Back in September, Microsoft launched a new version of its Whiteboard app for Windows, the company’s digital canvas that lets users collaborate with other people. This update introduced a brand new UI and several new collaboration features designed for hybrid work. However, the app has received a fair share of criticism since its launch due to the lack of some key features and performance issues (via Neowin).
As pointed out by several Reddit users, the new version of Whiteboard has latency and stability issues on Windows PCs. It also lacks many essential functionalities of the previous UWP app, such as support for window animations and the ruler. “Microsoft destroyed Microsoft Whiteboard. Slower at times to load, no window animations when maximizing/minimizing/closing (Windows10). No more Ruler functionality. It is somehow gone. Eraser erases the page as a whole, not what is desired,” the original poster explained on Reddit.
In response to the negative feedback, Senior Product Manager of Microsoft Whiteboard, Mathivathan Vhallatharasu, announced on Twitter today that the team has heard the criticism and would be rolling back its new Whiteboard application to the native Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app in “in less than a week.”
We heard all your feedback and we will be doing a rollback to the previous version of the whiteboard windows app shortly (in less than a week) – PM Whiteboard for windows.
— Mathivathan Vhallatharasu (@_mathi) November 18, 2021
Microsoft has confirmed on Reddit that the Whiteboard team is actively working to “close the gaps between the older windows app and the new update,” but the company didn’t provide a timeline. Do you miss the features available in the older Whiteboard app? Let us know in the comments below.
