Microsoft is killing its ‘Companion’ taskbar mini-apps in December

Microsoft is killing its ‘Companion’ taskbar mini-apps in December

By Mikael Markander
Publication Date: 2026-09-24 13:42:00

But now, just over a year since these Companions were first announced, Microsoft has decided to discontinue them. It’s unclear why they’re being discontinued—Microsoft offers no explanation.

According to this Microsoft 365 support page, all three companion apps will be going into retirement starting on December 16th, 2026. You can keep using these until then, and once they’re removed, you won’t lose any data and no other existing Microsoft 365 features will be impacted.

Since Microsoft 365 Companions are mostly managed by organization administrators, you may not have to do anything—they will be removed when the administrators trigger the removal. But if you aren’t part of an organization, you’ll have to remove them yourself. You can do this by navigating to Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps.

As far as what you can use in place of them once removed, Microsoft offers the following guidance:

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