Microsoft is building a ‘quiet’ Windows, starting with animated grass

Imagine your Windows taskbar was replaced by a soft green meadow of gently swaying grass, with small bunnies hopping about. Or mechs stomping back and forth with hellfire. Microsoft’s suite of killer Windows utilities, called PowerToys, might be getting another utility soon that lets you do just that.

It might not sound like the most productive tool. Distracting, even. But one of the ways Microsoft is trying to reconnect with its audience is with different ways to make Windows feel more personal. An animated footer on your screen might be one such path Microsoft goes down.

Microsoft’s PowerToys is a suite of free Windows utilities that has been around for years, with everything from an improved version of Windows Snap to a utility that makes it easy to move crowded apps around on your desktop. Microsoft typically designs these utilities in-house, but also adapts utilities that have been released as open source.

Clint Rutkas, who has been the public face of PowerToys as the principal product manager lead for developer SDKs at Microsoft, showed off what I’d call a concept of a new utility at a meetup for Windows Insiders in advance of the Microsoft Build developer conference on Monday night. (Windows Insiders meetups were staples of the Windows 10 development process, and Microsoft is bringing them back as part of its re-commitment to Windows users.)

Rutkas told the audience that he was trying to come up with something visual to show the Insider audience, so he started playing around with various frameworks. “So I built grass,” he said, showing off a virtual meadow made of pixel art, with some small animations to liven it up.

One metaphor you might hear in the coming weeks and months is the concept of “quiet,” as in a “quiet operating system.” Other attendees used the same term, indicating that the emphasis is more on allowing users to focus, or at least manage the demands on their time. Rutkas apparently took the “quiet” metaphor more literally. My guess is that you’d be able to treat the animated footer as like a screensaver—possibly on all the time, but maybe appearing after a period of inactivity.

“This will be released probably on PowerToys at some point,” Rutkas said. “Once we figure out the correct UX metaphors, we’ll teach you all how to do this same thing that I helped create for you all.”

It’s still a concept—not even a prototype—but personalization rather than utility would be an underutilized direction for PowerToys to take. I think it’s also worth paying attention to Microsoft’s “quiet” metaphor and whether it’ll stick. We could all use a little calm and focus in our workday.