Jul 01

Announcing the first Insider Preview for Windows 11

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Hi All, Microsoft released the first Windows 11 Insider Preview build to the Dev Channel, Build 22000.51!  As we finalize the product over the coming months, we will work with you to validate the experience. You will get to try many, but not all, of the new features we showed last week in this early preview. We will bring more features such as Chat with Microsoft Teams and Android apps in the Microsoft Store over the coming months as they are ready for you – we are just getting started on this journey together!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to read our blog post on how the Windows 11 hardware requirements may impact flighting on your PC and your options to get started.

We look forward to your feedback on what you love and could love more to help make Windows 11 work best for how you work, learn, and play.

Rolled it out on all my main devices, it’s stunning how smooth, fast & soft it feels…

Multiple time a day sparkles of joy when stuff pops up in a better way than before!

Happy Upgrading!

Beautiful, fresh, calm visuals and sounds

From rounded corners to the centering of content and new animations, this new visual design extends across multiple areas of Windows 11. Here are some key highlights that you will see after installing this build:

Start with pinned apps and cloud-powered “Recommendations".
Start with pinned apps and cloud-powered “Recommendations”.
  • Start: Start puts everything you need on your PC at the center with a set of pinned apps and a cloud powered “Recommended” section that shows your recently opened files from both your PC and across your devices like your smartphone with OneDrive.
  • Taskbar: Taskbar is also centered with beautiful new animations. Try pinning, launching, switching, minimizing, and rearranging your apps on Taskbar to see the beautiful new animations.
  • Notification Center & Quick Settings: The lower right corner of Taskbar has a button for Notification Center (WIN + N) and Quick Settings (WIN + A). Notification Center is the home for all your notifications in the OS and a full-month calendar view. Quick Settings is the place for you to manage common PC settings quickly and easily like Volume, Brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Focus Assist. Directly above your Quick Settings, you will see media playback controls when playing music or videos in Microsoft Edge or streaming music in apps like Spotify.
  • File Explorer: We made File Explorer modern with a clean look and brand-new command bar. We have also introduced beautifully designed context menus when right-clicking in File Explorer or on your desktop. App developers will be able to extend the new context menus. We are working to publish documentation for app developers on how to do this with their apps soon.
  • Themes: In addition to brand new default themes for Windows 11 for both dark and light mode, it also includes four additional themes so you can make Windows feel the way you want it to. All the new themes were designed to complement the centered Taskbar. We have also added new contrast themes for people with visual impairments such as light sensitivity. To change your theme, just right-click on your desktop and choose “Personalize”.
  • Sounds: The sounds in Windows 11 have been designed to be lighter and more atmospheric. They are also slightly different depending on whether your Windows theme is in dark mode or light mode. The startup sound for Windows also makes its return in which you’ll hear when your PC boots up to the Lock screen and is ready to go for you to login.

Widgets

Widgets bring you closer to information you both want and need. Just click on the widgets icon on the Taskbar, swipe from the left using touch, or hit WIN + W on your keyboard, and your widgets slide out from the left over your desktop. You can personalize your experience by adding or removing widgets, re-arranging, resizing, and customizing the content. The set of widgets we provide currently focus on your calendar, weather, local traffic, your Microsoft To Do lists, your photos from OneDrive, sports and esports, your stock watchlist, and tips.

Widgets in Windows 11.
Widgets in Windows 11.

In addition to your Widgets, you can stay up to date with an integrated feed of personalized news with the latest content from over 4,500 global brands like, The New York Times or BBC. The news feed will adapt to show stories of interest to you, and you can tune it to see more of the content you care about.

Multitasking

Increase your productivity and creativity with these new multitasking features:

Animated gif showing Snap layouts with 3 app windows.
Animated gif showing Snap layouts with 3 app windows.
  • Snap layouts: Just hover your mouse over a window’s maximize button to see available snap layouts, then click on a zone to snap the window. You’ll then be guided to snap windows to the rest of the zones within the layout with guided snap assist. For smaller screens, you’ll be offered a set of 4 snap layouts. You can also invoke the snap layouts flyout with the WIN + Z keyboard shortcut.
  • Snap groups: Snap groups are a way to easily switch back to your snapped windows. To try this out, snap together at least 2 app windows on your screen. Hover over one of these open apps on the Taskbar to find the snap group and click to quickly switch back.
  • Desktops: Access your Desktops via Task View (WIN + Tab) on the Taskbar. You can reorder and customize the backgrounds for each of your Desktops. You can also mouse-over Task View on the Taskbar for quick access to your existing Desktops or to create a new one!

The new Microsoft Store

With today’s build, you will be able to try out an early preview of the new Microsoft Store. We’ll continue to build and refine the Store. This build reveals a first look at the Store’s all-new design; in the coming months you’ll see us add other features detailed in last week’s blog post from Giorgio Sardo, GM for Microsoft Store.

Microsoft Store Preview on Windows 11.
Microsoft Store Preview on Windows 11.

Docking

When you undock your laptop, the windows on your external monitor will be minimized. When you re-dock your computer to your monitor, Windows puts everything back exactly where you had it before! You can find the settings for these features under System > Display > Multiple Displays.

