TL;DR: Microsoft is trying to repair Windows 11's reputation and overhaul its app ecosystem, and both efforts center on one idea: get back to fundamentals and make the OS feel like a fast, coherent, native-first platform again. That shift runs from Satya Nadella's pledge to "win back fans" to internal engineers publicly declaring that "Native apps are back!" for Windows 11.
During Microsoft's fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call, Nadella put consumer Windows front and center. As part of Microsoft's broader push to reconnect with users across its platforms, he framed the Windows strategy as a back-to-basics project around performance, quality and core UX. "When it comes to our consumer business, we are doing the foundational work required to win back fans and strengthen engagement across Windows, Xbox, Bing, and Edge. In the near term, we are focused on fundamentals, prioritizing quality and serving our core users better," the CEO said.
He cited work already underway in Windows 11, including performance improvements for lower-memory devices, a streamlined Windows Update experience, and a renewed emphasis on "core features and fundamentals that matter most to our customers."
Those remarks came as Microsoft reported that monthly active Windows devices have surpassed 1.6 billion, a figure that includes Windows 10 and older versions. Nadella argued that, over time, "Windows value will extend to deliver unmetered intelligence at the edge," positioning the OS as the local substrate for AI workloads instead of just a thin client for cloud services.
For longtime Windows users, though, the more immediate concern has been day-to-day friction: ads and upsells in the out-of-the-box experience, UI inconsistencies, and system components that feel sluggish compared with older releases.
Inside the Windows organization, the response is showing up as a mix of OS-level and app-level changes that all point in the same direction: less web wrapper, more native code.
Microsoft has already teased at least 18 notable improvements for Windows 11 in 2026, several of which are rolling out to early adopters. The company is testing a "quieter" Windows with fewer upsells and ads in the setup flow, along with a more streamlined first-time setup that takes fewer clicks to reach the desktop, including the ability to skip updates during OOBE.
Other work focuses on fundamentals: reducing baseline RAM usage, fixing dark mode inconsistencies across legacy dialogs and tools like Registry Editor, and moving more Control Panel functionality into the modern Settings app without breaking older hardware and workflows.
Performance problems haven't been limited to the OS shell. The Microsoft Store's evolution into a framework-agnostic distribution channel made it easier to ship Progressive Web Apps and Electron-style wrappers, but it also pushed many popular services away from native WinUI implementations. Netflix and WhatsApp are among the apps that moved from native frameworks to WebView2-based PWAs on Windows 11, with testing showing WhatsApp using around 600MB of RAM on an 8GB machine while idle.
Electron-based Discord can use up to 4GB of RAM and includes a mechanism to restart itself when usage gets too high. Users have been complaining for some time on forums like Reddit that this shift to web-centric clients has hurt overall OS responsiveness, especially on mid-range hardware.
Microsoft's own apps face similar issues. The web-based Copilot experience on Windows 11 pulls in a full Edge stack and, in testing, has been observed using roughly 500MB of RAM in the background and up to 1GB under active use.
The company's answer is not to retreat from rich clients but to rebuild them with native tooling. Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect working on the Store and File Explorer, has said he is forming a team focused on building better Windows 11 apps and has confirmed that new experiences from that group will be "100% native."
– David Fowler (@davidfowl) April 27, 2026
That push gained a public signal boost when David Fowler, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft known for his work on .NET and ASP.NET Core, posted a simple message on X: "Native apps are BACK!"
Inside the Windows community, the comment has been read as an indication that Microsoft intends to move key experiences away from web wrappers and back to native frameworks such as WinUI.
One visible example is the Windows 11 Start menu, which is shifting from React-based components to WinUI to cut latency and improve reliability, alongside plans to make it resizable again, as it was in Windows 10.
Under the hood, .NET 10 and its Native AOT (ahead-of-time compilation) support are expected to be central to this strategy. Native AOT is designed to reduce startup times and memory footprints for .NET applications compared with traditional JIT-heavy .NET deployments, which could directly address the overhead seen in today's WebView2 and Electron apps.
If Microsoft can demonstrate those benefits in its own in-box apps – File Explorer, communications clients, utilities – it will be in a stronger position to convince third-party developers to follow.
The more difficult problem is ecosystem inertia. Developers have grown used to cross-platform web stacks that let them target Windows, macOS, and mobile with a single codebase, even if that comes with higher resource usage on Windows.
To shift that calculus, Microsoft will likely need more than architectural guidance; it will have to show that 100% native Windows 11 apps can deliver clear performance and UX gains without giving up reach, and possibly sweeten the deal with Store visibility or other incentives.
For now, Nadella's focus on "foundational work" and Fowler's assertion that native apps are back describe the same direction: a Windows 11 that feels less like a cluster of web views and more like a coherent, responsive operating system.
Microsoft admits Windows 11 lost its way, Nadella pledges to "win back fans"
but... I thought AI is gonna solve... EVERYTHING?
