows Maps and Movies & TV apps in preview versions of Windows 11, as well as adding in the ability to uninstall more default apps (like Photos, Camera, the ones that all come preinstalled) in testing. Indeed, the latter ability has now progressed from the Canary channel in preview to Dev channel (so is heading for release, by the looks of things).
On top of that, we have other supplementary debloating moves afoot in Windows 11, such as the introduction of the RGB hub to avoid the need to install separate apps to control your peripherals with fancy RGB lighting. That feature is now live in Windows 11 and came in with the update at the end of September.
Considering there appears to be some momentum building around this cleaning up of the operating system, we can likely expect more pruning of Windows 11 from Microsoft going forwards, which can only be a good thing in our books.
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