Good news for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel as Microsoft today releases a new Windows 11 build with some welcome tweaks and new features.
Additions in Build 23451 include a Modernized Details Pane in File Explorer and improvements to Windows Spotlight.
The modernized details pane in File Explorer (ALT + Shift + P) is designed to help users access related content and stay up to date with file activity.
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Microsoft says:
When a user selects a file in File Explorer and enables the pane, a modern pane will display contextual information about the file including file thumbnail, share status and button, file activity, related files and e-mails, and other information.
To enable the pane, choose ‘Details pane’ in View menu and then toggle the pane with an easy-access button located on right side of the command bar. The View menu/toggle button in the command bar can similarly be used for accessing the preview pane. This modernized pane will replace the legacy details pane in File Explorer.
From this build, Microsoft is also giving users a choice of two different looks for Windows Spotlight. To enable Windows Spotlight, right-click on your desktop and choose “Personalize” and then choose the new Spotlight theme.
Microsoft says it is is rolling out the change, so not everyone will see it straight away, and Insiders “will see different treatments across their PCs so not everyone will see the same thing.”
Changes and Improvements include:
[Start menu]
- Microsoft is beginning to expand the roll out of notification badging for Microsoft accounts on the Start menu. A Microsoft account is what connects Windows to your Microsoft apps, backs up all of your data, helps you manage subscriptions, and where you can add extra security steps so you’re never locked out of your account. With this feature, Microsoft is giving customers quick access to important account-related notifications. These notifications can be managed by going to Settings > Personalization > Start.
- Microsoft continues to work on adding more valuable content to the Recommended section in the Start menu by re-introducing websites after trying this out with Insiders last fall. One improvement it has made is to recommend more useful and personal websites based on your browsing history instead of generally popular websites. Insiders can right-click on a website and choose to remove a website individually at any given time. Only some Insiders will see this experience and, if you do, please share your feedback. This feature will apply to users who have opted into sharing browsing data with Microsoft and have visited enough websites in Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome (with Continuous Import enabled). As a reminder, the settings for what is recommended on Start can be adjusted via Settings > Personalization > Start. Commercial customers can manage this experience via policy.
[File Explorer]
- For Windows Insiders who have Gallery in File Explorer (which began rolling out with Build 23435), we have updated the icon for Gallery.
[Widgets]
- Microsoft is beginning to roll out a new widget picker experience with an image that gives a visual preview of the widget before pinning, a deep linking ability that allows users to jump directly to the picker from the provider app/service as well as a link to the widgets Store collection page where users can discover more apps with widgets.
- Microsoft is beginning to roll out animated icons for Widgets on the taskbar. The animation triggers when you hover or click on the Widgets taskbar entry-point or when a new widget announcement is displayed on your taskbar. Currently, only a few weather and finance icons are supported.
[Live captions]
- Languages support has been expanded to include Danish, English (Ireland), French (Canada), Korean, Portuguese (Portugal).
[Developer]
- Enabling end task by right-clicking on an app on the taskbar under Settings > Privacy & security > For developers now works in this build. The setting for this first showed up with Build 23430 but the feature was not working.
Fixes in this release include:
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Fixed an explorer.exe crash impacting taskbar reliability.
- Fixed an issue that was causing Quick Settings and its project options to sometimes not respond when using ALT + F4 to close them.
[Start menu]
- Fixed an issue that was causing the Recommended section in Start to be blank the first time it was opened.
[File Explorer]
Fixed the following issues for Insiders previewing the Windows App SDK version of File Explorer
- Fixed an underlying issue believed to be the cause of explorer.exe crashing when opening the context menu in the previous flight for some Insiders.
- If you use an Arabic or Hebrew display language, the tabs should be displaying correctly now.
Fixed the following issues for Insiders with Gallery in File Explorer:
- Fixed an issue where the scrollbar for Gallery was displaying on the wrong side for Insiders with an Arabic or Hebrew display language.
- If you have the Item Check Boxes setting enabled, the Gallery will now show check boxes on images.
[Search]
- Did some work to fix an underlying issue which could cause Search to get stuck and not open. When this happened, you might also see a delay opening the Start menu.
[Input]
- Fixed an issue where the Pinyin IME’s insert text button wasn’t displaying correctly in some cases.
- Fixed an underlying crash impacting the ability to launch the touch keyboard / PIN entry on the login screen.
[Notifications]
- Fixed another 2FA code pattern which wasn’t being recognized. If you see any others, please file feedback!
[Live captions]
- Fixed an issue where caption characters shown in the second line of the default height window were getting clipped on top.
- Features have been added to the enhanced speech recognition language files to improve performance and provide out-of-language filtering meant to limit the incorrect captions for speech not in the caption language.
[Accessibility]
- Fixed an issue where using the down key while navigating by landmark with Narrator in Edge wasn’t jumping to the first line of the landmark correctly.
NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.
Known issues include:
[Search on the Taskbar]
- There is an issue where some people may not see the search box on the taskbar and/or the settings to adjust the search box experience on the taskbar after updating to Build 23403. Microsoft is aware of the issue, and is working on a fix.
- [NEW] When you open the search flyout you may see the content flicker before the content finishes loading.
- [NEW] Narrator customers may not be able to navigate down the left side panel of the search flyout.
- [NEW] Text scaling may not work in the search flyout.
[File Explorer]
Insiders who have Gallery in File Explorer will see the following issues:
- Gallery may require clicking twice on the node in the navigation pane for initial load.
- Live updates (including filtering) are currently disabled and require using the Refresh button as a workaround.
- Thumbnail loading performance for dehydrated cloud files and memory usage in large collections are known issues Microsoft is focused on improving. Please capture Performance traces in Feedback Hub for any performance-related issues. Rebuilding your Indexer can help if thumbnails are missing for cloud files; Search for “Indexing Options” and look in Advanced settings to find the rebuild tool.
- Photos from OneDrive for Business currently must be hydrated to work properly.
- Some file types (e.g., HEIC) might not be rendered correctly or performantly.
Insiders who have access keys in File Explorer will see the following issues:
- Access keys will appear inconsistently if no button is pressed. Pressing a button will cause them to reappear.
Insiders will have issues with the following commands on recommended files in File Explorer:
- Clicking on the Share command will currently bring up the Windows share sheet (non-OneDrive).
