The new title bar dropdown turns the sidebar into one of four layouts a user can pick, a structural shift from earlier Copilot integrations that pushed themselves onto the desktop.
Microsoft has been trying to make Copilot feel like a natural part of the Windows desktop for more than two years, and according to Windows Latest, it has redesigned the AI's shape on Windows at least six times in that span. The current experiment is more interesting than the others because it is finally giving the user a choice.
Per Windows Latest's hands-on test, Microsoft is testing a new dropdown menu inside the Copilot app's title bar in Windows 11 that exposes four optional screen modes. The reader can leave Copilot as a regular floating window, float it as a picture-in-picture overlay, dock it to the left edge of the screen, or dock it to the right edge. The dropdown sits next to the standard minimize, maximize, and close controls, and selecting a mode snaps Copilot into that layout. The sidebar behavior that Windows Latest describes is real, but it is one of four outcomes in the menu, not a forced replacement for the user's existing app arrangement.
The opt-in mechanism is the part that changes the texture of the rollout. Earlier Copilot integrations on Windows 11 pushed themselves onto the screen: a sidebar that appeared on launch, a dedicated Copilot key on new keyboards, a system-level overlay. The new design asks the user to pick a layout from a title-bar dropdown before Copilot rearranges anything. That distinction matters for anyone who has felt that Microsoft is sliding AI into the operating system without consulting the person sitting in front of it.
When the user picks a docked mode, the rest of the desktop reorganizes to make room. Choosing dock-to-right pushes the active app, whether File Explorer, a browser, or a document, to fill the left side of the screen, while Copilot takes a fixed-width column on the right. Choosing dock-to-left flips the geometry. Picture-in-picture floats Copilot above the active app at a smaller size, and the default-window option behaves like any other Win32 application. Windows Latest has separately reported that Microsoft is walking back its floating Copilot button in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint after user backlash, restoring the option to keep Copilot on the ribbon. The pattern across both is that Microsoft is starting to ship Copilot as a layout the user selects rather than a behavior the user is handed.
The new Copilot snap layouts are visually parallel to, but technically separate from, Windows 11's native Snap Layouts feature. Snap Layouts, which Microsoft introduced in 2021, let the user hover over a window's maximize button and choose from preset arrangements for the active app across one or more monitors. The Copilot dropdown is a per-app version of the same idea, applied to a single AI window instead of a single app, and it lives inside Copilot's own title bar rather than the OS shell. That is the structural development worth watching: per-app snap behavior for AI surfaces is a design pattern Microsoft is now testing, and other AI vendors, including OpenAI's ChatGPT desktop app and Anthropic's Claude desktop client, will face the same question of how an assistant should coexist with the apps a user is already running.
Underneath the new test, Copilot on Windows now runs inside an Edge-based wrapper that ships its own private Edge instance, a shift that has been underway since earlier in 2026, per Windows Latest. A web-based runtime is easier to dock and resize than a native Win32 chat surface, and it is the kind of change that makes per-app snap layouts practical to ship at all. The four-mode menu is also a return to a design Microsoft tried in 2024, when Copilot launched on Windows 11 as a sidebar and was then replaced. The current version of the idea is, again, optional, and the title-bar dropdown is the visible evidence of that.
Microsoft has not confirmed any of this in a Windows Insider blog post or a public statement, and the rollout is described as slowly rolling out with no Insider ring or build number attached, per Windows Latest. That is a single on-the-record witness for the four-mode menu at this point, and readers should treat it accordingly until Microsoft publishes a matching announcement.
The shell-side test is a separate effort from a parallel Microsoft 365 program. The Microsoft 365 Insider blog confirms that Microsoft is consolidating Copilot entry points in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single bottom-right icon plus a contextual suggestion, with a right-click "Dock" option and drag-to-dock functionality arriving soon. That work targets Windows build 2606 (19822.20182) and Mac build 16.108 or higher, with general availability in early June 2026. The shell-side test on Windows 11 and the M365-side test on Office are related ideas, but they ship on different surfaces and on different timelines, and Microsoft has only spoken on the record about the M365 side.
The open question worth carrying: when a user opens Copilot for the first time on a Windows 11 PC that supports the new dropdown, does Microsoft default to docked mode, or does Copilot still open as a regular window until the user opts in? Windows Latest does not answer that in the current reporting, and Microsoft has not addressed it publicly. The answer will determine whether this counts as a true user-controlled layout or a fourth, more polite attempt at pushing Copilot into the desktop.