Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 Releases

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Microsoft recently launched Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22494 to users of the development channel. This version mainly brings taskbar microphone shortcut operations.

This should be a useful feature for users who frequently conduct remote meetings because the microphone indicator can always show whether the current microphone is turned on. Avoid private conversations or other voices being transmitted to colleagues because you forget to disable the microphone.

In addition to this feature, this update does not bring other new features, but it does optimize the operation of the default application management for users to set.

Changelog

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).