Microsoft is retiring its Calendar, People and Files companion apps for Windows 11, roughly a year after it started installing them automatically on enterprise PCs. The apps stop working and lose support on Dec. 16, and Microsoft wants admins to pull them from managed devices before then, BleepingComputer reported.

The three taskbar apps came with Copilot built in and were meant to let users look up colleagues, find Microsoft 365 and local files and check their calendar without opening Outlook or Teams. In October 2025, Microsoft said it would begin installing them on Windows 11 enterprise devices that had the Microsoft 365 desktop apps, and by default they launched at startup. Admins could opt out of the automatic install in the Apps Admin Center.

Microsoft Is Retiring Its Windows 11 Companion Apps on Dec. 16

"We are retiring the companion apps and they will cease to function and will no longer be supported after 16 December 2026. We recommend that administrators remove the apps from the devices in their tenant by that date," Microsoft said in a Microsoft 365 message center post, quoted by gHacks. Microsoft has also stopped installing them through Microsoft 365 Apps updates.

What admins need to do

Microsoft's retirement guidance lays out a short checklist: