Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523 (KB5072043) to the Dev & Beta Channels. As a reminder, we are offering the same builds to both the Dev & Beta Channels on Windows 11, version 25H2.
If you are an Insider in the Dev Channel, you now have a window to switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta Channel if you would like. This window will only be open for as long as we’re releasing the same 25H2-based updates across both channels. Once we advance the Dev Channel to a higher build number, the opportunity to switch will close. As the Dev Channel progresses, stability may vary, so we highly encourage you to evaluate your preferred channel during this switching window.
Changes in Dev & Beta Channel builds and updates are documented in two categories: new features, improvements, and fixes that are gradually rolled out for Insiders who have opted in to receive the latest updates (via Settings > Windows Update), and new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to all users in the Dev & Beta Channels. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog.
New features gradually being rolled out with toggle on*
Introducing Ask Copilot on the taskbar with Microsoft 365 Copilot
In October, we introduced Ask Copilot on the taskbar in build 26220.7051 for consumer customers. We are now rolling out a version tailored for commercial customers, first announced at Microsoft Ignite. This opt-in experience will gradually become available in the coming weeks to commercial Windows Insider Program customers in the United States who have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
Ask Copilot on the taskbar provides a unified entry point that fluidly connects Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents, and search. This integration transforms everyday interactions into moments of productivity:
- One-click access to Copilot from your taskbar: Engage with Copilot through voice or text in a way that suits you best. Commercial users will have access to contextual information in their Copilot chats.
- Invoke agents: Directly invoke agents from Ask Copilot on the taskbar using the tools button or by typing “@.”
- Streamlined search experience: Enjoy lightning-fast results in a refreshed design that simplifies finding apps, files, and settings.
To get started, navigate to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Ask Copilot to enable the experience. Ask Copilot complements the familiar Windows Search experience, allowing you to continue using Search as you always have while exploring this new feature.
Ask Copilot utilizes existing Windows APIs to return apps, files, and settings—just like Windows Search—and does not grant Copilot access to your personal content. For more details, you can learn about privacy and control options for Microsoft 365 Copilot here.
Feedback: Share your thoughts in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Ask Copilot in taskbar.
Introducing Agents on the taskbar
Windows is adding a new way to monitor your Agents directly from the taskbar. The Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot can delve into topics and build detailed reports, and now you’ll be able to track progress without interrupting your workflow. Try asking Researcher a question from within the Microsoft 365 Copilot App.
We are also testing a hover experience—when you move your cursor over the Copilot or Researcher icon, you’ll see real-time reasoning updates, keeping you informed about task progress. Researcher will notify you when the report is complete, allowing you to review findings and take action.
Agent Launchers on Windows
We are introducing Agent Launchers, a new framework that allows Windows apps to register AI agents, making them discoverable across the system. This standardized approach enables apps to expose their interactive AI agents for easy access. When launched, these agents open their chat experience, facilitating active collaboration.
With Agent Launchers, developers can register their agents once, making them available to all supporting experiences—including Ask Copilot on the taskbar. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already utilizing this framework to register agents like Analyst and Researcher. Developers can register agents statically at install time or dynamically at runtime, offering flexibility based on various conditions. Documentation is available at this link.
FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Developer Platform > App Actions on Windows.
Personalize what Narrator announces
Narrator now offers enhanced control over how information is conveyed when navigating UI elements in an app. Each app comprises various control types—such as buttons, checkboxes, links, sliders, and text fields—each with distinct properties and values. You can now choose which properties are announced and rearrange their order according to your preferences.
For instance, when you land on a “Submit” button, Narrator may announce: “Submit, button.” With personalization, you can opt to hear the label first, the role first, or omit unnecessary information. To customize these announcements, press Narrator key + Ctrl + P. You can select, unselect, and reorder the properties Narrator speaks for each control type.
