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As we lean into WWDC, three strategically brilliant Apple moves have been exposed in the last couple of weeks, two of which will have immense consequences in the coming year, while one sets the scene for essential future growth.

In each case, Apple’s leadership has found counter-intuitive gambits that actually secure the company’s future. Let’s start with Vision Pro.

It came from the future

News this week is that incoming CEO John Ternus has made some tough decisions around Apple’s approach to spatial computing, terminating development of Vision Pro (even as leaked images of a black model emerge) while focusing R&D on two smart glasses projects to compete with Meta. 

The intention is to introduce XR and AR glasses priced at around $300 to $500 each. While not as richly-featured as the Vision Pro, they will be within the reach of more people and draw deeply on the huge R&D effort that went into the original Apple AR visors. Apple hopes a focus on trust and privacy will be enough to push Meta aside, helping Cupertino dominate this part of the category. If that plan succeeds, don’t be at all surprised to see plans for Vision Pro 2 return to the table, though that’s not the focus now.

Apple frequently described the Vision Pro as a product “pulled from the future,” a device for enterprise users and early adopters. For many such users, the existing product will be useful in their work for time to come. 

What’s strategically solid about this is that Apple has now defined a good future for spatial computing and is bringing components of that future to the mass market on the basis of a provable technology you can already try for yourself in any Apple Store. This is a long game, and while it will take time to play out, it’s a game the company has proved it can join.

Privacy as a standard

Apple has apparently chosen to use Nvidia and Google technologies to support at least some of the Apple Intelligence/Siri improvements to be announced at WWDC next week. This seems to fly against the company’s general approach to privacy on its platforms, with the silicon, operating system and — thanks to Private Cloud Compute — the cloud all in its control.

How, you might ask, can Apple ensure privacy when using third-party infrastructure to manage some AI transactions? How can it do so without damaging its trusted brand?

One direction that makes sense is to consider that Apple and its partners have reached consensus on what privacy should be and how it should be delivered. That’s a very important consensus, as it suggests Apple is building an approach that makes privacy an attestable standard.

The company has been pushing governments for years to agree to such standards, but all it seems to have had in return are continued government attempts to erode personal privacy. That’s particularly evident in the UK government’s egregious move to undermine encryption to the detriment of all. (The UK isn’t really alone in preferring surveillance above liberty.)

Android developer Google has had the same experience, and while its approach to privacy differs from Apple, both companies understand the need for encryption. As such, any form of consensus on some form of privacy standards is welcome — and while I’d very much prefer an enforceable, verifiable approach, some industry agreement has to be better than nothing at all. 

While I don’t believe Apple’s approach to privacy in the new breed Siri/Apple Intelligence will be introduced in this way at WWDC, it will be interesting to see what does emerge from the new tech triptych (Apple, Google, Nvidia) in the coming months. Certainly, all three have a great interest in guarding encryption against Quantum attacks for which hidden backdoors would be easy pickings.

Winning the PC War

Apple has won the PC war.

• MacBook Neo is selling in such vast quantities; IDC had to boost its laptop market growth forecast even while predicting a huge Windows PC sales decline. 
• Competitors are churning out products they’re marketing as MacBook Neo competitors, even though many reviewers note higher prices and lower build quality.
• Rapid component price increases, particularly around memory, are prompting some Neo competitors to come with just 8GB of RAM.  

That last point needs explanation: Apple’s entry-level MacBook Neo also has just 8GB RAM, but it also has custom-designed Apple processors and an operating system optimized to run on the hardware. That means those Macs use memory far more efficiently than their competitors. 

So, you can pick up some mass market Windows laptops for $800 that hold just 8GB memory, or spend $699 for a MacBook Neo with double amount and that can also run Windows in VM extremely well. 

Component prices are not going to shrink back for a while, any more than further magical thinking is going to end the war in Iran. At this point in the cycle, Apple has the PC market advantage. Millions are purchasing its entry-level Mac and the vast majority of those new users will love the platform, as new users usually do. That’s going to lead to a spike in Apple services sign-ups, and prompt solid future upgrade and accessory sales cycles.

Apple accomplished this by selling a low-cost Mac at a time when competitors face existential problems maintaining their grip on the mid-range market. The longer Apple holds prices on the device, the greater the advantage it builds, while applying huge pressure on PC competitors.