Animated gif showing the docking/undocking experience in Windows 11.
Animated gif showing the docking/undocking experience in Windows 11.

Input (touch, inking and voice)

  • Touch Keyboard personalization: To personalize your Windows experience, we have designed 13 new themes for the touch keyboard including three hardware matching themes that match the Surface colors. We have also built in a brand-new theme engine that allows you to create a fully customized theme including background images. Based on your feedback we have also introduced a setting to resize the touch keyboard.
Custom theme on Windows 11’s touch keyboard.
Custom theme on Windows 11’s touch keyboard.
  • Voice typing launcher: Our new voice typing launcher is a quick and easy way for you to start voice typing in a selected text field. It is off by default, but you can turn it on within the voice typing settings (WIN + H to start voice typing) and then place it anywhere you would like on your screen.
  • Improved Touch Gestures: Check out these new on-screen touch gestures for you to easily switch among apps and desktops with smooth transitions. The gestures are like the touchpad gestures but have thoughtful improvements designed specifically for touch. Here’s a list you can try:

Three-finger gestures:

  1. Swiping left/right – quickly switch to the last used app window.
  2. Swiping down – go back to the desktop (if you follow it with a swiping up, you can restore the app windows).
  3. Swiping up – open Task View to browse all app windows and desktops.

Four-finger gestures:

  1. Swiping left/right – switch to the previous/next desktop
  2. Swiping up/down – (same with three-finger ones).
  • Pen menu: If you’re using a digital pen, you can open pen menu by clicking the pen icon at the lower right on your Taskbar. (If the pen icon isn’t there, you can enable it by right-clicking on Taskbar and going to Taskbar settings to enable it. By default, it contains two apps which can be customized by clicking the gear button and selecting “edit pen menu”. In the flyout, you can add up to four of your favorite drawing or writing apps in the pen menu, to open them quickly when you’re using your pen.
  • Language/Input switcher: You can quickly switch between additional languages and keyboards via a switcher a switcher will show up at the lower right on your taskbar next to Quick Settings. You can also use the keyboard shortcut WIN + [Spacebar] to toggle between input methods. To add additional languages and keyboards, go to Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region.

Display improvements

  • Dynamic Refresh Rate: Dynamic Refresh Rate allows your PC to automatically boost the refresh rate when you’re inking or scrolling (which means you’ll get a smoother experience) and lower when you don’t need it so that your laptop can save power. You can try out DRR on your laptop via Settings > System > Display > Advanced display, and under “Choose a refresh rate” select a “Dynamic” refresh rate. DRR is being rolled out to select laptops running the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview builds and only on laptops with the right display hardware and graphics driver will have the feature available. For more details, check out this blog post.
  • Other display improvements coming in Windows 11: Auto HDR, Content adaptive brightness control (CABC) disabling, HDR support to color managed apps, and HDR certification.

Settings

We designed Settings to be beautiful, easy to use and inclusive of all your Microsoft experiences in Windows 11. Settings has left-handed navigation that persists between pages, and we have added breadcrumbs as you navigate deeper into Settings to help you know where you are and not lose your place. Settings pages are also all new, with new hero controls at the top that highlight key information and frequently used settings for you to adjust as you need. These new hero controls span across several category pages like System, Bluetooth & devices, Network & Internet, Personalization, Accounts, and Windows Update. We also have added expandable boxes for pages with a lot of settings.

The new Power & battery settings page showing battery usage patterns.
The new Power & battery settings page showing battery usage patterns.

The new Windows 11 setup experience

The Windows 11 setup experience (often referred to as the “out of box experience” or OOBE for short) has been redesigned with brand new colorful animated iconography and more modern light theme. This new setup experience is designed to build excitement for Windows 11 right from the moment you first turn on a new Windows 11 PC for the very first time. Based on your feedback, we have added the ability to name your PC during the setup experience.

The beginning of the setup experience for Windows 11.
The beginning of the setup experience for Windows 11.

After running through the setup experience, the Get Started app is a new first run experience app that will help you quickly get setup on a new PC. Currently, Get Started has a limited number of pages but over time, we plan to add in more content to further educate and assist people new to Windows 11.

The new Get Started app will help you get started with a new PC.
The new Get Started app will help you get started with a new PC.

For Insiders wanting to go the extra mile and try this experience out, you can reset your PC by navigating to Settings > System > Recovery > Reset this PC and choose to “Remove everything”. This will wipe your machine, so we recommend you back up your files before resetting your device.

Wi-Fi 6E Support

We’re excited to bring Wi-Fi 6E to the Windows ecosystem, enabling our Windows OEMs, Wireless IHVs and ecosystem partners to deliver leading edge Wi-Fi on new Windows PCs. Wi-Fi 6E is a revolutionary advancement that enables up to 3x more Wi-Fi bandwidth and will transform Wi-Fi experiences through faster speeds, greater capacity, reduced latency, and better security. Many OEMs are already shipping Wi-Fi 6E capable Windows PCs and the first Wi-Fi 6E capable access points and mesh devices are also commercially available.

