It’s official, the gold medal-winning Windows 11 feature is…

Rounded corners for windows voted best part of UI redesign

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

The best feature ofWindows 11’s big redesign is the new rounded corners the interface sports, or that’s the result of a recent vote.

The Twitter account for the Windows Dev Center held the poll in a knockout stage fashion, where various UI upgrades were pitted against each other in a series of votes, where the winner progressed to the next round, and the eventual final.

That final ended up being between the new rounded corners for windows, which came up against the revamped snap controls to allow for easier and more convenient multi-tasking of apps.

And the gold 🥇 goes to…. rounded corners 🎉Thanks to all who voted in our Windows 11 UI Element Bracket! pic.twitter.com/tnhqBl9y1sAugust 4, 2021

And indeed it was a close run thing, but rounded corners came out on top with a 54% share of the vote.

On its way through to the final,Microsoft’s rounded corners dispatched refreshed icons in the first round, and easily dispensed with the new – anddefinitely admired– background art in the semi-final (securing 75% of the vote in the latter case).

On the other side of the bracket, snap controls beatwidgetsin the first round and then outdid pinned apps to advance to the final.

Analysis: a victory for the superficial?

Rounded corners of windows, dialog boxes and menus might seem a rather superficial winner of the competition to find the best interface change inWindows 11, but it does have a fairly big effect on the overall appearance of theoperating system. We personally think that it’s one of those changes that sounds small, but actually has a bigger impact than imagined on making Windows look like a more modern OS overall (or indeed more Mac-like).

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

That said, there are some folks who dislike the rounded appearance, but as with any UI change, there are going to be detractors out there somewhere. Of course,snap controls are a far more practical UI refinement, and pretty niftily implemented in Windows 11 as we’ve seen, offering a tangible boon to multi-tasking and working with multiple apps in general.

So, it’s not surprising, then, that the final vote was a pretty close-run thing, and we also have to remember that far from everybody snaps apps into place on their desktop, too.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

Alt + Tab trouble: Windows 11’s 24H2 update turns time-saving shortcut into ten-second headache

Windows 11’s Paint and Notepad apps are getting smart new AI features – though one of the best will be for Copilot+ PCs only

Smeg Combi Steam Oven review: a multi-functional countertop oven that looks stunning and cooks well