Summing up the goods

With the Mac hitting its iPod moment as it achieves mass market sales, Apple finally seeing something like progress in its attempt to secure privacy in a digital age, and a strong position from which to grow in the wearables market, the company has played a fine hand. 

That’s even before it introduces us to its improved Apple Intelligence, and an era of AI access in which many everyday tasks take place token free directly on the device. Indeed, when it comes to AI, if it gets things right at WWDC, Apple appears to be making money, while AI competitors are bleeding financial oxygen as their inflated bubble heads to its inevitable demise. What about the enterprise? Take a look at this chart.

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Humanitarian organization World Food Programme (WFP) says one of its systems was breached, and around 600,000 Gazan households receiving aid had their details improperly accessed. Its announcement, made via Telegram on May 31, confirmed there was “a security incident” in the self-registration application used by Gazans to register for aid and applicants’ names, ID numbers, phone numbers, and location information were among the data types accessed. “We understand this may be concerning, and we want to assure you that protecting your data and privacy is our top priority,” the WFP said. “The program is treating this situation with the utmost seriousness and priority.” The organization said it temporarily suspended the registration platform to urgently apply the necessary security improvements. Its most recent update on the situation came on June 2, when it said the platform was still down, but added that aid recipients did not need to do anything, while their support would continue to be delivered uninterrupted. “The WFP wants to assure all those registered via the link that food assistance, cash assistance, nutritional supplementation, and all other WFP programs are continuing as usual,” it said. “If you are already registered on the Self-Registration Application (SRA), your registration remains valid. There is no need to update, delete, or re-register your information at this time.” WFP told The New Humanitarian, which first reported the story, that the attack was detected on May 14, and confirmed the scale to be in the region of 600,000 households. The news organization also claimed, citing a whistleblower’s account of matters, that an anonymous “independent expert” contacted WFP’s Palestine team, alerting it to vulnerabilities in the SRA two days before the organization detected the breach. The Register contacted WFP’s Rome headquarters for more details, but it did not immediately respond. WFP, which is a division of the UN and the largest welfare organization in the world, supports 1.6 million Palestinians every month who face a malnutrition crisis amid fierce conflict between the territory and neighboring Israel. This represents around 77 percent of the country’s population, and an estimated 80 percent of the population is unemployed, unable to earn the money required to pay for a nutritionally sound diet. WFP delivers wheat flour, high-energy biscuits, and fortified snacks to families, community kitchens, and bakeries in its effort to push back famine, as well as facilitating cash transfers. The organization is also helping individuals get back into paid work, maintains roads, and says that when conditions allow, it will stay in the region and help local people rebuild communities, markets, and other food systems. ®

AI could soon lead to systems capable of improving their own performance faster than humans can effectively supervise them, reviving concerns about the industry’s longstanding “alignment problem,” ensuring AI systems reliably pursue human goals, senior Anthropic researchers have warned in a new blog post titled “When AI builds itself.”

Anthropic Institute lead Marina Favaro and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark outlined three possible futures: growth in AI capabilities may flatten out; AI efficiency gains may continue to grow, but expose bottlenecks elsewhere in software development; or AI systems may become capable of full recursive self-improvement, and build their successors by themselves. It’s that third scenario that’s prompting them to suggest society be ready to hit the brakes on AI development.

“How the alignment problem gets solved — or not — in this future is something we are least certain about,” they wrote. Advanced, self-improving models could follow our needs and wants — or, they warned, “The rare occurrences of misalignment present in today’s models could compound as the models build their successors, growing more frequent but less understood until we lose control of them. It’s possible that we can’t build, integrate, and verify the tools that we’d need to understand which trendline we are actually on.”

While Anthropic’s warning is framed around future AI development, analysts say it highlights governance questions enterprises are already beginning to confront as autonomous AI agents move from answering questions to taking actions.

“The issue is no longer just whether AI gives the right answer, but whether autonomous systems take the right action, at the right time, within the right authority,” said Ashish Banerjee, senior principal analyst at Gartner.

From model governance to agent governance

The warning comes amid growing enterprise investment in agentic AI.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI and that one-third of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI capabilities. The firm has also warned that governance shortcomings are already emerging, predicting that 40% of enterprises will demote or decommission autonomous AI agents by 2027 after governance failures become apparent in production environments.