Once you’re on this Insider Preview build with a Wi-Fi 6E capable PC and driver, along with a capable Wi-Fi router, it’ll just work.

You’ll need a PC that’s equipped with a Wi-Fi 6E device such as the Intel AX210™ and a capable driver. To obtain the latest driver from Intel, see the following guidance: How to Enable Wi-Fi 6E/ 6GHz Band Using Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX210…

You’ll also need a Wi-Fi 6E capable router, such as one of these:

Once you’re connected to your Wi-Fi 6E router, go to Windows Settings / Network & Internet / Wi-Fi and choose Adapter properties to see if you’re connected to the 6GHz network band. You can also find the Band from the command line by entering: “netsh wlan show int”.

Note that if you use the mobile hotspot in Windows or Wi-Fi Direct, these features continue to support Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) only.

Windows 11 + Office

Coinciding with the release of today’s Windows 11 Insider Preview build, the Office Team is releasing a preview for Office Insiders of their Office apps with a new design that will shine on Windows 11! Designed based on your feedback, the new design gives you a natural and coherent experience across all your Office apps. Learn how to be an Office Insider and try the more intuitive Office here.

The new visual design of Office on Windows 11.
The new visual design of Office on Windows 11.

Additionally, for Windows Insiders on ARM PCs – you can also try out the 64-bit version of Office for Windows on ARM. For details, see this blog post here.

Inviting you to our Inside Windows 11 website

We are bringing you behind the scenes to learn about why and how we built Windows 11. You will be able to meet our makers from Engineering, Design and Research to share their insights and unique perspectives throughout this journey. We will be posting new inside stories on a bi-weekly basis to share how we made Windows 11 happen.

Watch one of the stories we have that shows how Windows 11 was crafted to feel completely new, yet immediately familiar.

Visit Inside Windows 11.

For developers

You can download the latest Windows Insider SDK at aka.ms/windowsinsidersdk. View the top 10 things you can do to make your app great on Windows 11 including ensuring support for rounded corners in your apps.

You can also use the latest Windows Insider SDK to build apps for Windows 11 on ARM using ARM64EC.

Changes and Improvements

  • We are providing estimates for how long a restart for updates would take. When your PC is pending reboot for a quality update, you will be able to see estimates on your power menu under Start, in restart notifications, on the Windows Update Settings page and inside the Windows Update icon that shows up at the lower right of Taskbar. This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first so not everyone will see this right away.
  • Some Insiders will have the ability to right click on ‘Recommended’ on Start to refresh the content. This is rolling out to a subset of Insiders at first. If you get this experience, let us know what you think.

Important Insider Links

You can check out our Windows Insider Program documentation here, including a list of all the new features and updates released in builds so far. Are you not seeing any of the features listed for this build? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re in the Dev Channel, and see the list of builds available in the Flight Hub. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected.

Known issues with Build 22000.51

  • When upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 10 or when installing an update to Windows 11, some features may be deprecated or removed. See details here.
  • Taskbar:
    • Taskbar will not be shown across multiple monitors but will return in an upcoming build.
    • The preview window may not display the entire window when hovering over Task View on the taskbar.
  • Settings:
    • When upgrading a device with multiple user accounts to Windows 11, Settings will fail to launch.
    • A small set of Settings legacy pages as well as fit and finish bugs will be addressed in future releases.
    • The ‘Power mode’ setting does not show up on the Power & battery page.
    • When launching the Settings app, a brief green flash may appear.
    • When using Quick Settings to modify Accessibility settings, the settings UI may not save the selected state.
  • Start:
    • In some cases, you might be unable to enter text when using Search from Start or the taskbar. If you experience the issue, press Win + R on the keyboard to launch the Run dialog box, then close it.
    • We’re working on fixing an issue that’s preventing unpinning apps from Start, making the command bar in File Explorer disappear, or hiding snap. To work around these, restart your PC.
  • Search:
    • App icons in the Search panel may do not load, and instead appear as gray squares.
    • When hovering your mouse over the Search icon on the taskbar, the third recent search does not load and remains blank.
    • After clicking the Search icon taskbar, the Search panel may not open. If this occurs, restart the “Windows Explorer” process, and open the search panel again.
    • When you hover your mouse over the Search icon on the taskbar, recent searches may not be displayed. To work around the issue, restart your device.
    • Search panel might appear as black and not display any content below the search box.
  • Widgets:
    • System text scaling will scale all widgets proportionally and may result in cropped widgets.
    • Launching links from the widgets board may not invoke apps to the foreground.
    • When using screen reader/Narrator in widgets may not properly announce content
    • Widgets board may appear empty. To work around the issue, you can sign out and then sign back in again.
    • When using the Outlook client with a Microsoft account, Calendar, and To Do changes may not sync to the widgets in real time.
    • Widgets may be displayed in the wrong size on external monitors. If you encounter this, you can launch the widgets via touch or WIN + W shortcut on your actual device monitor first and then launch on your secondary monitors.
    • After adding multiple widgets quickly from the widgets settings, some of the widgets may not be visible on the board.
  • Store:
    • The install button might not be functional yet in some limited scenarios.
    • Rating and reviews are not available for some apps.

source: Windows Blogs

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Jun 26

Windows 11 announced by Microsoft

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WIN_Start_GenZ_Light_16x10_en-US

2 days ago during Microsoft’s What’s next for Windows Event Windows 11 was announced

Here’s the link to the event page where you can reply the recording if you missed it:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/event

Windows 11 is scheduled to be released during the holidays later this year.

