Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494

[Brandon LeBlanc]

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 to the Dev Channel.

TL;DR​

• We are beginning to roll out the ability to mute or unmute your microphone from the Taskbar starting with Microsoft Teams.
• This build includes a good set of fixes for some impactful bugs but also adds a few known issues. Please read the fixes and known issues sections below!

What’s new in Build 22494​

Easily mute and unmute your microphone directly from your taskbar during a Microsoft Teams call​

No more awkward or embarrassing moments when you forget to unmute or mute your microphone. Starting with Microsoft Teams today, you’ll find a microphone icon automatically added to your taskbar when you’re actively in a call. You can see your call audio status, what app is accessing your microphone, and quickly mute and unmute your call at any time. When you join a meeting, you will see the following icon instantly appear in your taskbar. The icon will be present throughout your call, so it is always accessible, no matter how many windows you have open on your screen. [caption id="attachment_175371" align="alignnone" width="525"] Mute and unmute your calls with the microphone icon on the taskbar.[/caption] We are beginning to roll this experience out to a subset of Windows Insiders with Microsoft Teams for work or school installed and ramp it up over time. This means not everyone will see this right away with their Teams calls. We plan to bring this to Chat from Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Teams for home) later. Other communications applications can also add this capability to their applications. The capability to mute or unmute your call applies only to your current call. You can now communicate and collaborate with confidence & ease using the new call mute feature on Windows 11. We plan to enable this feature for all Windows 11 customers in a future serving update. *Features and app availability may vary by region.

Changes and Improvements​

• We are trying out showing snap groups in ALT + TAB and Task View with some Windows Insiders just like when you hover open apps on the taskbar, and you see them there. This isn’t available to all Insiders just yet as we plan to monitor feedback and see how it lands before pushing it out to everyone.
• If you’re searching for file type or link types under Settings > Apps > Default apps, we’ll now show a dropdown of options containing your current query without having to first press enter.
• If needed, you can now launch the installed apps settings page under Settings > Apps > Installed apps directly via this URI: ms-settings:installed-apps.
• Adjusted the names of the sort by options under Settings > Apps > Installed apps to help make them clearer and added a new option to sort from smallest to largest size.

Fixes​

[Taskbar]

• Tooltips should no longer appear in random places on the Taskbar after sliding your mouse over volume, battery, network, or other icons in the Taskbar corner.
• Addressed an underlying issue that was leading to come unexpected duplication of certain icons in the Taskbar corner.

[File Explorer]

• Addressed an issue that was causing the context menu to crash for some people if you tried to scroll it.
• Did some work to help address an issue where in certain areas of the screen the context menu submenus would draw on top of the context menu instead of beside it (for example, if you hovered over New).
• The context menu icons should be less blurry on systems with multiple monitors with mixed DPI now.
• Addressed an issue that could cause selecting Open With in the context menu to unexpectedly just open the file in certain cases rather than actually opening the Open With dialog.
• Renaming files on the desktop is back up and running in this flight.
• Made another adjustment to the command bar underlying logic to help improve performance of command actions in File Explorer.

[Search]

• Fixed a recent issue that was causing the indexer database to become too fragmented, leading to the indexer unexpectedly consuming a large amount of memory and CPU for a prolonged period of time. This was particularly noticeable for people that have large Outlook mailboxes.

[Input]

• Mitigated an issue that was causing certain apps to hang when trying to drag something with the Shift or Ctrl key held down.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the touch keyboard to not appear on tablets when tapping the text field if you were to try to reset your PIN from the login screen.
• Improved reliability of the Pen menu.

[Windowing]

• Fixed a few explorer.exe crashes related to using windowing features (snap, ALT + Tab, and Desktops).
• If you open Task View on a system with multiple monitors, the background should now be acrylic on both monitors.
• Addressed a couple UI issues with the window thumbnails in Task View and ALT + Tab, notably that the close button might get cut off if the app window was too thin.

