By Zac Bowden
Publication Date: 2026-05-26 14:47:00
A newly published document has revealed that Microsoft is planning to ship Windows 11’s new Ask Copilot Taskbar feature this summer, after months of testing with Insiders. The feature, which was first announced last year, will see Copilot replace the Taskbar’s search box with a dynamic chat box that users can interact with at all times when enabled.
In the document, Microsoft describes the Ask Copilot feature as bringing “Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI agents directly into the taskbar and Start menu through the new Composer experience. This means faster action, less context switching, and AI that feels like a natural part of Windows.”
The new Ask Copilot search experience replaces the current Windows Taskbar search UI with a floating popup that you can use to search for local files or interact with Copilot itself. In our testing, we found that the new Ask Copilot search UI was actually more accurate at finding local files and apps compared to the current Windows Search.