Banerjee said many organizations continue to approach AI agents as advanced productivity tools when they increasingly resemble digital workers operating with delegated authority.

“CIOs should stop treating AI agents as smarter chatbots,” he said. “They are becoming digital workers with delegated authority — and must be governed like privileged users, not productivity tools.”

As agents gain the ability to conduct research, write code, invoke tools, trigger workflows, and make recommendations, enterprises face new risks around unauthorized actions, accountability gaps, data exposure, tool misuse, and insufficient auditability, Banerjee said.

“Human-in-the-loop is not a strategy if the human cannot keep up with the loop,” he said.

Charlie Dai, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, said Anthropic’s concerns mirror challenges enterprises are already encountering as AI systems gain greater autonomy.

“Alignment becomes operational,” Dai said. “It is about ensuring agents consistently act within policy, not just model accuracy.”

Current governance approaches focus largely on models and data, but increasingly autonomous agents require oversight of runtime behavior, permissions, tool usage, and decision boundaries, Dai said.

Concerns about agent oversight are not limited to AI vendors and industry analysts.

In AI Agent Governance: A Field Guide, researchers from Institute for AI Policy and Strategy warned that “society is largely unprepared for this development” and said “the exploration of agent governance questions and the development of associated interventions remain in their infancy.” The paper argues that advances in autonomous AI agents are outpacing the governance mechanisms needed to oversee them.

Both analysts argued that governance frameworks originally designed for generative AI models may prove insufficient for increasingly autonomous systems. Dai said organizations will need greater oversight of runtime behavior, permissions, tool usage, and decision boundaries as agents become more capable.

Why Anthropic is worried

Anthropic’s researchers argue that those governance questions could become significantly harder if AI systems become increasingly involved in the process of AI research and development itself.

Favaro and Clark stopped short of predicting that fully autonomous recursive self-improvement is inevitable. Instead, they argued that the possibility warrants preparation and discussion among developers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. They also suggested the industry may eventually need mechanisms to slow development if capabilities begin advancing faster than safeguards, while acknowledging that such measures carry risks of their own.

“But if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe,” they wrote in the blog post.

Forrester’s Dai said the practical implication for enterprises is that governance can no longer depend primarily on human review.

“Supervision becomes architectural, not manual,” he said. Organizations will increasingly need bounded autonomy, embedded guardrails, verifiable execution mechanisms, and fallback controls designed into agentic systems from the outset.

Do ChatuGPT dorazila pátá verze paměti, dosud nejpokročilejší. • Sama si pamatuje důležitý kontext, vzpomínky bude možné upravit. • Fungovat bude i v bezplatném tarifu, ale až později.

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously unreported threat cluster dubbed OP-512 (where "OP" stands for "opponent") that has been observed targeting Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers to deploy a bespoke web shell framework. ReliaQuest has assessed with moderate to high confidence that the espionage-focused activity is linked to China. "OP-512 was highly

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously unreported threat cluster dubbed OP-512 (where "OP" stands for "opponent") that has been observed targeting Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers to deploy a bespoke web shell framework. ReliaQuest has assessed with moderate to high confidence that the espionage-focused activity is linked to China. "OP-512 was highly Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Eighteen months ago, the AI SOC was a marketing line. Today it's a budget item. The category has crossed over from interesting to inevitable, with billions of dollars now flowing into AI-powered security operations platforms, agentic SOC tools, and AI co-pilots built into every layer of the security stack. The data shows SOCs are buying, deploying, and standing up AI capabilities at the fastest

Eighteen months ago, the AI SOC was a marketing line. Today it's a budget item. The category has crossed over from interesting to inevitable, with billions of dollars now flowing into AI-powered security operations platforms, agentic SOC tools, and AI co-pilots built into every layer of the security stack. The data shows SOCs are buying, deploying, and standing up AI capabilities at the fastest [email protected]

Alza začala jako obchod s počítači, ale dnes v ní seženete cokoli. Už dva roky prodává například léky, kvůli čemuž si koupila a provozuje i jednu kamennou lékárnu. Teď otevřela specializovanou drogerii – nebo jak ji sama firma nazývá – luxusní beauty shop. Nový obchod AlzaBeauty o rozloze 280 m² ...

