Today, Microsoft released the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22563 system update to Dev channel users.
Here are the highlights:
- This version is for ARM64 computers.
- As a reminder, not every version Microsoft releases will have as many new features as last week’s version. However, this release includes some new features for beta testers to try out at launch, including a tablet-optimized taskbar experience, some improvements to content in widgets, and new group policies for IT administrators in the education sector.
- There are also some notable changes and improvements in this release, including improvements to File Explorer, support for Microsoft Edge tabs in Snap Assist and ALT+TAB, and support for Emoji 14.0.
Here’s what’s new in Windows 11 Build 22563
Tablet-optimized taskbar
Microsoft has introduced new taskbar states designed specifically to give you more confidence and comfort when using your device. When you disconnect or fold back the keyboard on a 2-in-1, the taskbar will automatically transition to this optimized version. This feature is only available on devices that can be used as a tablet. It doesn’t work on a laptop or desktop computer.
This taskbar has two states: collapsed and expanded. In the folded state, the taskbar is out of your sight, allowing more screen real estate and preventing users from accidentally calling the taskbar while holding the tablet. In the expanded state, the taskbar is optimized for easier use of touch. Users can easily switch between the two states by swiping up and down on the bottom of the device.
To find out if this feature is available on your device, navigate to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar Behavior, where “Automatically hide the taskbar when using the device as a tablet” The new settings will be displayed and enabled by default.
[Microsoft is starting to roll out this feature, so it’s not available to all beta testers yet, as Microsoft plans to monitor feedback and see how it works before rolling it out to everyone. ]
Make the content of the widget more dynamic
Microsoft is experimenting with making some changes in widgets to bring more dynamic content to your widget panels, by experimenting with bringing together experiences from widgets and news feeds into one dynamic feed with widgets and news content. This should make it easier for users to discover and engage with new widgets and news content.
With a dynamic feed, the burden on your users to curate the canvas is reduced, but you can still pin your favorite widgets on it if you want. If you’ve customized the widget panel, all your pinned widgets will be exactly where you want them, and existing customizations won’t be lost.
This release focuses on making widgets discoverable from feeds, and over time Microsoft plans to make feeds more personal.
[Microsoft is starting to roll out this feature, so it’s not available to all beta testers yet, as Microsoft plans to monitor feedback and see how it goes before pushing it out to everyone. ]
New Group Policy to manage Windows Update notifications
For IT administrators in education, Microsoft has a new policy with teachers and students in mind. Starting with this release, users will finally be able to turn off any Windows Update notifications that could distract students during school hours.
Administrators are able to provide this better experience while maintaining compliance because if user action is required and a device reaches a deadline, notifications will start showing again, although most devices are able to automatically reboot overnight in the absence of students.
To enter this new Group Policy, simply open the Group Policy Editor and navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage End User Experience > Display option for update notifications.
Changes and Improvements
[File Explorer]
Searching from Quick Access has been expanded to include content from OneDrive, Downloads, and any indexed location. Use Quick Access to find results quickly.
Files in Quick Access that don’t exist locally (for example, files shared to you from another OneDrive) are now shown as thumbnails and shared with OneDrive.
[Window]
Microsoft is making it easier to grab the most relevant windows side-by-side by introducing Microsoft Edge tabs as suggested windows in Snap Assist. When a window is grabbed, you will now see the 3 most recent Edge tabs displayed as suggestions (by default). You can control whether Microsoft Edge tabs are displayed at any time, and how many tabs are displayed when grabbing or pressing ALT + TAB via Settings > System > Multitasking.
[Enter]
Starting with this release, Windows Insiders can now use 37 new emoji characters in the emoji picker as part of Emoji 14.0. Some of the new emojis include “melting face”, “troll”, “coral”, “bean”, “playground slide” and “spherical mirror”.
- Gestures and people’s skin tones change, bringing the total to 112 emojis, including a handshake. You can now choose the skin tone of both hands in the handshake emoji.
- The updated accessibility popup on the login screen, introduced in Build 22557, is now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.
Repair
[General]
- Improved login performance for some special cases of very large temporary folders.
- Fixed some issues affecting explorer.exe reliability.
- Updated the volume popup when using the hardware keys on the keyboard to account for the absence of working audio.
[Mission Board]
- The auto-hidden taskbar will now remain expanded when you switch desktops using Task View.
- When dragging a file or app to the taskbar, Microsoft has updated the information next to the mouse to show what’s supported and what’s not and is now responsive to dark mode and contrast themes.
- Fixed a periodic explorer.exe crash on devices using the French (Canada) display language, related to the battery icon tooltip.
