hi everyone Kevin here today I want to show you the best free pre-installed apps that are included with Windows 11 a lot of the value from an operating system comes not just from the core OS capabilities but also from all the different apps that are included and Microsoft we refer to these as inbox apps because they come in the box with the OS even though you don’t really get a box anymore but hey the terminology has stuck around now you wouldn’t believe this but the entire process of deciding what apps to include as part of Windows is a very thorough process a lot of data is shared and sometimes it could be a little bit contentious and the reason I know that is I worked on the office app and I had to make the pitch or the case to the windows team to include that app as an inbox app today we’re going to look at one app that’s being included for the first time we’ll also look at two apps that this time around did not make the cut I’m sorry for those apps and then at the very end we’re going to look at one interesting app that doesn’t really offer much utility it’s pretty much impossible to find but it keeps making it from Windows version to Windows version and it’s making another appearance on Windows 11 and we’ll touch on that as well all right let’s jump on the PC and let’s check these out and here I am in Windows 11 and we’re going to look at a whole bunch of different apps today but if this is your first time seeing Windows 11 and you want to know well what changed with the task bar what’s new in the start menu I’ve included another video link in the description that’ll give a really nice introductory overview with that now out of the way let’s talk apps to be able to see all of the different apps that come pre-installed with Windows 11 let’s go down to the taskbar and click on the start menu or the windows logo icon this opens up the start menu and in the top right hand corner there’s a button that says all apps this initial view right here this is only a subset of all of your pinned apps when I click on all apps here I can see most of the apps that come with Windows 11 now I found that a few of the apps that are pre-installed don’t make an appearance on this list so it’s not truly all of your apps I’ll exit out of the start menu and to see all of your apps let’s click on the search icon down below and within the search field type in add or remove programs and then click on the best match within add or remove programs here we can see a full and comprehensive list of all of the different apps that come inbox with Windows 11 and this brings us to our very first app today and this is one that’s appearing for the very first time as an inbox app called Power automate desktop so what is power automate desktop or what I like to refer to as pad well it’s an RPA tool or what’s known as robotic process automation if you find yourself doing any type of manual tasks on your computer where you do the same step again and again and again instead you can show your computer how to do those steps and then it’ll repeat those steps on your behalf the closest analogy is macros in Microsoft Excel except instead of being limited to just one application you can create automations that work across applications and even including your browser so let’s take a very simple example right up here I can click on desktop recorder and this opens up the recorder here I’ll click on start recording and now let’s take file explorer I can move the window and here we’ll see that it captured that step here I can minimize the window and it captured that step as well once I’m all done I’ll click on finish back within pad here I see all of the steps that were recorded and right up on top I can click on the run Icon and it’ll go through and it’ll execute all of these different steps and it’s not just limited to basic recording over on the left hand side you can add things like variables conditions Loops you can pull in data from Excel from email you could even write to different applications so once again you can truly automate just about anything on your desktop Microsoft used to charge a pretty hefty monthly fee to be able to use Pad but recently they made an announcement that this tool would be made available to everyone for free and it would be included as an inbox app as part of Windows if you want to watch a full in-depth overview of how to use pad I’ve included a link in the description down below next let’s shift gears and look at some of the apps that have been removed from this version of Windows and probably one of the most glaring omissions is paint 3D here when I come down and click on search if I type in paint 3D I no longer see that as an option I still have paint but the 3D option is now gone although paint 3D is no longer an inbox app you can still find it in the Microsoft store simply search for paint 3D and then you can install it here the one thing I would question though is I don’t know how much Microsoft will continue investing in this experience since it’s no longer an inbox app but at least for now you can still get it in the Microsoft store and another noteworthy app that no longer appears in Windows 11 is OneNote here if I search for OneNote it no longer appears now OneNote pretty popular so what happened to it well here when I click on the start menu we’ll see that there’s now another app here called office and this includes things like word excel and Power power point and over here on the left hand side we can see the OneNote app so I think this is Microsoft basically consolidating some of the apps and trying to remove some of that app overload with one note just like with paint 3D if you still want the Standalone one note app you can search for it in the Microsoft store and here you can install it now that we’ve looked at apps that have been added and also apps that have been removed let’s now look at my favorite apps that continue to appear in Windows and this brings me to to my first favorite tool and this one is the office app and I might be a little bit biased I worked on this when I was at Microsoft the office app pulls together and consolidates all of your productivity tools into one place over here on the leand side you’ll see word excel PowerPoint and I have all these other tools here when I click into word this will drop me on the start page and I can kick off a new document and this brings us to the next best app and that’s the mail app that comes with Windows 11 you simply search for mail and then click on the best match the mail app is a fairly featur email client over here I see all my different accounts and folders here I could click into different emails and I could read up on what’s going on one of