Changes can be made swiftly using a natural language input box exclusively on Copilot+ PCs. Simply type your preferences—for example: “Don’t announce the selection info or position info,” and these changes will apply throughout the app you’re currently using.
You can also preview how your personalized announcement will sound before saving your changes. If you wish to revert to the original settings, simply choose Reset to default.
FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Accessibility > Narrator.
Enhancing the Touch Keyboard Experience for Voice Typing
We’re updating the voice typing experience with the touch keyboard to create a more streamlined and intuitive interface. The new design eliminates the previous full-screen overlay, displaying voice typing animations directly on the dictation key, allowing you to maintain focus without visual distractions.
Before the update:
After the update:
FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Input and Language > Voice Typing (Windows key plus H).
Discover Windows Widget
A new Discover Windows widget is being introduced on Windows 11, designed to help users learn about Windows features through short, helpful tips that appear at opportune moments.
What it shows:
- Quick, actionable tips from the Windows Tips website—covering shortcuts, productivity tricks, and security reminders.
- Tips update automatically throughout the day to align with common usage moments.
How to add it:
- To Widgets Board: Open the Widgets Board, select Add widgets, then choose Discover.
- To Lock Screen: Go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, then add the Discover widget to your lock screen widgets.
This widget is designed to be helpful without being intrusive, allowing you to add, remove, or ignore it at any time. We will initially test this experience with Insiders to gather feedback before a broader rollout.
FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Widgets.
Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out with toggle on*
[Settings Agent Language Expansion]
- Last September, we announced that the Agent in Settings experience was expanded to include French in Dev and Beta. Now, the languages supported by the Settings Agent continue to grow. The following locales and languages are supported with this release:
Current:
- English: en-gb, en-us
- French: fr-fr, fr-ca
New:
- German: de-de
- Portuguese: pt-br, pt-pt
- Spanish: es-es, es-mx
- Korean: ko-kr
- Japanese: ja-jp
- Hindi: hi-in
- Italian: it-it
- Chinese (Simplified): zh-cn
[Click to Do]
- The Copilot prompt box in Click to Do now supports Microsoft 365 Copilot. Users can ask Microsoft 365 Copilot about content displayed on their screens. Quickly type a custom prompt directly into a text box, which is then sent to Microsoft 365 Copilot along with the selected screen content. This change is not yet rolling out to Windows Insiders in the EEA (European Economic Area) or China, as it previously rolled out last September to Dev and Beta channels outside of EEA.
[Input]
- The AltGr layer is now enabled for the Arabic 101 keyboard layout. The left Alt key continues to function as before, while the right Alt key acts as a modifier to access additional symbols. The first new symbol mapped to AltGr on the Arabic 101 layout is the Saudi Riyal currency symbol (AltGr + S). Users who switch languages with Alt + Shift can continue to use the left Alt + Shift or the general shortcut Windows logo key + Space. Arabic 102 and Arabic 102 AZERTY layouts are updated similarly.
[Voice Access]
- A more streamlined setup flow is being introduced to simplify the process of getting started with Voice Access. The redesigned flow assists in downloading the appropriate speech model for your chosen language, selecting your preferred input microphone, and highlighting what Voice Access can assist you with on your PC.
[Taskbar]
- The rollout of new animations when sliding between open apps on the taskbar has been temporarily halted to investigate some issues. We appreciate your patience during this time.
[File Explorer]
- For Windows Insiders signed in with a Microsoft account (consumer cloud), File Explorer will now begin displaying people icons under the “Activity” column on File Explorer Home and in areas like Recommended, Favorites, and Recent. Hovering or clicking on a people icon will reveal the new Windows People Card (WPC), providing lightweight context about who recently interacted with the file and offering quick actions like starting a chat or a call through preferred communication apps.
This enhancement brings the people context experience—previously available only for work and school (Entra ID) files via the Live Persona Card (LPC)—to consumer cloud files, fostering a more consistent and intuitive collaboration experience across File Explorer. This update builds on the feature originally released in the Dev and Beta channels in August 2025.