[Settings]

• Addressed an issue where Facial Recognition (Windows Hello) might be unexpectedly greyed out in Sign-in Settings in certain cases until closing and opening Settings.
• Fixed an issue where Storage Sense wasn’t cleaning up C:\Windows\SystemTemp.
• Standard users (aka non-admins) should now be able to change the time zone in Settings if Location access is not granted, rather than the dropdown going blank.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue causing links to Windows Update, Recovery and For developers to show under the main Windows Update Settings page.
• Fixed a bug where images had a yellow tonality in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic when in HDR mode.
• Mitigated an issue related to DHCP that was causing unexpected power usage while the screen was off in recent builds for some Insiders.
• Did some work to help address an issue where Service Host: WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service would unexpectedly utilize a lot of CPU.
• Fixed an issue that could cause some devices to have a black screen when coming out of sleep (where the lock screen wouldn’t display).
• Addressed an underlying issue that was causing some users with ARM64 PCs to experience an increase in Microsoft Teams crashes in the last few Dev Channel builds.
• We have increased the padding for selected items as seen by clicking Show More Options in the File Explorer context menu, or the menu options in Task Manager.
• WSL: Fixed error 0x8007010b when accessing Linux distributions via `\\wsl.localhost` or `\\wsl$` (Issue #6995).

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the active development branch may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11 that became generally available on October5th.

Known issues​

[General]

• Users updating from Builds 22000.xxx, or earlier, to newer Dev Channel builds using the latest Dev Channel ISO, may receive the following warning message: The build you are trying to install is Flight Signed. To continue installing, enable flight signing. If you receive this message, press the Enable button, reboot the PC, and retry the update.
• Some users may experience their screen and sleep timeouts being reduced. We’re investigating the potential impact that shorter screen and sleep timeouts could have on energy consumption.

[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.

[Taskbar]

• The Taskbar will sometimes flicker when switching input methods.
• We’re investigating an issue in this build where the clock in the Taskbar can get stuck and not updated, particularly when accessing the PC via Remote Desktop.

[Input]

• Clipboard history says it is empty even if it is enabled and should contain content. This is a UI issue we’re investigating – when a flight goes out with a fix, any pinned items should become available again.

[Search]

• After clicking the Search icon on the Taskbar, the Search panel may not open. If this occurs, restart the “Windows Explorer” process, and open the search panel again.

[Quick Settings]

• We’re investigating reports from Insiders that the volume and brightness sliders aren’t displaying properly in Quick Settings.

For developers​

You can download the latest Windows Insider SDK at aka.ms/windowsinsidersdk. SDK NuGet packages are now also flighting at NuGet Gallery | WindowsSDK which include:

• .NET TFM packages for use in .NET apps as described at aka.ms/windowsinsidersdk
• C++ packages for Win32 headers and libs per architecture
• BuildTools package when you just need tools like MakeAppx.exe, MakePri.exe, and SignTool.exe

These NuGet packages provide more granular access to the SDK and better integrate in CI/CD pipelines.

About the Dev Channel​

We have moved the Dev Channel back to receiving builds from our active development branch (RS_PRERELEASE). These builds are from the earliest stage in a new development cycle with the latest work-in-progress code from our engineers. These aren’t always stable builds, and sometimes you will see issues that block key activities or require workarounds while flighting in the Dev Channel. It is important to make sure you read the known issues listed in our blog posts as we document many of these issues with each flight. These builds are also not matched to a specific release. New features and OS improvements from these builds could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready, and we may deliver them as full OS updates or servicing releases. Build numbers are higher in the Dev Channel than the Windows 11 preview builds in the Beta and Release Preview Channels. You will not be able to switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta or Release Preview Channels without doing a clean install back to the released version of Windows 11 currently. 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. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected. The desktop watermark you see at the lower right corner of your desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.

Important Insider Links​

• Want to learn how we made Windows 11? Check out our Inside Windows 11 website to hear and meet our makers from Engineering, Design and Research to share their insights and unique perspectives throughout this journey.
• 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.
• Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.

Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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