Unblockable ads now litter Microsoft’s Windows Surface app

Windows is full of suggestions and recommendations to try out new apps and features, which we sometimes refer to as ads. But the Windows 11 Surface app is an actual nest of advertisements, pushing you to buy various products from Microsoft and its partners.

And it looks like you’ll just have to deal with it.

I have a small cache of Windows laptops on hand, which includes some Surface devices. Since Microsoft has multiple channels to test new Windows features, I try to have a few devices available to check out new features. For example, I was gratified to note that my daily driver, currently on the Beta Channel, now includes the nice little battery indicator that should be arriving to all Windows PCs soon. But I also noticed that the smart charging feature that protects the Surface battery had been turned off.

Most laptop manufacturers include smart-charging options inside their utility applications, like MyAsus or the Lenovo Vantage application. Microsoft uses the bare-bones Surface app to control that feature, so I opened it up to make a quick fix.

What I didn’t expect was an immediate push to buy a new Xbox controller. For some reason, Microsoft’s Surface app now includes “recommended” devices at the bottom of the app, which for me included a suggestion to buy the controller — currently 30 percent off! — as well as a Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock. (Weirdly, that’s one I still haven’t tested as part of my recommendations for the best laptop docking stations.)

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Note that those ads were pushed to my PC without my consent. But the Surface app also includes a separate drop-down menu for “Discover offers & devices,” which at least is closed by default. When I opened it, I was pushed to buy an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and both of Microsoft’s latest Copilot+ PCs, with an additional button to click, leading to an entire page of Surface accessories. All told, Microsoft pushed three separate opportunities for me to buy Surface hardware and accessories.

What’s frustrating about this is that the Surface app appears to be specifically coded to allow ads. The ads popped up within the Surface app on recent devices, both on the Beta and Dev Channels. But I also hauled out the Surface Laptop Go 3, released midway through 2023 — about a year before Microsoft released its first Copilot+ PCs.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

I’d never used the Surface app on that PC, so it had to go through a setup process. When the Surface app opened, it presented me with what the Surface app used to do: Simply show off the Surface device in question. But within seconds — pop! pop! pop! — three ads loaded in below. (If I’m going to be exhaustively fair, those ads included products that should have been released by the time the Surface Laptop Go 3 was released, not the Copilot+ PCs. But still: ads.)

Again, Microsoft has a history of pushing suggested features at Windows users, enough that we’ve collected nine separate ways to try and block Windows ads, from Start menu suggestions to suggested features within File Explorer. But I’m not sure how you’d even turn these off — Start menu suggestions are governed by Settings > Personalization > Start. They’re not notifications, Spotlight ads, or search ads, either. Instead, they act like a traditional web ad — though, even with a number of ad blockers turned on within Edge, the Surface ads kept appearing.

So yes, these appear to be unblockable ads within Windows. Hurray.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

The question I can’t help but ask is, why the Surface app? For one thing, if I’ve bought myself a pricy new Surface, the last thing that I want to see within my new Surface app are reminders for what I should have purchased alongside it. But there’s already a Windows app that should be tweaked to allow hardware upgrades: the Microsoft Store app. Microsoft has confined its Store app to software purchases and subscriptions, which is an arbitrary, unnecessary limitation.

That’s an argument for another day, however. If you’re already annoyed by the rising tide of Windows advertisements, don’t buy a Microsoft Surface. You’ll see red.