Britská divize španělské průmyslové ikony a loďařské společnosti Navantia představila koncept velkého autonomního hladinového plavidla LASV75 pro rodící se hybridní flotilu britského Královského námořnictva. 75 metrů dlouhý dron Autonomní lodě by měly fungovat podobně jako létající drony, které ...

Windows 11 does a lot under the hood to speed up a PC’s performance, but PCs tend to slow down over time as they accumulate apps, files, drivers, and other detritus. Even zippy new Windows 11 devices can be sped up — and protected against future slowdowns — with a few minor system tweaks.

It’s simple to make your Windows PC run faster. Just follow these tips.

Top ways to speed up Windows 11

1. Disable programs that run on startup
2. Turn off unused apps with high resource usage
3. Use Efficiency mode
4. Use automatic Windows maintenance
5. Kill adware and bloatware
6. Turn off search indexing
7. Clean out your hard drive
8. Disable shadows, animations, and visual effects
9. Disable transparency
10. Change your power settings
11. Turn off Windows tips and tricks
12. Disable Game Mode
13. Update device drivers
14. Turn off background app permissions
15. Roll back your PC to a previous state
16. Restart Windows

Read on for details.

Note: This story covers Windows 11 version 25H2. If you have an earlier release of Windows 11, some things may be slightly different. If you have Windows 10, see our Windows 10 speed tips.

1. Disable programs that run on startup

Your Windows 11 PC could be a laggard if programs you rarely or never use are running in the background. Your PC will run faster if you stop them from running.

To do it, first launch the Task Manager in one of these ways:

• Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc.
• Right-click the lower-right corner of your screen and select Task Manager.
• Type task manager into the Windows 11 search box and press Enter.

There’s a lot you can use Task Manager for, but here we’re focusing only on killing unnecessary programs that run at startup.

Click the Startup apps icon on the left side of the screen. (It’s the fifth icon from the top.) It displays a list of the programs and services that launch when you start Windows. The list includes each program’s name as well as its publisher, whether it’s enabled to run on startup, and its “Startup impact,” which is how much it slows down Windows 11 when the system starts up. Note, though, that the screen doesn’t show how much each program will impact your performance after startup, during normal PC operations.

You can use the Windows Task Manager to get information about programs that launch at startup and disable any you don’t need.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

Also note that not all apps will have useful information about their startup impact — many show up as “Not measured” in Task Manager. There are multiple reasons you might see this. For example, some apps don’t provide the Windows metadata required to measure their startup impact, and others start up too late in the boot process to be measured. Still others may not have been started a sufficient number of times for Windows to measure their impact. (The Windows Club has an article with tips and workarounds for “Not measured” apps.)

To stop a program or service from launching at startup, right-click it and select Disable. This doesn’t disable the program entirely; it only prevents it from launching at startup — you can run the application after launch. Also, if you later decide you want it to launch at startup, you can return to this area of the Task Manager, right-click the application and select Enable.

Many of the programs and services that run on startup may be familiar to you, like Microsoft OneDrive or Spotify. But you may not recognize many of them. (Anyone who immediately knows what “bzbui.exe” is, please raise your hand. No fair Googling it first.)

The Task Manager can find information about unfamiliar programs. Right-click an item and select Properties for more information about it, including its location on your hard disk, whether it has a digital signature, and other information such as the version number, the file size, and the last time it was modified. (Note that not all programs provide this information when you right-click them — the Properties button may be grayed out.)

You can also right-click the item and select Open file location. That opens File Explorer and takes it to the folder where the file is located, which may give you another clue about the program’s purpose.

Finally, and most helpfully, you can select Search online after you right-click. Bing will then launch with links to sites with information about the program or service. With Task Manager’s help, I easily discovered that bzbui.exe is Backblaze backup software, something I want to run automatically during startup.

If you’re worried about one of the listed applications, you can go to a site run by Reason Software called “Should I Block It?” and search for the file name. You’ll usually find very solid information about the program or service.

Now that you’ve selected all the programs that you want to disable at startup, the next time you restart your computer, the system won’t launch those unnecessary programs automatically, and your PC may run faster.

2. Turn off unused apps with high resource usage

It’s easy to forget just how many apps you’ve got running at the same time in Windows. Sometimes your PC’s sluggishness can be due to running too many apps you’re not currently using — or a single app that’s taking up a lot of resources.

