According to the company’s latest blog post, they’re introducing a simplified user interface for the critical error screen, designed to reduce downtime during a crash to about two seconds for most users. The new UI, Microsoft says, “improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed.”
While that’s all well and good, the change that attracted the most attention was not the improved readability but rather the shift in the screen’s color palette from blue to black, raising questions about why the change was necessary and how exactly the Blue Screen of Death no longer aligned with “Windows 11 design principles” after existing in some shade of blue for nearly 40 years, since the original version of Windows launched back in 1985.
Behold, here’s Windows 11’s new BSoD (at least we can still call it BSoD):
