This app has been shipping with Windows for decades, and it needs to go away

Windows is one of the most feature-packed desktop operating systems out there, and each new release seems to add something new that becomes essential for your PC. Sometimes, though, these features can feel like bloatware, and that's especially true when they're left to rot in the deep recesses of Windows, even after being replaced with more modern and accessible alternatives.

Microsoft has been purging a lot of old apps from Windows 11 in recent years, but one of them still sticks out like a sore thumb — the Character Map. Once a useful piece of software, the Character Map feels overly convoluted these days, and I imagine most people today don't even know it exists or what it's for. It's time for it to go.

It's convoluted and unnecessary

You can't tell me you like using it

The purpose of the Character Map is to make it easier to access uncommon characters you may need to type in certain situations. Some special characters are accessible directly through the keyboard via key combinations, but those are still fairly limited, so it makes sense to have a way to insert these characters built in.

The problem is it's an unnecessarily complicated tool for the vast majority of people. For starters, just the fact that it's an app you need to search for and open — rather than something you can bring up with a keyboard shortcut —already makes this more complicated than it needs to be. Then there's the fact that all these characters are shown per individual font, which shouldn't make a difference in most day-to-day use cases. Most likely, the characters will be formatted to the default font of the program where you use them anyway. And it's made even more annoying by the fact you need to click on a character, click Select, and then click Copy once you've selected the characters you want. That's before even enabling the Advanced view.

The Character Map is simply too much, and almost no one needs all these features.

We have a modern implementation already

The input panel is right there

Even if you do need to use some of these uncommon characters, Microsoft already provides a much better way to use them in Windows 11, making the Character Map redundant. This is the emoji keyboard, which has a lot more than emoji. You can switch over to the symbols tab and find pretty much every symbol you'd get in Character Map here.

You just have to press Windows + . (period) on your keyboard to bring up the emoji panel, and then switch to the appropriate tab, so it's already faster than launching Character Map. On top of that, this panel opens over any text box you select and remains available while you select symbols, but it's dismissed when you no longer need it. It's much easier to get the symbols you need and move on with your work. On top of that, the last 12 symbols you used are saved at the top, so if you have a frequent need for a specific one, you can avoid scrolling too far down to find it.

There are a couple of improvements I think Microsoft could make here, though. A shortcut to the Symbols tab directly would be ideal, and maybe making the panel bigger so you can see more symbols at once would help as well. Otherwise, this solution is already far better than the Character Map.

The Character Map should just be in Office

It's the only place it makes sense

I'm sure someone out there would bemoan the removal of the Character Map, but to me, this feels like a prime example of something that should be a feature in Microsoft Office rather than Windows. And in fact, it is. Microsoft Office and other suites have a built-in Character Map already, and in some ways, it can even feel more modern than the general Windows implmentation.

Office apps are the only place where I see this implementation of the Character Map making more sense. Being able to choose symbols in different fonts and select multiple symbols in one go might make sense for some kinds of documents, and Office is meant to be for more dedicated document editing features. The Character Map could be modernized in some ways, but by and large, the current implementation could work pretty well in Office, maybe even getting a dedicated shortcut so you can access it more quickly.

As a Windows feature, though, I really don't think it serves any purpose. The vast majority of people using their Windows computer aren't touching Character Map, and if they are, they'd be much better off just using the emoji panel.

Just one of many useless or outdated features

I picked out Character Map for this, but there are actually a couple more apps that probably stand to be removed from Windows 11 at this point. One of them is Steps Recorder, which is already on its way out with Microsoft officially deprecating the tool in favor of the screen recording feature in Snipping Tool. Another one would be Windows Media Player Legacy, which does still have some uses for library management, but really, Microsoft should just build that into its modern Media Player app.

Windows 11 is a big enough operating system as it is, taking up more space and using more resources than many of its competitors. The least Microsoft can do is remove redundant and outdated features.