After releasing updates to Release Preview channel earlier this week, Microsoft is releasing an update to the Dev channel. The new update for Windows 11 Dev Channel to users is being released with build 25281. This is a weekly update for Insiders, and this week’s update comes with various changes and bug fixes.
Microsoft also released an update to the beta channel which you can check out here. Both Dev and Beta are separate channels in the Windows Insider program. And the update will come on the user’s device based on the channel they have selected.
With the latest Windows 11 build 25281, Microsoft is testing different looks for Windows spotlight. Since there are multiple treatments in testing, the spotlight look will be different for different users.
The new update to Dev Channel also brings tabs in the Notepad, just like the tabs in the File Explorer. There are also UI changes in Graphics settings and a few more. Here are the changes and fixes in the new update.
Changes and Improvements
[Settings]
- Aligning with the new Windows 11 design principles, we’ve redesigned the graphics settings page under Settings > Display > Graphics to help you get to graphics configurations such as ‘GPU preference’ and ‘Auto HDR’ with greater ease. The functionality of these settings remains unchanged from prior versions of Windows, but we now have a more streamlined visual appearance. For more on all the graphics settings in Windows 11 – check out this blog post on the DirectX Blog.
- When removing a paired Bluetooth device from Settings > Bluetooth and Devices, it will no longer pop up a prompt to confirm before removing it.
Fixes
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Updated the printer icon in the system tray when printing something, so it better aligns with other modern icons.
- When navigating the taskbar using WIN + T and arrow keys, the position of the app icon should now be called out by Narrator (for example, File Explorer might say “one out of fifteen”, if it’s in the first position and there are 15 app icons on your taskbar).
[File Explorer]
- Updated the error dialog when network discovery is off so that it points to the correct location to enable it.
- Fixed an explorer.exe crash which could happen when closing File Explorer.
[Settings]
- Fixed an issue where SSID wasn’t being populated on the properties page for your Wi-Fi in Network & Internet Settings.
- In the scenario where you are prompted with the UAC dialog when switching a network between private and public, that UAC dialog should now come to the foreground rather than being behind other windows.
- Fixed an issue where Quick Settings might not be able to re-open after going to the Wi-Fi section and closing the flyout.
[Windowing]
- Right clicking a snap group in Task View and selecting “show this group on all desktops” shouldn’t crash explorer.exe anymore.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue where Narrator wasn’t announcing when the @ mentions window popped up in Outlook.
- Fixed an issue that could cause some app uninstalls to get stuck and fail the uninstall in the last few builds.
- Fixed an issue which was causing the Windows print queue window to crash sometimes in recent builds.
- Fixed an issue which could cause SQL Server Management Studio to fail to launch.
The known issues are listed on the official page.
If you’ve joined the dev channel on Insider Preview Program and running on Windows 11, then you’ll receive the latest beta build. You can simply head over to Settings > Windows Update > click on Check for Updates. And from there you can simply install the update on your PC.
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