News

Microsoft Releases Windows 11 Preview Build 22463

By Brian Burgess

Published September 22, 2021

Microsoft today is releasing Windows 11 Preview Build 22463 to Insiders in the Dev channel. The company is also releasing news about the Dev Channel that’s worth reading.

Microsoft today is releasing Windows 11 preview build 22463 to Insiders in the Dev channel. This follows build 22458. There is not a lot in the way of new features per se but Microsoft is making some announcements on the type of builds and experiences you’ll see in the Dev channel moving forward. Here is a look at what you can expect.

Windows 11 Preview Build 22463

First off, Microsoft announced at TL;DR for Insiders in the Dev Channel which is as follows:

• Please see the new section at the end of this blog post outlining the type of builds and experiences you will see in the Dev Channel.
• It will be a little while before major new features show up. However, this build includes a good set of improvements and bug fixes. Speaking of fixes…
• The issue impacting the Taskbar where icons appeared misaligned and/or cut off is FIXED in this build!
• Insider PCs that are Mobile Device Managed (MDM) will not receive this build. There is an issue in this build that prevents PCs from successfully updating to this build. We hope to have this fixed in the next flight.
• Microsoft PowerToys is now available in the Microsoft Store in Windows 11!

And this is the list of changes and improvements in today’s release:

• When you have a file or folder selected in File Explorer, you can now use CTRL + Shift + C to copy the path to your clipboard.
• Rounded the corners of the pop-ups shown when clicking “identify displays” in Display Settings.
• Made some small adjustments to the contrast theme colors based on feedback, including making hyperlinks a little more distinct on hover when using the desert theme.
• Added an icon next to the volume slider in Quick Settings to help make the option for managing audio endpoints more discoverable.
• Updated the Windows Ease of Access folder in Start’s All apps list to now simply be called Accessibility.
• Added an option to Focus Assist settings so you can choose whether or not you would like Focus Assist to be automatically enabled for the first hour after a Windows feature update.

And this is the list of fixes to various parts of the OS:

[Start]

• System now shows up again as an option when right-clicking on the Start button (WIN + X).
• Fixed an issue that was causing Narrator to not be able to focus on the headers in Start sometimes with touch.
• Mitigated an issue where when a large number of apps were installed, the Start menu might get stuck with no app icons showing (only app name) after a DPI change. This change is also believed to help improve Start launch reliability on secondary monitors in mixed DPI scenarios.
• If the accessibility option “Always show scrollbars” is enabled, switching to the All apps list will no longer cause the scrollbar to escape the window boundaries during the transition animation.
• Pressing the down arrow after opening Start will now navigate into the pinned apps section instead of jumping to your username.

[Taskbar]

• Icons on the Taskbar are properly aligned and centered again apps should no longer get cut off by the “show hidden icons” button when too many apps are open.
• The Taskbar previews text will now follow the Accessibility setting to increase text size.
• Adjusted the notification count badge for notification center to fix an issue where some of the numbers weren’t centered in the circle.
• Fixed an issue where the Chat flyout wouldn’t light dismiss the first time it was opened.
• Improved explorer.exe reliability when the Taskbar spanned multiple monitors.

[Search]

• Opening Search on secondary monitors works now.

[File Explorer]

• Mitigated an issue that could cause File Explorer to hang when doing a search.
• Pressing F1 in File Explorer will now open a search for Windows 11 help and not Windows 10.
• Made a change to address an issue where items under View, Sort by, and Group by submenus in the context menu weren’t displaying a mark to show they were selected.

[Input]

• Fixed an issue resulting in the mouse pointer position in WDAG being incorrect when the monitor was in portrait mode.
• Text predictions (both for the touch keyboard, and hardware keyboard) should be working again now in this flight for English and certain other languages where it was broken.
• Addressed an issue when using the previous version of the Korean IME where when typing quickly in certain apps the Shift Key Up event wouldn’t be received by the app.
• Fixed an issue that was making the touch keyboard key borders look blurry in certain cases.
• Mitigated an issue where the touch keyboard would crash in certain cases when switching dock mode while the voice typing UI was visible.

[Settings]

• Removed duplicate Nearby Sharing entry in Focus Assist priority list.
• Fixed an issue that was causing a repeated prompt to reset to default settings when “Automatically optimize new drives” was unselected in Optimize Drives.
• If you press WIN + P the current projection mode will now have initial keyboard focus instead of always the first in the list.

[Windowing]

• Trying to switch Desktops (for example, using the keyboard shortcuts) when there is only one should no longer steal foreground focus.
• Addressed an issue where the snap layouts flyout would start flashing when invoked in certain places on the screen.
• Move To option when right clicking a window thumbnail in Task View is now aligned with the other context menu entries.

[Windows Sandbox]

• Windows Sandbox should now launch in this build. In previous Dev Channel builds, Windows Sandbox would not launch in some circumstances.

[Windows Subsystem for Linx (WSL) & Hyper-V]

• We have fixed the issue causing both WSL2 and Hyper-V to not work on ARM64 PCs such as the Surface Pro X in previous Dev Channel builds.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue that caused some PCs to bug check with DRIVER_PNP_WATCHDOG error when attempting to update to a recent build.
• Fixed an issue that caused some Surface Pro X’s to bug check with a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR.
• Fixed an issue where the Autorun registry entry for Command Prompt would not work if /k was used.
• Did some work to address an issue where not being able to parse a certain firewall rule would result in all rules following that one not being migrated on upgrade.
• Addressed an issue where the Quick Assist window could be small and not possible to resize.
• Fixed an issue for some users where if the sign in button in Quick Assist was clicked, it would open a blank browser window and they wouldn’t be able to proceed to sign in.
• Mitigated an issue with certain menus / context menus that was causing a visual glitch with the shadow on first launch.
• Mitigated a race condition that was causing certain PCs to sometimes bugcheck with INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR when resuming from hibernation.
• Fixed an issue that was making some PCs unable to progress past the boot screen when upgrading to 224xx builds with certain SSDs attached.

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 after general availability on October 5^th.

Also note that Microsoft PowerToys is now available in the Microsoft Store with the company saying:

Exciting news everyone, Microsoft PowerToys is now available in the Microsoft Store in Windows 11! Take advantage of advanced functionalities to maximize your productivity today! – Download it at https://aka.ms/GetPowerToys! As a reminder, Store now accepts Win32 applications and all the great open-source projects that are part of our ecosystems. Sign up for the waitlist and learn more about the new Store here.

A reminder of Insider Builds (Especially Dev Channel)

Keep in mind that these builds are not meant for inexperienced users. They are also not meant to run on your primary production machine. Insider builds contain many known stability issues that can cause your system to become unstable or even crash. Especially the new builds from the Dev Channel.

This is the reason it’s only being offered to members of the Windows Insider Program. When the final build is ready for the public, it will be preinstalled on new PCs.  Then it will be available for users with eligible PCs in the first part of 2022.

And in its blog post, Microsoft notes:

[REMINDER] Build numbers are higher in the Dev Channel than the Windows 11 preview builds in the Beta Channel because we’ve moved the Dev Channel back to receiving builds from our active development branch (RS_PRERELEASE). This means the builds released to the Dev Channel no longer match the Windows 11 experience that will be released to customers on October 5th.