- Updated the mute icon in the taskbar to now give hints for the keyboard shortcut (WIN+Alt+K).
[Tablet optimized taskbar]
- Note: These fixes will only appear if the tablet-optimized taskbar is enabled on your device. See above for details on the tablet-optimized taskbar, which has started rolling out to Windows Insiders and isn’t yet available to everyone.
- The top borderline of the taskbar now extends across the entire taskbar instead of stopping before the system tray area.
- The button style of the hidden icon popup is now consistent with the design of other buttons in the system tray.
- The taskbar should no longer flicker when switching input methods or otherwise adding and removing systray icons.
[Start Menu]
- Fixed an issue that caused the Start menu to not consistently open when swiping up from the bottom of the screen using the new touch gesture.
- When recommended items are newly added or removed, their icons now animate in and out.
- The sleep icon in the power menu no longer incorrectly appears as a bell.
- Fixed an issue that caused the apostrophe in the power button tooltip to not display correctly.
- App names in folders no longer briefly blur when opening a folder in Start.
- Fixed a crash some users experienced when trying to share an app from the All Apps list.
[File Explorer]
- Fixed an issue where the OneDrive icon would sometimes not appear in the File Explorer command bar when it should.
- Removed random white dots that appeared in the context menu when right-clicking the title bar of File Explorer in dark mode.
[Enter]
- Based on feedback, some improvements have been made to emoji search results, including adding more “emoji” to search results. Made some improvements to the emoji search results based on feedback, including generally preferring the exact name match of the emoji in the search results (for example, the emoji for the balloon first when searching for balloons), rather than the possible return for these keywords of various other emojis.
- Fixed an issue that caused Insiders to not see the updated Korean IME design in previous builds.
- Fixed several shading issues in the IME candidate window.
- Mitigated a crash that occurred when trying to access Personalization > Text Input in Settings after an upgrade, if you had customized the touch keyboard appearance.
- Resolved an explorer.exe crash that could occur when switching input methods.
- Improved the performance of the input switcher on first launch.
- If “Show accent color on start and taskbar” is enabled in the color settings, the input method switcher’s background color will now follow this preference.
- Fixed typing link names in touch keyboard settings options to match open settings pages.
- System > Clipboard in Settings now explains why the “Sync across devices” option may be greyed out.
- Added text to the emoji panel to help explain some cases where emoji search results are not supported.
[Search]
- Microsoft has done more work to reduce the problem of getting stuck on the screen when a recent search pops up.
- Microsoft has fixed an issue in a recent Dev Channel build that caused some Insiders to experience an issue where Search would open, but only show a magnifying glass in the window, with no results. If you continue to experience issues, please submit feedback under Desktop Environment > Search with specific details of what you’re seeing.
[Set up]
- Fixed an issue where dialogs that pop up in settings (for example, when adding optional features, or when configuring your IP address) were activated left-aligned instead of centered.
- Resolved an issue where the RSAT: DNS Server Tool would appear to be installed in optional features when trying to install it, but was not actually installed.
- Fixed an issue where Display Settings might not show the option to change the refresh rate when your PC is in portrait mode.
- When your User Account Control is set to Always notify, the setting no longer crashes when attempting to uninstall an app via Apps > Installed Apps.
- In this release, Windows Update > Update History should again show the history of feature updates.
- Resolved an issue related to the Windows Update page that could hang setup.
- Links to provide feedback in Settings > System > Notifications now take you directly to the Notifications Feedback section of the Feedback Hub.
- Fixed an issue that prevented adding Bluetooth or Cast to Quick Settings from popping up.
- Media controls above quick settings should now show when media is on, or hide when media is off, more reliably.
- Fixed an issue where the numbers in the volume popup that opened were inconsistent with the volume numbers in the quick settings when using the hardware keys.
- Improved placement of accessibility popups above login screen buttons.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented certain Bluetooth devices from connecting automatically after powering on or resuming the computer from sleep/hibernate.
[Widget]
- Information such as temperature is now displayed when the taskbar is left-aligned.
- Fixed an issue where the weather information for a widget could display different information in a multi-monitor setup.
[Task Manager]
- Microsoft has done some work to help resolve an issue where the navigation bar in the updated Task Manager design would display a black glitch when launching Task Manager from a minimized state.
[Window]
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t use the minimize, maximize, and close buttons (among other things) on maximized apps because the notification center holding focus.
- Made some work to improve the smoothness of animations when invoking a task view using an on-screen three-finger gesture.
- The improved general reliability of ALT+Tab to help resolve situations where it might get stuck.
- Addresses an issue affecting performance when using ALT+Tab, Task View, or Snap Snap Assist in recent releases.
