It hosts quick action buttons, brightness and volume sliders, and system tray items such as Windows Security, OneDrive, and third-party app icons. The icon clearly says it is for quick access to system settings and applications. The Control Center could be open from the system tray via an icon. Functionally, it resembles the same option from iOS. When trying to clean up the system tray and move the quick action buttons from the 'Notification Center', Microsoft came up with a new flyout for system options and shortcuts. It was about 5 years before the release of a brand new operating system. Some of these ideas are now implemented in Windows 11, but work on them began at the time of Windows 10. The engineers thought about merging some buttons, turning off some of the icons, and changing the system tray to save space. That's why development teams began to work out ideas and concepts for how to clean up the taskbar. Even if some system icons were actively used, users often had to disable them to free up space on the taskbar. Users had too little free space to pin their apps and see the running software. The presence of a large number of system icons was a real problem for devices with small screens or low resolutions. Windows Central's Zac Bowden continues their 'Windows Unshipped' series of posts, this time about the Action Center developed for the cancelled Andromeda OS which the desktop Windows 11 could get.īy 2017-2018, Windows 10's taskbar had too many integrated features with appropriate icons, including Task View, Cortana, Windows Ink Workspace, My People, Action Center, and a huge search box.

Action center on windows 10