First launch Task Manager using one of the methods covered in the previous tip. If you’re already in Task Manager, click the Processes icon on the left side of the screen (three squares in a grid, second from top) to get to the Processes screen. You’ll see a list of every app or process you’re currently running.

Look for apps you’re currently running but not actively using, and also look for any not running with high memory or CPU usage. Right-click any app you want to close and select End task.

Use Task Manager to identify and shut down unused apps using lots of system resources.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

3. Use Efficiency Mode

Task Manager has another trick up its sleeve for juicing Windows 11 performance. Efficiency Mode can speed up your PC and improve laptop battery life. It lowers the process priority of background applications, among other efficiency tricks.

The term is a bit of a misnomer, because you can’t put your entire PC into Efficiency Mode. Instead, you use Task Manager to put individual apps and processes into it. There’s one caveat: You’ll only be able to use it on some apps and processes.

On the Processes screen in Task Manager (see previous tip), look through the list of currently running apps and processes. Click the app or process you want to put into Efficiency Mode, click the Efficiency mode icon at the top right of the screen, and then confirm that you want to turn on Efficiency Mode for the app.

Note that if the Efficiency mode icon is grayed out when you click an app or process, you won’t be able to use it. Also, some apps, including Microsoft Edge, automatically work in Efficiency Mode by default, and the mode can’t be turned off.

Turning on Efficiency Mode for an app.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

4. Use automatic Windows maintenance

In the background, Windows 11 constantly performs maintenance on your PC, doing things like security scanning and performing system diagnostics to make sure everything is up to snuff. It automatically fixes problems it finds, which helps your PC run at peak performance. The automatic maintenance runs every day at 2:00 a.m. if your device is plugged into a power source and is asleep.

However, that feature may have been accidentally turned off, or it may not have run recently if you shut down your PC at night (rather than putting it in Sleep mode) or you haven’t had your laptop plugged in for a while. You should make sure it’s turned on and runs every day. You can also run it manually if you’d like.

Type control in the search box on the taskbar and select Control Panel from the results to run the Control Panel app. In the app, select System and Security > Security and Maintenance. In the Maintenance section, under Automatic Maintenance, click Start maintenance if you want it to run now.

To make sure that it runs every day, click Change maintenance settings, and on the screen that appears, select the time you’d like maintenance to run and check the box next to Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time. Then click OK.

Here’s how to set a time each day for Windows 11 to run its maintenance tasks.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

5. Kill adware and bloatware

It may be that what’s slowing your PC down isn’t Windows 11, but bloatware or adware that takes up CPU and system resources. Adware and bloatware are particularly insidious because they may have been installed by your computer’s manufacturer. (This is generally not a problem for business PCs but is very common on consumer devices.) They typically run automatically at startup without you even knowing it. You’ll be amazed at how much better your PC will run if you get rid of it.

Start by running a system scan to find adware and malware. If you’ve already installed a security suite such as Norton Security or McAfee LiveSafe, you can use that. Microsoft Defender Antivirus, the anti-malware tool built into the Windows Security app, also does a great job. Type windows security in the search box, press Enter, and on the screen that appears, click Virus & threat protection and then click Quick scan. Windows Security will look for malware and remove any it finds.

You should get a second opinion, though, so consider a free tool like Malwarebytes. The free version scans for malware and adware and removes what it finds; the paid version offers always-on protection to stop infections in the first place.

Malwarebytes scans for and removes malware.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

Now that you’ve done all that, check for bloatware and uninstall it. A good free anti-bloatware tool is Bulk Crap Uninstaller. You can also go to the website Should I Remove It? — it offers recommendations on what software is useful, and what you can uninstall.

There’s a section of the website devoted to advice on how to remove bloatware on PCs from specific manufacturers. I highly recommend going there, because it lists all the bloatware different manufacturers install on their PCs. That section of the site also compares how much bloatware major manufacturers ship on their PCs. It rates Toshiba as having the most and Acer as having the least.

Finally, when you buy a new PC online, check whether there’s an option to leave off trial software and software you don’t need to run your PC. That will stop bloatware from getting on your system in the first place.

