Microsoft continues to shove Copilot down our throats, this time on our tablets

(Image credit: Prostock-studio / Shutterstock)

If you’re a Windows user, you’ve probably been embracing (or running away from) Microsoft Copilot being integrated into your operating system. The AI-powered tool has been added to Microsoft Edge, Microsoft 365, and the Windows 11 taskbar. Now, it seems like the AI companion is making its debut on Windows tablets - in the most annoying way possible.

Zac Bowden from Windows Central discovered that swiping from the right on your tablet now opens Copilot instead of your notification center - disrupting a core gesture that users have grown accustomed to. Bowden posted a video on Twitter (sorry, X) showing this change in action, swiping to open notifications and instead being greeted by an unwelcome Copilot.

Huh, the swipe gesture to open notifications now opens Copilot instead on Windows 11 build 26100 pic.twitter.com/ymcUCPef9cApril 3, 2024

Bowden also adds that the notification panel has apparently simply disappeared. You would think that if Copilot had been moved to the right, the notification panel would have been relocated, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Now, it seems that if you miss a notification it’s simply gone with the wind - you have nowhere to catch up on anything you miss.

Give it back!

Almost all modern devices have some kind of notification center that’s easily accessible. iPhone and Android mobiles have the swipe down from the top gesture, which is also translated to larger touchscreen devices like iPads or Galaxy tablets. Even your Windows PC has a notification center on the right side of your taskbar. So, it’s incredibly peculiar for Windows tablets to have that crucial feature removed.

If you’re worried about your tablet being affected, don’t panic - so far this change has only been implemented on tablets that are running on the latest Windows 11 version (24H2). It was first spotted in Microsoft Windows Insider Dev and Canary channel and now seems to have broken out to a wider array of devices - so if you want to avoid this, just hold off on updating to version 24H2 for now.

Hopefully, this is a temporary change that’ll be reversed soon. While Microsoft’s Copilot is an objectively impressive tool, there’s no doubt that not everyone will be happy to have these changes shoved in their faces like this. Especially if you’re not a big fan of AI chatbots in the first place - I’d be pretty upset if I lost access to my notifications for something I’d never use.

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Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison. Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she's joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you've got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you're in the right place. Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook's Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).