It looks like Microsoft is planning to make a small but interesting (ok, maybe not that interesting) change to Windows 11 in the coming weeks, one that has us scratching our heads a bit. The company has revealed (albeit accidentally) that it’s making the search box that appears on the Taskbar and in the Start menu a little taller, by 4 whole pixels.
4 pixels doesn’t sound like much of a change, but it is a noticeable difference, if you can believe it. The change makes the search box appear chunkier, taking up more visible space above and below it, and bringing it closer to the top edge of the Taskbar itself and slightly pushing content down in Start.
Here’s a before and after of the Start menu and Taskbar, in gif format so that it loops making the difference very easy to identify:
Microsoft hasn’t explained why it’s making this change, but if I had to guess, I’d say the change is being made to align it with the Ask Copilot search box appearance, which differs from the existing Windows Search search box.
Ask Copilot is an alternative search experience coming soon to the Taskbar on Windows 11 that incorporates Copilot chat directly into the user interface. It’s currently aimed at commercial customers, and includes a thicker but narrower search box that appears on the Taskbar when enabled.
Ask Copilot is a separate UI to the standard Windows Search experience, and needs to be manually enabled before you can use it. That’s why I think Microsoft is making the default search box 4 pixels taller, as the company likes the look of Ask Copilot and would like that appearance to apply to the default search box too.
Here’s a closer look at the search box on the Taskbar comparing the new height to the old height. See, it is a noticeable difference! Investigative journalism at its finest on display here.
Either way, you can likely expect to see the search box in the Start menu and on the Taskbar get slightly bigger in the coming months, as Microsoft begins rolling out the change to Insiders before making it generally available to all. The change was unveiled in a changelog for a recent Windows 11 preview build, but a Microsoft engineer has since confirmed to me that the change isn’t yet being previewed.
Thanks phantomofearth!
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