Back in August 2025, Microsoft launched a new kind of software initiative called “Microsoft 365 Companions,” which were like mini-apps that lived within the taskbar and served a middle-of-the-road solution between simple notifications and complex Widgets.
When they first launched, there were three Microsoft 365 Companions immediately available: People, which showed your favorite contacts and let you search your full contact list; Files, which could search, preview, and share cloud files without fully opening them; and Calendar, which let you join Teams calls without opening the full app.
But now, just over a year since these Companions were first announced, Microsoft has decided to discontinue them. It’s unclear why they’re being discontinued—Microsoft offers no explanation.
According to this Microsoft 365 support page, all three companion apps will be going into retirement starting on December 16th, 2026. You can keep using these until then, and once they’re removed, you won’t lose any data and no other existing Microsoft 365 features will be impacted.
Since Microsoft 365 Companions are mostly managed by organization administrators, you may not have to do anything—they will be removed when the administrators trigger the removal. But if you aren’t part of an organization, you’ll have to remove them yourself. You can do this by navigating to Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps.
As far as what you can use in place of them once removed, Microsoft offers the following guidance:
For calendar and people information, use Outlook and Teams. For files, use Windows Search Box, File Explorer, SharePoint, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. You can also use Copilot, even when you only remember a few details about what you’re looking for.