6. Turn off search indexing

Windows 11 search performs indexing in your hard disk in the background, allowing you to search your PC more quickly than if no indexing were being done. That’s good for fast searches, but not so good for slower PCs, because indexing can cause a performance hit. You can give a slower machine a speed boost by turning off indexing. Even if you have an SSD disk, turning off indexing can improve your speed, because the constant writing to disk that indexing does can eventually slow down SSDs.

To turn it off, type services.msc into the search box on the taskbar and press Enter. The Services app appears. Scroll down to either Indexing Service or Windows Search in the list of services. Double-click it, and on the screen that appears, click Stop. Then reboot your machine. Your searches may be slightly slower, but you also may not notice the difference. You should, though, get an overall speed boost.

Here’s how to turn off Windows 11 indexing.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

Alternatively, you can turn off indexing only for files in certain locations. In this way, you can still index files and folders you often search for but turn off indexing for the rest of your hard disk. So you’d still get fast searches for files you use often, while increasing your PC’s performance.

To do it, type index in the Windows 11 search box and click the Indexing Options result that appears. The Indexing Options page of the Control Panel appears. Click the Modify button, and you’ll see a list of locations that are being indexed, such as Microsoft Outlook, your personal files, and so on. Uncheck the box next to any location, and it will no longer be indexed.

7. Clean out your hard drive

A bloated hard drive filled with files you don’t need can slow down your PC. Taking a few minutes to clean it can give an immediate speed boost. A built-in Windows 11 tool called Storage Sense will do the job for you.

Launch the Settings app, select System > Storage, scroll down to the “Storage management” section, and next to Storage Sense, move the toggle from Off to On. From now on, Windows will constantly monitor your PC and delete old junk files you no longer need — temporary files, files in the Downloads folder that haven’t been changed in a month, and old Recycle Bin files.

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Here’s where to turn on Storage Sense.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

You can also customize when Storage Sense runs and what should be deleted automatically — for example, whether to delete files from the Downloads folder after they’ve been there for more than 30 days. To do it, click the right-facing arrow next to the Storage Sense On/Off slider.

8. Disable shadows, animations, and visual effects

Those who like eye candy are probably big fans of Windows 11’s shadows, animations, and visual effects. They typically don’t affect performance on fast, newer PCs. But they can exact a performance hit on older, slower machines.

If you’ve got a slower PC, turn them off. To do it, in the Windows 11 search box, type sysdm.cpl, press Enter, and then click the sysdm.cpl icon. That launches the Control Panel’s System Properties dialog box. Click the Advanced tab and click Settings in the Performance section. That brings you to the Performance Options dialog box. (Make sure you’re on the Visual Effects tab of the dialog box.) You’ll see a varied list of animations and special effects.

The Performance Options dialog box lets you turn off visual effects that might be slowing down Windows 11.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

If you love to tweak, you can turn individual options on and off. These are the animations and special effects you’ll probably want to turn off, because they have the greatest effect on system performance:

• Animate controls and elements inside windows
• Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
• Animations in the taskbar
• Fade or slide menus into view
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view
• Fade out menu items after clicking
• Show shadows under windows

However, it’s a lot easier to just select the Adjust for best performance option at the top of the screen and click OK. Windows 11 will then turn off the effects that slow down your system.

9. Disable transparency

To get an even bigger speed boost, go beyond turning off shadows, animations, and visual effects. Also disable the transparency effects in the taskbar and other Windows 11 locations. Windows does a surprising amount of heavy lifting to create transparency effects, and turning them off can make a difference in system performance.

To do it, run the Settings app and select Personalization > Colors, then move the Transparency effects slider to Off.

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Turning off Windows 11’s transparency effects can help speed up performance.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

10. Change your power settings

Your Windows 11 PC’s power settings let you balance its energy use with its performance. If you’re using the most power-efficient setting, you’re slowing down your PC, because the setting reduces your PC’s performance to save energy. (Even desktop PCs typically have a power-saving setting.) Changing your power setting to one of the less power-efficient options will give you an instant performance boost.

To do it, run the Settings app, then choose System and click the right-facing arrow next to Power. Depending on whether you’re using a laptop or a desktop PC (and if you’re using a laptop, whether it’s plugged in), you’ll see either a “Plugged in” or “On battery” setting that lists the power mode you’re using. Click the drop-down arrow next to it and choose the setting you want.

