In June this year (2021), Microsoft brought us the Windows 11 operating system, a new design language, a fully optimized touch experience, the ability to run Android apps directly... Each of these new features makes us call Microsoft "crazy."
But unexpectedly, after the upgrade experience, the user called Microsoft "kill crazy" in another aspect: Help, where did my right-click refresh go?
It seems to be useless, and it is regarded by countless users as a "refresh" of the necessary function, what is its use?
Can refreshing really make your PC faster?
On the afternoon of the weekend, I was chatting with my favorite girl in the room about QQ, and suddenly the door was opened by my mother, I hurriedly shrunk the dialog box, quickly refreshed the desktop with my fingers, and then casually said to myself: Ah, the computer is a good card.
▲ Is there such a similar experience in your memory?
When we don't know what to do with the computer, we always keep refreshing the desktop, and although there seems to be no tutorial inside or outside the school that clearly tells us what is the use of "refreshing the desktop", the statement that "refreshing the desktop will make the computer faster" has become our "consensus".
So, what exactly does the computer do when it refreshes?
The computer desktop looks special, but it's really just a folder stored on your hard drive. The process of refreshing is the process of re-reading the contents of a folder and displaying them again. So when you click "Refresh", you will see the file on the desktop flash, which is the desktop file has been re-read.
If you're using an earlier Windows system, like Windows XP, you might be impressed with this picture.
By refreshing and re-reading, the modified name will be displayed, the deleted file will disappear, and the installed software shortcut will appear. The most common scenario is probably when you drag a file (picture or Word) to the desktop and refresh it to see a preview of the file.
▲Schematic diagram
When you move a window, the remnants of the window you moved appear on the desktop. This is because when a window loses its response, the system takes over the window drawing work until the software responds (or is ended).
In the computer class of that year, this even became a way of touching fish that did not want to listen to the lecture seriously. When the teacher came over and saw my computer screen, he just "refreshed" and the desktop returned to normal.
On Windows 95, there is a feature called Microsoft Active Desktop that can display feature information such as time, to-do, stock, news, search box, and so on. Refresh the desktop to keep the information on the widget updated.
▲Windows 95
Updating the information of the Windows 95 active desktop, clearing the window residue of the Windows XP desktop, and refreshing the file display of the desktop are basically all the functions of the "refresh" operation.
One thing these features have in common is that they are almost never used today.
In Netmarketshare's website, we can see the market share of recent computer systems, of which Windows 7 and later released Windows systems account for nearly 90%, the other 10% of macOS and other systems, still using Windows XP and previous systems of individual users, only less than 2%.
System upgrades, computer performance gradually enhanced, such as file display delays, name modification delays, preview display delays and other issues, in fact, has appeared less and less on our computers, "refresh" the role is naturally smaller and smaller.
▲It is normal for the preview to appear at the first time
I've also seen people say that refreshing clears the cache of your computer's File Explorer (explorer.exe) to make your computer faster. But I didn't find it in the official literature. And the performance of the computer is getting stronger and stronger, and the improvement from clearing the File Explorer cache is not significant.
But I also know that people don't care so much about whether "refresh" can speed up the computer and update desktop content. After all, for many people, refreshing the desktop as a thing that can be done casually when bored, with almost no errors and no impact on the operation of the computer, has long become a leg shaker in the digital age.
Jumping left and right lessons is not just about "refreshing"
In Windows 11, although there is still a chance that there will be a delay in desktop updates, the low-frequency operation of refreshing the desktop does not need to give it an important position in the right-click menu: it cannot be deleted, and it seems to be a good choice to put it in the secondary menu.
▲ In the early Days of Windows 11, we could only refresh by clicking "Show more options"
And this change has caused the problem mentioned at the beginning of the article, friends who like the "refresh" function have asked on social platforms: Where has my refresh gone?
Not only at home, but also abroad, there are many users who are dissatisfied with this setting, not only want to see the refresh function on the desktop, but also hope to see this function anywhere in the system. Of course, there will be no shortage of tutorials on how to refresh the system on Windows 11.
It seems that the feedback from users made Microsoft aware of the seriousness, and in the July update of Windows 11, "Refresh" was moved to the familiar location of the desktop right-click menu. I understand the reason why Microsoft put "refresh" in the secondary menu, and I can also foresee that Microsoft will put the function back in place, after all, this is not the first time Microsoft has done this.
▲Now, we can happily refresh again
In August 1995, with the Rolling Stones' deafening Start Me Up, Bill Gates introduced the new Windows 95 to users around the world. In the lower left corner of the system interface, for the first time, the Start button that can "Start Windows up" appeared, and this "Start" button has accompanied us in the lower left corner of the computer for nearly 30 years since that day.
Some people say that the start button placed in the lower left corner is so that we can move the mouse to the corner of any interface to open it, but in fact, the start button of Windows 95 cannot wake up in the corner of the screen, because Microsoft has left an edge space in order to make it look like a button.
Some people say that when the start button was placed in the lower left corner, the technical power was insufficient, and it could only be fixed on the edge of the screen, and then it was too lazy to change, but Microsoft did not "lazy to change", it has been trying.
On Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a "Start Screen" that maximizes screen real estate, replacing the "Start Menu" for small screens since Windows 95. As a result, we also know that on Windows 10, the Start Menu is back.
Internet Explorer, tiles, Cortana, tablet mode, timeline, control panel. Delete, add, retain, consolidate, new design.
Maybe because of user feedback, maybe because of internal optimization, on the latest Windows 11, we can still see the interface of different eras, fonts of different eras, operation logic of different eras, and the "refresh" that has little effect but still occupies the right-click C bit.
How far are we from Windows in the trailer?
Compared with Windows, which occupies a large number of desktop systems, macOS is much more resolute than Windows in the unity of system updates.
After the system fonts were updated to San Francisco and Pingfang, we could hardly see other older fonts (such as Chinese boldface) appear in macOS's system; after the system fully switched to 64-bit, the 32-bit software could not be turned on and was cleaned up.
Windows is going in a completely different direction, and even in the latest Windows 11, we can still run 32-bit software (such as WeChat) and still run software in the compatibility mode of Windows Vista (2006).
In Microsoft's promotional films, typing, touch screen, painting, Windows is always so elegant and smooth, but the world's huge user base, from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars of hardware configuration, almost all areas of professional use, so that Windows can not be as firmly cut off as macOS.
We're still a long way from Windows in the trailer.
However, in Windows 11, the Start menu finally left the lower left corner where it had been for nearly 30 years, and it was not only more suitable for touch screens, but also more friendly to ultra-widescreen users; Microsoft 365 adopted a new design, which was more in harmony with the system design; and the functions of the control panel were gradually migrated to the settings, one step closer to us saying goodbye to it.
Maybe the next time Microsoft cancels the "refresh" function, we can see the elegant and modern Windows in the promotional video.