- Snap snapshot group titles should now display correctly when using windows with Arabic or Hebrew display languages.
- Some improvements have been made to the invocation experience of the Snap snapshot layout when moving the window to the top of the screen.
- Fixed an issue where dragging a snapped window while the Snap Snap Accessibility was active would include the thumbnail of the dragged window.
- When using the down arrow to browse app thumbnails in Snap Assist, it should now cycle to the top when you reach the bottom row.
- Fixed an issue where two crashes could occur when using snapshot layouts on secondary displays or portrait mode displays.
- Made the margins a bit larger when grabbing on the left and right sides of the screen.
- Using a keyboard shortcut to switch desktops while the Start menu is open should no longer cause the desktop to switch back unexpectedly after closing Start.
[The internet]
- Added some text to show disconnect after hitting the disconnect button in the VPN section of quick settings to communicate if work is in progress.
- Fixed an issue where a managed virtual private network profile that specified IPv4 routing might disconnect frequently.
[Narrator]
- The narrator no longer jumps to the search box in Start after using the Power or Account menu.
- The narrator will now properly navigate to and read app information after switching to the All Apps section of the Start menu.
- The narrator in Word Online will now correctly read new lines when arrowing up and down between paragraphs.
- Fixed an issue that caused Narrator to stop reading or be unable to move the cursor when entering a table in Microsoft Word.
- Improved how Narrator reads the content of the accessibility popup on the login screen.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue that caused the back button to be invisible in the login window of some applications when using a contrasting theme.
Note: Some of the fixes mentioned here in Insider Preview builds from active development branches may make their way into servicing updates for the October 5, 2021, generally available Windows 11 release builds.
Known Issues
[General]
- Users running Windows 10 will experience a “0% download” hang on Windows Update if they try to upgrade directly to Build 22563 in the Dev Channel. To bypass this issue, join the Beta channel, install the Windows 11 build provided there, then switch to the Dev Channel to receive the Build 22563 update. Microsoft is aware of this issue and will fix it in an upcoming release.
- When going through the Device Setup Experience (OOBE) on the Enterprise Edition, the Network Add screen will be skipped on the first try. As a workaround, when the user sees the “Name your PC” option, reboot and restart OOBE. The network add interface will now appear as expected.
- Many users no longer hear the startup sound.
[Mission Board]
- explorer.exe may crash if you right-click the Start icon or press WIN+X in this build. If you use this menu to start the task manager, temporarily use CTRL + Shift + Esc.
[Tablet optimized taskbar]
- Windows Insiders with the feature enabled will not be able to use the new touch gestures announced in Build 22557 from the bottom of the screen until they first remove or fold back the keyboard. Insiders using PCs such as laptops that cannot be used as tablets will not be able to use touch gestures from the bottom of the screen if the feature is enabled. This will be fixed in a future release.
- The taskbar didn’t always collapse automatically after launching an app or tapping outside the extended taskbar on the 2-in-1.
- Some areas of the OS don’t yet track the height of the extended taskbar on 2-in-1s, so you may see overlapping components like widgets overlapping the taskbar.
- On 2-in-1s, the transition animation between the expanded taskbar and the collapsed taskbar is still being tweaked.
[File Explorer]
- File Explorer’s search box may not work when typing and clicking suggestions.
- Microsoft is working to fix issues with icon sizes, visual bugs, and text clipping showing the OneDrive storage popup.
[Widget]
- Sometimes when pinned from a feed stream, pinned widgets are placed on top, rather than below other pinned widgets. If this happens, this will automatically correct within 30 minutes, moving the most recently pinned widget to the expected default position. Or you can log out of the widget panel, and log back in immediately, which should correct the problem.
- After rearranging the widgets in the widget panel, some users experienced an issue where widgets in fixed sections were not rendering correctly. If this happens, logging out of your widget panel and logging in now should correct the problem.
[Focus]
- Taskbar icons and tooltips may not match the focus state.
- The Clock application has not updated the Windows focus state when the focus session is configured within the application. This will be resolved in a future app update.
[Live subtitles]
- Some full-screen applications, such as video players, prevent live captions from being displayed.
- Some applications located near the top of the screen, closed before running Live Captions, will be restarted behind the Live Captions window at the top. When an application has focus, use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) to move the application’s window further down.
- When Live Caption is on top, the very top of a maximized application (for example, the title bar’s window management buttons) cannot be touched by touch.
[Task manager]
- Microsoft is aware that the efficiency mode icon is missing on some subprocesses.
- Some setting options are not preserved.
- Microsoft is working on fixing issues around icon sizes, visual bugs, and in most cases, the fix is to resize the Task Manager or lower the resolution setting from Settings > Display > Display Resolution.