Microsoft today released the latest Windows 11 Preview Build 25272 update for the Windows Preview Experience Dev channel. This is Microsoft’s first Dev release of 2023, and it contains a nice set of Insiders improvements and fixes.
Image source Unsplash
Changes and improvements
[General]
Moved Quick Assistant out of Windows Tools so that it appears directly in the All Apps list in the Start menu and is easier to find.
Microsoft is removing the suggested actions for searching for copied text in Microsoft Edge and displaying recommended popular websites in the Recommendations section of Start — both of which are available as of Build 25247. Both features are available starting with Build 25247. As a reminder, features and experiences that Microsoft is trying out in the Dev channel may be removed and never released outside of the Dev channel as Microsoft incubates new ideas and gets feedback from Insiders.
[WSL]
As of Build 25267, the built-in version of Windows Subsystem for Linux has been removed. If you are a WSL user, you will need to update to the latest WSL version outlined in this GitHub post when installing the version with this change to ensure that WSL continues to run on your PC. Once this is done, WSL will continue to handle subsequent version updates. In a future release, this will hopefully be done automatically.
[Print].
Added a refresh button to the Windows print queue.
Fixes
[General]
- Fixes an issue that caused some Arm64 devices to have a black screen when resuming from sleep or hibernation.
- Fixes an issue that caused various UI elements in the application to sometimes disappear and reappear in recent releases.
[Search on Taskbar]
- These fixes are only available to Windows Preview Experience members who received a different treatment for the appearance of search on the taskbar, starting with the rollout to Preview Experience members of Build 25252.
- Fixes an issue that caused the search box on the taskbar to not render correctly and display visual artifacts.
- Japanese IME candidates will now display correctly in the search box on the taskbar.
[Task Manager]
- Fixed an issue that caused filtering by publisher name on the process page to not match correctly.
- Fixed an issue that caused some services to not show up on the “Services” page after applying filters.
- Fixed an issue that caused a new process to appear in the filter list if it was started while setting the filter.
- Fixed an issue where Task Manager did not display light and dark content correctly, rendering text that may not be readable.
- Fixes an issue that caused the Launch Applications page in Task Manager to not list any applications for certain internal testers.
- Task Manager now explicitly states if there are no matching search results.
- Fixed a Task Manager crash that could occur when trying to end certain processes.
- Users can now set the focus to the search box by pressing CTRL + F.
[Narrator]
- Fixed an issue that caused settings to crash after opening or closing the narrator in Lithuanian and Hungarian versions.
- The narrator now works properly with Windows Defender Application Guard for Edge.
[Live Captions]
- Fixed an issue that caused Live Subtitles to not work in the latest Insider Preview version of the Dev Channel.
[Input]
- When using Japanese IME in combination with the Narrator will no longer read out the entire combined string each time the user presses a key.
- If only one input language is installed, the message displayed when using ALT + Shift for the first time will no longer be displayed.
- Fixed an issue with the Surface Pen not advancing PowerPoint slides in the latest version.
- Made changes to help improve mouse performance when playing games.
- Fixed an issue where the Start menu could get stuck in the middle of opening with a touch gesture.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Excel to stop responding to certain mouse-drag events when using Japanese or Chinese IME.
[Settings]
- Fixed an issue that could cause a hang if authentication was canceled when connecting to a virtual private network.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused settings to crash when turning on the power and battery.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused Quick Settings to crash when navigating to the Bluetooth section.
- Fixed the issue that the app icon under “Settings” > “Apps” > “Default Apps” might be blurred.
[Window]
- Fixed an issue that caused a black screen when ALT + Tabbing exited certain games in recent versions.
- The maximize button should no longer be slightly smaller than the close and minimize buttons when users use dark mode to highlight the maximize button in File Explorer and certain other applications.
- Fixed several DWM crash issues introduced in recent versions.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue that caused some Windows security applications to crash.
- Fixed an issue with the print queue showing stale job information for printer-connected devices.
- Fixes an issue where you may see a dialog box twice in a row in some cases when creating FIDO2 credentials for a website in the browser.
- This release includes a fix for a Windows Hello issue that affected some PCs. Microsoft is continuing to investigate resolving the issue specific to Arm64 PCs
- Fixed an issue that could cause problems with the Camera app display if you press pause while recording video.
- Some of the fixes mentioned here in the Insider Preview version of the Dev channel may make it into the service update for the released version of Windows 11.
Known Issues
[General]
- Using Windows Hello to sign in via facial recognition may not work on Arm64 PCs. The workaround is to use the Hello PIN path.
[Taskbar and System Tray]
- When using a taskbar optimized for tablets, the taskbar is sometimes cropped in half. Users may also see this problem on the secondary display.
[Search on Taskbar]
- The following known issues apply only to Windows Preview Experience members, who received a different treatment of the search on taskbar appearance that started rolling out to Preview Experience members using Build 25252.
- There is a layout issue with the text in the taskbar search box in languages that are displayed right-to-left, such as Arabic.
[Task Manager]
- Some dialogs may not render with the correct theme when applied from the Task Manager settings page.
- The data content area of the process page may blink once when a theme change is applied from the Task Manager settings page.
[Widgets]
- Microsoft is investigating an issue where the widget panel will be stuck in an invisible state in Insiders in China (and possibly others), causing clicks on the left side of the screen to not work. If this is encountered, pressing WIN + D may resolve the issue.
- In right-to-left display languages (e.g. Arabic), when clicking to expand the widget panel view, the content animates before the widget panel resizes.