the nice things is you have all these beautiful themes built into the mail app you can add multiple different email accounts whether you use Outlook Google Yahoo you can add all of those into the mail app you can even link together multiple inboxes so this way you could see your Gmail Yahoo and Outlook inboxes all in one unified place all in all the mail app is fairly Advanced and it’s getting more and more functionality so it’s getting closer to what you would say find in Microsoft Outlook but it does have some things that it’s missing for example you can’t set up rules you can’t apply conditional formatting you can’t install any extensions but if you just need it for basic email usage the mail app is pretty nice from the mail app we’re going to jump on to the next best app in the bottom leand corner and and that’s the Calendar app here when I click on calendar this launches the calendar experience and it’s a pretty featur calendaring app right up on top I can shift my view of my calendar here I could go from a day View to a week View to a month view I can make all those adjustments right here down in the bottom left-and corner I can also very easily add additional calendars maybe I’m a fan of the Seattle cawks I can pull their calendar into my calendar one neat feature is when I’m setting up a new event there’s an option where I can simply include an online meeting and this will set up Microsoft teams as the meeting provider so this way I can meet with my friends or my family this now brings us to the next best app and here too I can also access it directly from the calendar experience down in the bottom leftand corner I can click on too as I click on that that’ll open up a separate app and with mail calendar or to-do you can also launch them all on their own here when you click on search here I could also type in calendar or I could type in to-do and this is yet another way I could launch those apps Microsoft to-do is a very featur task tracking app if you want an in-depth overview of everything that you can do with to-do I’ve included a link in the description down below that brings us to the next best app and before you ridicule me for this recommendation it’s Microsoft Edge and it’s the app that’s pinned to the desktop as the one and only app on the desktop so why Microsoft Edge haven’t they been losing market share for years and years well it’s true and so Microsoft has started investing heavily in it first off edge is now chromium based that’s the same technology that powers the Chrome browser also because Microsoft has so little market share they’re building tons and tons of features out to try to get more users to use Edge and some of those features are pretty Innovative as a few examples of some of the features that I really like let’s say that hypothetically maybe I wanted to buy some cookies from Mrs Fields I mean they are pretty tasty aren’t they right up here on the address bar I can click on this icon and this will show me a price history over time so this way I can ensure that I’m getting the best deal possible and this works on all different types of merchants in the top right hand corner when I click on the Ellipsis I could also have Edge read this page to me so maybe I’m studying some material or maybe I’m reading an article let me have the computer read it to me and lastly you could even pin websites directly to your taskbar so enough of this Miss Fields garbage I don’t want to order their cookies I’m going to click right here on my taskbar and go to the best cookie company that’s right the Kevin Cookie Company this brings us to the next best app and this has been a Mainstay on windows for a long time and it’s the calculator app so what’s so special about the calculator app I mean you could just do basic calculations well there is some hidden functionality that I really like up here in the top leftand Corner when you click on the hamburger menu you get all these other calculators but along with that you can also run all these different conversions here you can convert currencies volume length here’s temperature and the list goes on and on so if you have to convert something the calculator is a fantastic go-to app and this brings us to my last favorite app and that’s the your phone app simply go down to search and type in your phone and then you can launch the app experience now this is a fantastic app if you have an Android phone with an Android phone you could check your notifications you could view your photos you can make calls you could also text back and forth with others if though you have an iPhone you can share links between your iPhone and your PC and it’s not really that compelling I have an iPhone and I don’t use your phone but if you have an Android phone this is a fantastic go-to app this brings us to the very last app that we’re going to look at today and this is by no means a favorite app but it’s more of a curiosity this app has existed in many different versions of Windows and chances are when Windows 20 comes out maybe I’ll be in my 80s this app will probably still continue to appear there’s no easy way to access it when you open up the start menu you won’t see it anywhere even under all apps even under add and remove apps you won’t see this app but if you know the name of it you can get to it when you click on search simply type in dial. exe and then click on the best match this opens up dial. exe and it probably feels like a blast to the Past right here it looks like we’re back on Windows 95 so what is the phone dialer well it’ll dial a phone number you need a modem installed in your PC and then you can type in a phone number and it’ll dial it for you it won’t establish a data connection you can’t actually talk to the person through your computer once you dial instead you can dial and then you could pick up your phone and talk to whoever you dialed so why is this this included in Windows 11 I mean shouldn’t this have been removed by now my hunch is that well the app probably doesn’t take up very much space but still to include it on everyone’s computer that seems like Overkill I think the best explanation is that you likely have some very important customers who rely on this functionality maybe you have some government customers or other large Enterprise customers who need this functionality and so it’s a non-starter to remove it all right well what do you think of the apps that are included inbox should they have included more or maybe should they have cut some more and hopefully you don’t think they should have cut the office app I worked on that so that’ll hurt my feelings to see more videos like this please consider subscribing and I’ll see you next time [Music]