Windows Insiders can expect the 1st insider test build next week: Preparing for Insider Preview Builds of Windows 11 | Windows Insider Blog

Introducing Windows 11 | Windows Experience Blog

There are some new updated requirements to run Windows 11:

Minimum system requirements

Processor1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with 2 or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or System on a Chip (SoC)
Memory4 GB RAM
Storage64 GB or larger storage device
System firmwareUEFI, Secure Boot capable
TPMTrusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0
Graphics cardDirectX 12 compatible graphics / WDDM 2.x
Display> 9″ with HD Resolution (720p)
Internet connectionMicrosoft account and internet connectivity required for setup for Windows 11 Home

Certain features require specific hardware, see detailed system requirements.

These specs do exclude older types of devices and devices without PTM chips, no worries Windows 10 is not going away soon, it’s fully supported & will still get updates until October 14th 2025

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Jun 02

#MicrosoftEvent – see what’s next

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Download reminder 📅

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May 29

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21390

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Hi all, Last Wednesday Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21390 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Very smooth & fast upgrades here.

One strange issue with Edge launching from the run dialog: With Edge closed, open a website by pressing WindowsKey + R, typing an url in the run box & press enter, instead of opening up Edge, a couple of white windows appear & disappear after a few seconds https://aka.ms/AAcrs0t

Changes and Improvements

  • As part of our ongoing iconography improvements, Task Manager and MSI installers now have new Fluent icons.
  • You can now set Windows Terminal Preview as your default terminal emulator on Windows – please see this blog post for details. This requires Windows Terminal Preview version 1.9 (or higher).

Fixes

  • We fixed an issue causing the news and interests text on the taskbar to appear blurry on some resolutions and scaling factors.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain punctuation not being displayed correctly when the display language was Chinese.
  • We fixed a svchost.exe crash related to cdp.dll that some Insiders have been experiencing in recent builds.
  • We fixed an issue impacting Start reliability in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where when using dark mode, the text in the File Explorer search box would be black on a black background. Please note this only addresses this dark theme issue in File Explorer, we are continuing to investigate a second issue impacting dark theme when using Search in the taskbar.
  • We fixed an issue in recent flights where a folder might not retain keyboard focus after being renamed in File Explorer.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager showing the incorrect icon for some processes.
  • We fixed a second issue causing some devices to fail when updating to this build with error code 0xc1900101. If you continue to receive this error code when attempting to update, please file a new feedback item.
  • [ADDED 5/27] We have re-enabled the functionality where if a folder under the Start menu’s all apps list only contains a single item, we will now display that item in place of the folder on the Start menu.

Known issues

  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re investigating an issue where Search results are unexpectedly no longer following dark theme as of recent flights.
  • [News and interests] We’re investigating an issue where the flyout may occasionally flash in the top left corner of your screen after clicking the button on your taskbar.

source: Windows Blogs

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May 22

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21387

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Hi all, Yesterday Microsoft Released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21387 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Fast download & smooth install on all my devices, interesting this is the 1st build with no more Internet Explorer 11.

1st thing I tested off course was what if I try to launch iexplore.exe? Very nice experience, any attempt to open up IE returns the Edge Browser with the requested website

You can try this:

  1. right-click start
  2. select run
  3. enter “iexplore.exe https://www.technine.be”

no error message, the site opens up in edge nice!

Changes and Improvements

Fixes

  • We fixed an issue in the previous flight where during the upgrade and in the welcome screens displayed after first sign in, the text was unexpectedly using the Times New Roman font.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing errors when trying to launch Notepad via the Run dialog.
  • We fixed an issue for WSL users, preventing some Linux GUI apps from launching correctly via the shortcut that is automatically added to Start menu.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the reset or change PIN workflows not working.
  • We fixed an issue where for some Insiders, night light was immediately turning off after being enabled.
  • We fixed an issue in recent flights where you might unexpectedly get a “We can’t find an audio device” error when trying to play audio from a connected Bluetooth speaker.
  • We fixed an issue where explorer.exe might crash after repeated use of the touchpad gesture for switching Virtual Desktops.
  • We fixed two issues impacting the ability to print using USB printers.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Windows Update page potentially becoming unresponsive after clicking Pause Updates.
  • We fixed an issue causing some devices to fail with error code 0xc1900101. While this fix will resolve the problem on some devices, there is a second issue causing the same error code (noted below). We’re working on a fix for this issue as well.
  • We fixed an issue where some devices were re-offered the .NET update after it is installed. After taking this build you should no longer be reoffered the .NET update. If you experience and issue getting Build 21387 because of a pending .NET update, you can work around the issue by pausing then un-pausing updates.
  • We fixed an issue where some devices would crash with a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION error when using OneDrive Personal Vault.
  • We fixed a ctfmon.exe crash when using ATOK (a third-party IME) if reconversion was triggered in some win32 apps.