Change your power settings to give your PC a performance boost.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

Best Performance gives you the most oomph but uses the most power. Balanced finds a happy medium between power use and better performance, and Best Power Efficiency does everything it can to give you as much battery life as possible. Desktop users have no reason to choose Best Power Efficiency, and even laptop users should consider the Balanced option when unplugged.

11. Turn off Windows tips and tricks

Windows 11 constantly watches what you’re doing on your PC and gives you tips about things you might want to do with the operating system. I’ve never found these tips helpful. And I don’t like the privacy implications of Windows constantly taking a virtual look over my shoulder. (Also see: How to protect your privacy in Windows 11.)

Beyond that, this monitoring can also make your PC run more sluggishly. So to speed things up, tell Windows to stop being so nosy and giving you advice. To do it, run the Settings app and select System > Notifications. Scroll down to Additional settings and click the down arrow. From the options that appear, uncheck the box marked Get tips and suggestions when using Windows.

Turn off Windows’ suggestions to help things run more smoothly (and regain a measure of privacy).

Preston Gralla / Foundry

12. Disable Game Mode

Windows 11’s Game Mode optimizes your PC for playing games. When it detects that you’re playing a game, it prioritizes system resources for gaming, taking them away from other apps and background processes. That’s great for serious gamers, but when you’re not playing games, it can slow down your system because it keeps some system resources in reserve in case you start playing a game. It occasionally causes stability issues as well. So turning off Game Mode may be able to give your PC a quick boost. (You can always turn it back on again when you want to play a game.)

Game Mode is turned on by default, so even if you’ve never played a game on your PC, it’s probably enabled. To turn it off, go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode and move the Game Mode slider to Off.

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Game Mode can sometimes cause stability and performance issues, so turning it off may give your PC a boost.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

13. Update device drivers

Your Windows 11 PC can become a slowpoke if its drivers are old and in the way. Outdated drivers can exact a big performance hit. Graphics drivers are often the biggest culprit in driver-related slowdowns. To check whether your graphics driver is outdated, and to update to the latest one:

1. In the Windows search box, type device manager and click on the Device Manager icon that appears.
2. Scroll to the Display Adapters entry and click the side-facing arrow to expand it.
3. Right-click the driver, and from the context menu that appears, select Update Driver.

You’ll be asked whether to have Windows search for an updated driver, or whether you want to find one and install it manually. Your best bet is to let Windows do the work. Follow the on-screen instructions to get the driver installed.

You can use the Device Manager to update all your drivers this way. That’s time-consuming, so consider asking Windows to do the work for you. To do it, launch the Settings app (pressing the Windows key + I is a good shortcut for doing it) and select Windows Update from the left pane.  Select Advanced Options > Optional Updates. You’ll see a list of all the updates Windows has found but hasn’t installed. Select any of the drivers you want to install, then click Download & install.

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Tell Windows Update to update your drivers.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

14. Turn off background app permissions

Some apps run various processes in the background even if you don’ t launch them. You’ll likely never know they’re doing it, and they can cause unexpected slowdowns and a sluggish PC. Microsoft says these background processes do things such as syncing or sending notifications. That can slow your PC down, especially if more than one app is doing it.

You can head off performance problems by not allowing the apps to run in the background. To do it:

1. Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps.
2. Click the three horizontal dots on the right of any app whose permissions you want to turn off and select Advanced options.
3. Click the dropdown under “Background app permissions,” and choose Never if you want to stop the app from ever running a process in the background, or Power optimized if you want to let Windows decide whether to let the processes run when they won’t cause your PC to take a performance hit.

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Managing background app permissions properly can give your PC a performance boost.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

15. Roll back your PC to a previous state

Sometimes your PC will slow down for no apparent reason, and stay slow. It could be a new driver slowing your system down. Perhaps accidentally you changed a system setting that caused the problem. It can be difficult, and often impossible, to get to the root of these kinds of problems and fix them.

If you’ve noticed that your computer has become sluggish recently, there’s something that might solve the issue: Restore your PC to the state it was in before the problem began. You can easily do this via System Restore.

