Microsoft was clear about Windows 11 system requirements and was not budging from them. The Redmond giant announced in 2022 that it would apply an incompatibility watermark. It would appear above the system tray icon area on the desktop for users who bypass the system requirements and upgrade to Windows 11.
Windows Latest covered this announcement and the subsequent developments of this plan when it began showing up on some users’ desktops. It’s almost a week before 2025 begins, but there’s no sign of a watermark on stable builds in Windows 11. The support document spotted by Windows Latest still mentions the watermark will be applied.
We aren’t longing for it, but surprisingly, Microsoft didn’t implement the watermark after such a strong stance against unsupported PCs. Some PCs simply didn’t make the cut due to TPM 2.0 limitation while being perfectly capable of running Windows 11.
As a result, they resorted to third-party tweaks and tools like Rufus to bypass the requirements and try the new OS.
Soon after, it released an official registry fix to bypass the requirement on unsupported PCs, which questioned its original decision to introduce the watermark. We anticipated that this decision wouldn’t stick for long, and until now, the broad rollout of the watermark hasn’t happened.
Microsoft briefly tested the Windows 11 watermark on unsupported PCs two years ago
In 2022, Windows Latest spotted the watermark in Windows 11 preview builds. Then, we spotted the watermark in the stable channel.
For example, in the below screenshot spotted by Windows Latest, we observed that the System requirements not met watermark was applied to the desktop when Windows detected we were using an unsupported device.
However, this watermark was only rolled out to some PCs in 2022 and later pulled back by Microsoft.
It’s also worth noting that the placement of the watermark was also poorly thought out. That area is typically reserved for “Windows not activated” or “Insider build” messages. Displaying two warnings in the same space would have been confusing.
It seems Microsoft has given up on the idea. We reached out to Microsoft, and they had nothing to share beyond what’s already documented.
Future of the incompatibility watermark
Microsoft should let users decide whether or not they want to use a less secure version of Windows 11. After an initial warning, if the user installs Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, they are responsible for their decision. There’s no reason to mock the user on the desktop daily with a watermark.
Microsoft might be the only company trying to hurt the promotion of its product by limiting its reach and coming up with ideas like watermarks.
We don’t expect Microsoft to pay attention to this stupid idea because it’s already got a lot on its plate with multiple Windows 11 24H2 bugs, upcoming Copilot features, and making the Copilot+ PCs more appealing to anyone looking to upgrade.