Known issues

  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re investigating an issue where elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.
  • [News and interests] We’re investigating an issue where the flyout may occasionally flash in the top left corner of your screen after clicking the button on your taskbar.
  • We’re working on a fix for a second issue causing some devices to fail when updating to this build with error code 0xc1900101. When the update fails, it will roll back to the previous build. If you are encountering this issue, we recommend pausing updates until we release a build with the fix.

source: Windows Blogs

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May 15

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21382

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Hi all, Yesterday evening Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21382 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

A special effect on this upgrade with the upgrade screens showing up in times new roman gave it a retro look 🙂 I actually liked it

Happy Upgrading!

What’s new in Build 21382

Bringing HDR support to color managed apps

HDR mode changes the behavior of some creative and artistic apps that use International Color Consortium (ICC) display color profiles, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic, and CorelDraw (amongst others). In the past, these apps were limited to targeting the sRGB color gamut.

We have added a new feature that lets these apps get accurate color and access the full gamut of your HDR display. To turn this feature on, close your application, right-click the app’s icon and click in Properties > Compatibility tab and then under Settings select “Use legacy display ICC color management”. This flag only has an effect in HDR mode.

Application Properties window. HDR ICC compatibility tool can be enabled on the Compatibility tab, under Settings, by checking the “Use legacy display ICC color management” checkbox.

Changes and Improvements

  • As some Insiders have noticed, Device Manager now has the ability to view drivers alongside of devices. The new driver focused “Devices by drivers”, “Drivers by type”, and “Drivers by devices” views enable users to view, install, and remove drivers, while the new “Add drivers” action enables users to add and install new drivers across all applicable devices. Managing drivers directly is more intuitive in many situations than working with them by way of the devices they are installed on, so we hope that developers and power users alike will enjoy the added flexibility. This change was added in Build 21343.
  • The Start menu will launch to help people get to the apps they want quickly after a clean install or upgrade is finished.
  • We’ve updated the new generic folder icon in File Explorer so it will now show an indication when the folder has contents.
  • We’ve updated the touch keyboard to use the Segoe UI Variable font and made some small adjustments to the icons.

Fixes

  • We fixed an issue in the previous flight where after updating some devices unexpectedly showed a warning in the taskbar indicating the version of Windows 10 had reached end of service.
  • We fixed an issue impacting explorer.exe reliability.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in multiple hung SearchProtocolHost.exe processes.
  • We fixed a memory leak that could result in DWM unexpectedly using a lot of memory over time.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain notification toasts unexpected not firing.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in delayed audio playback on ARM64 devices.
  • We fixed an issue where the new unified audio endpoint work wasn’t displaying on ARM64 devices.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in certain games launching to a black screen in recent builds.
  • We fixed an issue where if you select the System option after pressing WIN + X it would just open Settings and not navigating to the About page.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in certain devices unexpectedly being listed twice on the Printers and Scanners page in Settings.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in Windows Update failing with error 0x80070003.
  • We fixed an issue that could cause pixilation when a colored mouse pointer was set to be a large size.
  • We fixed an issue where the cursive style for closed captions wasn’t displaying in the list on the Captions page in Settings.
  • We fixed an issue where Japanese touch keyboard in 50-on or 12-key layout could show a non-functional and broken text candidate.
  • We fixed an issue where incorrect spacing was applied when using the voice typing to type a parenthesis.
  • We fixed an issue where when using the handwriting panel to write Chinese, pressing the return key wasn’t committing the text.

Known issues

  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re investigating an issue where elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.
  • [News and interests] We’re investigating an issue where the flyout may occasionally flash in the top left corner of your screen after clicking the button on your taskbar.
  • During the upgrade and in the initial welcome screens when after first signing in after upgrading, you may unexpectedly see the text that appears to be displayed in Times New Roman font.

source: Windows Blogs

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May 12

New BugBash from now through May 17th!

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Microsot just announced a new BugBash on Twitter

Head over to you FeedBack Hub for daily new quest & earn that new shiny badge!

https://aka.ms/FHQuests

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May 08

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21376

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Hi all, Last Thursday Microsoft Released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21376 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Start Menu searching looks fixed (typing Windows Key + search word)

Upgrades went smooth here, some devices might show the Build as expiring soon, this is a known issue

Some unexpected notifications on privacy settings, with no apparent trigger, camera & mic privacy settings notify they were blocked, checking settings show they are not. https://aka.ms/AAcgeb8

Device Manager has some nice new tricks:

Adding Drivers

Sorting devices by driver! that’s gonna save a whole lot of time sifting though drivers

Happy Upgrading!

What’s new in Build 21376

Updated Segoe UI font

We are introducing Segoe UI Variable which includes an optical axis so that font outlines can scale seamlessly from small to larger display sizes. Segoe UI Variable is a refreshed take on the classic Segoe, now with improved legibility at small sizes, and much improved outlines at display sizes.

