According to Neowin, Microsoft is making its recently added AI Actions feature optional in the latest Windows 11 insider build, version 26220.7344. The company only introduced these AI-powered options to the right-click context menu back in May of this year, but user feedback has forced a swift reversal. The release notes confirm that if no AI Actions are available or enabled, the entire section will now be hidden from the menu. Users can also manually disable all associated actions—like those for Paint, Photos, and Teams—in one go through Settings > Apps > Actions. This change directly addresses complaints that the menu was leaving an empty, space-wasting entry even when the features weren’t in use, cluttering an already busy interface.
The never-ending fight against menu bloat
Here’s the thing: this is about more than just an AI toggle. It’s a small victory in the eternal user war against interface clutter. That Neowin screenshot from May showed a context menu with a staggering 18 items, and that wasn’t even the full list! Compare that to something like Fedora Xfce, where a right-click on an image might give you ten clean options. Microsoft keeps piling features into these menus, assuming more is better. But for a lot of us, it’s just visual noise. So this concession, while minor, is a sign that someone in Redmond is finally listening to the chorus of users screaming for simplicity and control.
Is it even a real AI feature?
Let’s be honest, the “AI Actions” label always felt a bit marketing-heavy. Basically, it’s just a fancy link farm. Options like “Blur background with Photos” or “Remove background with Paint” just launch those apps—you could already do the same thing with “Open With.” It’s not some magical, in-place AI processing; it’s a shortcut. A potentially useful one for some, sure. But framing it as an essential AI integration always seemed like a stretch. This quick walkback suggests users saw through that and just found it annoying. When your “innovative” feature is one of the first things people want to disable, maybe it wasn’t that innovative to begin with.
A sign of smarter design to come?
The good news is this isn’t the only cleanup happening. Microsoft is also grouping other messy items, like putting “Compress to…” and “Copy as path” under a “Manage file” sub-menu and bundling all OneDrive options together. That’s the kind of thoughtful design that actually improves daily use. It makes you wonder: if they’re willing to make the new AI stuff optional, will they ever let us fully customize or strip down the context menu to our liking? Probably not anytime soon—there’s too much feature promotion baked in. But for now, getting rid of an empty box is a win. And in the world of Windows updates, we take those where we can get them.