To do it:

1. Make sure System Restore is turned on by going to Settings > System > About, and under the “Device info” section, click System protection.
2. From the screen that appears, click Configure and select Turn on system protection if it’s not already turned on. Click OK.
3. You’ll be sent back to the System Protection screen. Click System Restore.
4. On the screen that appears, select Recommended restore and click Next if you want to revert to the most recent restore point. Select Choose a different restore point if you want to choose one yourself, and click Next.
5. Restart your PC. It will revert to its previous state. Note that when you do this, your documents, pictures, and personal data won’t be deleted.

Here’s how to turn on System Restore.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

16. Restart Windows

Here’s one of IT’s not-quite-secret weapons for troubleshooting and speeding up a PC: shut it down and restart it. Doing that clears out any excess use of RAM that otherwise can’t be cleared. It also kills processes that you might have set in motion and are no longer needed, but that continue running and slow your system.

If your Windows 11 PC has turned sluggish over time for no apparent reason, you may be surprised at how much more quickly it will run when you do this. I can vouch for it, and I restart my Windows 11 PCs regularly even if they’re not sluggish, just as a precautionary measure.

This article was originally published in February 2023 and most recently updated in June 2026.

More Windows 11 tips:

• Windows 11 cheat sheet
• 8 ways to be more productive in Windows 11
• How to protect your privacy in Windows 11
• How to repair Windows 10 or 11 in 4 steps
• 6 steps to recover missing data in Windows
• How to fix a Windows black screen
• The fast way to fix a frozen Start menu or taskbar in Windows
• Microsoft cheat sheets: Dive into Windows, Office, and Copilot

A City of York Council email mishap exposed the email addresses of hundreds of Blue Badge holders in the ancient Viking capital, inadvertently revealing their status as disabled residents and triggering a data breach investigation. The council confirmed to The Register that it’s investigating what it described as a "personal data breach" after emails sent to residents last week were distributed without using the blind carbon copy (BCC) function, allowing recipients to see everyone else on the mailing list. According to local reports, the council sent three emails containing Blue Badge-related updates before issuing a fourth message acknowledging the error and asking recipients to delete the previous emails, including from their deleted items folders. Recipients were also warned to remain alert for suspicious messages following the incident. While the exposed information appears to have been limited to email addresses, the breach is especially sensitive because everyone on the distribution list was receiving communications intended for Blue Badge holders. In practice, that meant recipients could identify hundreds of people as members of a group generally associated with disabilities or mobility impairments. One affected resident told local media that the disclosure had left her upset because most people in her life were unaware she held a Blue Badge. "Honestly, I think it's just disgusting – we've been given the details of hundreds of disabled people, which feels unsafe," she said. In a statement to The Register, a spokesperson at City of York Council said it activated its data breach procedures as soon as the error was identified and is conducting a risk assessment in line with guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office. "We're working carefully to establish exactly what's happened, alongside conducting a thorough risk assessment ... to understand any potential impact on individuals," a spokesperson said. “Our investigation is ongoing, and we’ll continue to be as open as possible while ensuring the accuracy of the information we provide.” The spokesperson declined to say how many individuals were affected or whether the issue was caused by human error or a technical issue. The council added that it was assessing whether the incident meets the threshold for notification to the ICO within the statutory 72-hour reporting window. That may depend less on the email addresses themselves than on what the mailing list revealed. A spokesperson at the ICO told The Register: "We can confirm that we have received a data breach report on this matter, and following an assessment of the information provided we have closed the case with advice given.” For all the talk of AI-powered cyber threats, it seems some organizations remain committed to the classics. ®

Bezdrátová nabíječka Cubenest SQ314 zlevnila na 849 Kč, běžně stojí dvojnásobek. • Nabije tři zařízení najednou – mobil, sluchátka a chytré hodinky. • Mobilová část láká na silný magnet a standard Qi2.2 s výkonem 25 W.

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Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in Everest Forms Pro, a WordPress plugin with about 4,000 active installations, to execute arbitrary code, leading to a complete site compromise. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-3300 (CVSS score: 9.8), a remote code execution bug impacting all versions of the plugin up to, and including, 1.9.12. A patch for the flaw was

Threat actors are actively exploiting a critical security flaw in Everest Forms Pro, a WordPress plugin with about 4,000 active installations, to execute arbitrary code, leading to a complete site compromise. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2026-3300 (CVSS score: 9.8), a remote code execution bug impacting all versions of the plugin up to, and including, 1.9.12. A patch for the flaw was Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

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