Historically, fonts for printing small text were designed differently than fonts designed for large display text. Segoe UI was originally designed to work at 9pt, which makes it a great font for that size, but limits expression at large sizes and lacks legibility at even smaller sizes. Segoe UI Variable solves this by using a new version of Segoe that uses variable font technology to dynamically offer great legibility at very small sizes, and style at large sizes.

Demoing Segoe UI Variable at different sizes and pointing out the spacing differences.

Please note: While Segoe UI Variable is included as part of the OS, it’s adoption across all the visual surface areas is ongoing and will rollout progressively over time. This means not every visual surface is utilizing the new font just yet.

Changes and Improvements

  • To continue enjoying Auto HDR, visit Settings > Display > HDR Settings and make sure Auto HDR is set to On.
  • We’ve made some small updates to improve the drag-and-drop default cursor design in scenarios like dragging and dropping into Outlook.
  • We’re updating the Connect app icon to align with our other recent iconography improvements.
  • Based on feedback we’ve made some small tweaks to how the symbols in the symbols section of the emoji panel are sorted.
  • We’re updating the Segoe UI Historic font to add Bamum Unicode range support.

Fixes

  • [News and interests] We fixed an issue where news and interests would open on hover while the mouse was in motion over the button instead of only when the mouse is stationary.
  • [News and interests] We fixed an issue so that the taskbar button will no longer be stuck in a reduced size when the taskbar height is increased from its default.
  • [News and interests] We made some explorer.exe reliability and performance improvements, especially when using a Remote Desktop Connection.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in WSL users finding that File Explorer launch performance and other file related activities regressed after upgrading to Build 21354 and higher.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Pinyin IME users not being able to select items from the candidate window using their keyboard.
  • We fixed an issue where Windows Spotlight related text unexpectedly stopped showing on the lock screen in the last few builds.
  • We fixed an issue impacting the responsiveness when switching from Start to Search in recent flights (aka when pressing the Windows key and typing).
  • We fixed an issue where the “Search with Screenshot” button in Search wasn’t working.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in Insiders seeing pseudoloc text on the Windows Update page in Settings.
  • We fixed an issue where the Startup Apps page in Settings was showing the wrong icon for Edge Canary.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the Storage Sense page in Settings crashing for some people.
  • We fixed an issue where Manage Disks and Volumes in Settings was still incorrectly displaying some HDDs as SSD.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in explorer.exe locking up after signing into your PC if you had a large number of browser tabs displaying in ALT + Tab.
  • We fixed a rendering issue when viewing acrylic surfaces under Magnifier.
  • We fixed an issue impacting night light reliability in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where the dual boot delay timer was being reset to 0 after upgrading.
  • We fixed the issue where some Windows Subsystem for Linux instances can fail to launch with a ‘The parameter is incorrect’ message.
  • We’ve worked with our partners to resolve and distribute a fix for an issue causing updates to hang due to a driver compatibility issue. If you are experiencing an issue, please ensure you are running the latest drivers from your manufacturer.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in the Windows Update icon unexpectedly not displaying in the notification area when an update was pending reboot.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in apps hanging after pressing ALT + Shift.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in certain apps crashing if you set focus to the search box in the Open or Save dialog.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in Windows Terminal unexpectedly displaying an error saying “Unable to find the selected font” on launch.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in audio playback failing when using the new unified audio endpoint.
  • We fixed an issue when using a precision touchpad that could result in issues controlling the cursor if your palm was slightly touching the other side of the touchpad.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in a precision touchpad unexpectedly scrolling in the wrong direction sometimes.
  • We fixed an issue where the black cat emoji wasn’t rendering correctly in DirectWrite controls.
  • We fixed an issue where when typing with an IME while Task Manager or certain other apps were in focus, the unfinalized text could appear very tiny on a high DPI screen.
  • We fixed an issue where some elements of the Japanese IME candidate window could be unexpectedly cut off after increasing the text scaling.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the F10 function not working if you switched to using the previous version of the Japanese IME.
  • We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard unexpectedly had some blank keys when using the Bopomofo IME with the full keyboard layout.

Known issues

  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re investigating an issue where elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.
  • We’re working on a fix for an issue where after updating to this build, some devices may show a warning in the tray indicating your version of Windows 10 has reached end of service.
  • [News and interests] We’re investigating an issue where the flyout may occasionally flash in the top left corner of your screen after clicking the button on your taskbar.

source: Windows Blogs

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May 01

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21370

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Hi all, Last Thursday Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21370 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Nice Tweak in this build that fixes the double Bluetooth device when you connect a Surface Headphones

Upgrades went smooth but did seem to take a bit longer during the install phase

Happy Upgrading!

What’s new in Build 21370

Improving the Bluetooth audio experience

Over the past several months, we have been adding new features to make Bluetooth audio streaming easier, better, and more performant.

Updates to the “Select playback device” dropdown on the taskbar for Bluetooth audio devices.
  • Unified audio endpoint: No more clicking through multiple audio endpoints to make your Bluetooth headset’s voice and mic work properly. We now only expose one audio endpoint in the UI and will switch to the correct one automatically for you for a seamless experience. Listening to Spotify and then have to hop onto a Teams call? You can also now directly control the volume of your headset.
  • Support for AAC codec: Enjoy premium audio streaming quality wirelessly on your Bluetooth headphones and speakers with AAC codec. Short for Advanced Audio Codec, AAC is a lossy codec that delivers high quality audio streaming in smaller files – great for listening to music online.

Changes and Improvements

  • We’ve made some small adjustments to the icons in File Explorer’s address bar.
  • We’ve improved the touch keyboard launch animation to make it smoother in cases where UWP apps reflow when it appears.
  • We made a change so that if you set focus to the Run dialog, the touch keyboard will now show a backslash (\) key.

Fixes

  • [News and interests] We fixed an issue where hovering over the news and interests button sometimes may not open the flyout.
  • [News and interests] We fixed an issue where the news and interests flyout may get stuck displaying the loading spinning dots.
  • [News and interests] We made some explorer.exe reliability and performance improvements.
  • [News and interests] We fixed an issue where news and interests may sometimes briefly appear on the taskbar if the taskbar is aligned to the top.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing error 0x80092004 when installing KB5001030 – 2021-02 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 after updating to the previous build.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in Insiders seeing error 0x80070005 when installing framework updates.
  • We fixed an explorer.exe crash in the previous flight that could result in issues with the login screen and logging in after resuming from sleep.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders experiencing bugchecks with a CRITICAL PROCESS DIED error.
  • We fixed an issue where Narrator wasn’t announcing the error message on the login screen after entering the wrong password multiple times.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in broken characters appearing in text across Settings.
  • We fixed an issue in the last couple flights resulting in Cortana not launching from the taskbar after clicking the icon.
  • We fixed an issue impacting mouse input on the dual boot screen.
  • We fixed translation issues in the –help text in the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
  • We fixed OS upgrades creating copies of libdxcore.so and other files when using the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
  • We fixed two issues impacting conhost.exe reliability.
  • We fixed two issues preventing some USB printer drivers from initializing correctly.
  • We fixed an issue where if you sent the VK_HOME virtual key code while the Japanese IME was active and numlock was on, unexpected 7 would be input.
  • We fixed an issue where the Japanese 50-on touch keyboard layout wasn’t inserting full-width space characters correctly when it was in the Shift state.
  • We fixed an issue where the Chinese Pinyin IME was inserting a placeholder string if you selected a cloud candidate while the cloud candidate entry was still loading.

Known issues

  • We’re looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
  • We’re investigating an issue where elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.
  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re working on a fix resulting in WSL users finding that File Explorer launch performance regressed after upgrading to Build 21354 and higher.
  • Some Windows Subsystem for Linux instances can fail to launch with a ‘The parameter is incorrect’ message. This known issue is being tracked here on the WSL repository.

source: Windows Blogs

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Apr 24

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21364

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UPDATE 4/23: We are starting to roll out Cumulative Update Build 21364.1000 (KB5003397). This update does not include anything new and is designed to test our servicing pipeline. This DOES NOT include any fixes for the known issues listed below.

Hi All, Wednesday Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21364 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Fast downloads & smooth Upgrades here,

Right-clicking an image file & selecting edit with Photos open the app but crashes after a few seconds. https://aka.ms/AAc172y

Enjoy Upgrading!

What’s new in Build 21364

Run Linux GUI applications directly on Windows using the first preview of GUI app support on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

The Windows Subsystem for Linux now includes a first preview of support for GUI applications! This means you can now run your favorite GUI editors, tools, and applications, to develop, test, build and run your Linux apps! Please view the video below for a demo:

For more info on this change please view this blog post.

Task Manager supports Microsoft Edge process classification

We partnered with the Microsoft Edge team to support process classification in Task Manager. This will help you to identify resource consumption under Microsoft Edge. The classification is broken down to several different components like Tabs, Browser processes (Browser, GPU Process, Crashpad), Utility plugins (Utility: Audio Service Extensions), Dedicated & Service workers etc. It also features separate icons for each process to help you identify them including fav icon for website. Head over to this Microsoft Edge blog post for a list of detailed improvements.

Showing Microsoft Edge process classification support in Task Manager.

NOTE: This feature is available to Windows Insiders that are running the latest Microsoft Edge Canary or Dev builds. Insiders can download the latest version here. This feature is also rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

Eco mode in Task Manager

Task Manager has a new experimental feature in this build called “Eco mode” which provides users with an option to throttle process resources. It will also help identify apps that are already running in Eco mode. This feature is helpful when you notice an app consuming high resources and would like to limit its consumption so that the system gives priority to other apps which will lead to faster foreground responsiveness and better energy efficiency.

Right-click on child processes in Task Manager to enable “Eco mode”.

Here is how to enable Eco mode for any process:

  1. Open Task Manager.
  2. Click on Processes tab.
  3. Right-click on a child process or an individual process.
  4. Click on “Eco mode” in the context menu to apply throttling.
  5. The status column in the Processes tab should show Eco mode for the process.

This same process also works on the Details tab too.

If “Eco mode” is greyed out, then it’s a parent/group process. You can expand the process tree to apply Eco mode on one of its child processes.

And if Microsoft Edge (or Chrome) is showing “Eco mode” as enabled but you did not apply it, this is due to both Microsoft Edge and Chrome experimenting with lowering base priority and applying power efficiency APIs to improve performance which is similar to what Task Manager is doing to identify “Eco” efficient apps. You may see other apps with “Eco mode” if they adapt to similar techniques to improve performance.

You can submit feedback on these recent Task Manager changes in Feedback Hub under Desktop Environment > Task Manager.

NOTE: This feature is rolling out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel at first, to help us quickly identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. Rest assured they will be gradually rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

Japanese 50-on touch keyboard

We’re excited to introduce a new touch keyboard layout for Japanese, 50-on touch keyboard. 50-on touch keyboard is a popular layout widely used for Kiosk devices in Japan. It allows you to input Japanese texts intuitively without knowing how to compose Hiragana characters.

The new 50-on touch keyboard layout for Japanese.

You can switch to 50-on layout from [⚙] > [50-on]. It also provides alphabet and symbol views newly designed specifically for the layout. You may notice some known issues where inserting a full-width space using Shift key doesn’t work and typing some characters shows garbled suggestion candidates. We’re actively working on addressing them. Thank you for your patience. We’re looking forward to your feedback via [Give feedback] menu!

Enabling the new 50-on touch keyboard.

Changes and Improvements

  • Based on feedback, we’re updating the notification that used to say “We need to fix your account (most likely your password changed)”, to be more representative of what it’s for, and now say “Select here to sign in to your account to continue using apps between this device and your other devices.”
  • When you turn on or off night light manually, for example via the Action Center, night light will now turn on immediately rather than slowly transition.
  • [ADDED 4/22] You can now turn off Aero Shake via Settings > System > Multitasking and choosing the “off” toggle under “Title bar window shake”. This setting is now off by default so for those who want it back will need to turn this setting on.

Fixes

  • We fixed an issue causing some USB attached printers to no longer work after upgrading to Build 21354 and higher.
  • Theme-aware splash screens are now visible again in this build.
  • We fixed an explorer.exe crash impacting Insiders in the last few builds.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the About page in Settings appearing blank sometimes.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some corrupted characters across Settings in the previous build, for example in the “These folders won’t be indexed” text on the Searching Windows page.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in the Windows Update status in the Settings header not being correct.
  • We fixed an issue where the “Manage Disks and Volumes” page in Settings was incorrectly displaying HDDs as SSDs.
  • We fixed an issue where chkdsk was sometimes not calculating elapsed time correctly.
  • We fixed an issue where some of the text in the UAC dialog wasn’t displaying correctly.
  • We fixed an issue with where the recent changes to the default spacing in File Explorer, the icon in the address bar was a little too close to the side.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in the New Text Document button in File Explorer’s ribbon not working.
  • We fixed an issue where File Explorer was unexpectedly not pinned for some Insiders after resetting or clean installing their PC in recent builds.
  • We fixed an issue where the battery icon in the taskbar looked like it was at 90% when it was actually at 100% at some scaling.
  • We fixed an issue impacting Windows Hello reliability in recent flights.
  • We fixed an issue where Windows Firewall was unexpectedly giving an error recently when updating existing rules to Block.
  • We fixed an issue where sihost.exe would crash sometimes when trying to use the Share option when right clicking an app in Start.
  • We fixed an issue impacting Search reliability for some Insiders in the last two builds. Please let us know if you continue experiencing crashes after upgrading, as it may be a different underlying root cause.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing a CRITICAL PROCESS DIED bug check in recent builds.
  • We fixed an issue that could result in freezing in certain games recently when bringing up overlays when HDR was enabled.
  • We fixed an issue where certain images expectedly wouldn’t appear in your clipboard history after copying them from a webpage using Microsoft Edge.
  • We fixed an issue where elements of the Japanese IME candidate window may get truncated when using a text scaling of 200%.
  • We fixed an issue where after using the gesture on the touch keyboard’s space bar to move your cursor, the Shift and CTRL key displayed states may become out of sync with the actual state.
  • We fixed an issue that was preventing x64 apps on ARM64 like Cyberlink PhotoDirector from detecting the presence of the C++ redistributables.
  • We fixed and issue preventing split screen mode for Auto HDR from working.
  • We added support for x64 out of process shell extensions on ARM64.
  • 3D Viewer and Print 3D app shortcuts have been moved back into Start.

Known issues

  • We’re looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
  • [News and interests] Pressing ESC key to dismiss an opened context menu in the flyout dismisses the whole flyout instead.
  • [News and interests] Sometimes the news and interests flyout cannot be dismissed with pen.
  • We’re investigating an issue where elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.
  • The Windows Camera App currently does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.
  • We’re working on a fix resulting in WSL users finding that File Explorer launch performance regressed after upgrading to Build 21354 and higher.
  • [ADDED] Some Insiders are reporting error 0x80092004 installing KB5001030 – 2021-02 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 after updating to this build. We are working on a fix for a future build.
  • [ADDED 4/22] We are aware of broken characters appearing in text across Settings resulting in random characters appearing within text.

source: Windows Blogs

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