Fixes gradually being rolled out with toggle on*
[Taskbar and System Tray]
- When your taskbar is set to uncombined, if you have an app open with many windows, they will no longer all move as a set to the overflow area when there is insufficient space on the taskbar. Instead, only those windows specifically within the set that lack space will move. This change should prevent the overflow area from appearing to have excessive available space.
- Fixed an issue where the label in the taskbar might not display correctly if you had an app with multiple windows open.
[File Explorer]
- Fixed an issue causing File Explorer to show a white flash when navigating between pages after the latest flights.
- Made improvements to File Explorer search performance by eliminating duplicate file indexing operations, resulting in faster searches and reduced system resource usage during file operations.
- Enhanced search reliability with improved handling of system and secondary drive locations, ensuring more accurate search results across all storage devices.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent OneDrive files from opening in RemoteApp sessions (showing error 0x80070057).
- Improved Voice Access support in File Explorer’s Gallery view, allowing users to open photos by saying ‘click [number]’ instead of requiring ‘double click,’ streamlining voice-controlled navigation.
[Login and lock screens]
- Fixed several issues that could lead to the login screen becoming unresponsive and not rendering.
[Display and Graphics]
- Fixed an issue that could cause Adaptive Brightness not to function immediately after rebooting your PC.
[Windows Update]
- Fixed an issue resulting in an increase in Insiders experiencing error 0x800F0922 when attempting to install the latest updates recently.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue where text might not display correctly in Windows Recovery when using the Japanese display language.
- Fixed an issue where valid Windows license migration might fail during upgrades due to the device not registering with the Windows Activation server for its CLIP / online entitlement, necessitating the use of the troubleshooter to resolve.
- Fixed an issue where external virtual switches might lose their physical network adapter (NIC) bindings after a host restart, resulting in loss of network connectivity for virtual machines and blocking normal server operations.
- Fixed an issue where the Share dialog might unexpectedly show an option to share to Shell Experience Host.
- Updated the “Change Account Type” dialog in Settings > Accounts > Other accounts to better align with other modern dialogs in Settings.
- If you were seeing a message stating “There’s a newer build available” in Windows Insider Program Settings, but there wasn’t actually, that issue should now be resolved.
Known issues
[Agents on the Taskbar]
- Researcher may appear unresponsive if you click on the taskbar icon or status card while a task is in progress. Switching to a different conversation and then back to the researcher task within Microsoft 365 Copilot should resolve the issue.
[Xbox full screen experience for PC]
- Some apps may behave unexpectedly when using Full Screen Experience (FSE), particularly those that expect to be locked to a specific size or launch additional windows.
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- We are working on a fix for an issue causing the Start menu to not open for some Insiders on click, although it will open if you press the Windows key. This issue may also potentially impact the notification center (accessible with WIN + N) and quick settings (WIN + A).
- We are investigating an issue where some Insiders are not seeing apps in the system tray when they should be.
- [NEW] We are addressing an issue in the latest builds where, when the taskbar is set to autohide, it may invoke before interacting with the bottom of the screen, obstructing the use of apps in that area.
[File Explorer]
- Scrollbar and footer are missing and displaying a white block instead when text is scaled in the dark mode version of the copy dialog.
- We are working on a fix for an issue causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders after the previous flight when opening the context menu.
[Bluetooth]
- We are addressing an issue causing Bluetooth device battery levels to not display for some Insiders.
[Click to Do]
- [NEW] We are investigating an issue where the Microsoft 365 Copilot prompt box on selected images does not function if the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is not running.
Paint App update rolling out to Canary & Dev Channels
- With Paint version 11.2511.281.0, we’re introducing the collapse toolbar feature. To get started, open Paint and click the chevron icon at the bottom-right of the ribbon to enable Automatically hide toolbar. Once the toolbar collapses, use the Show toolbar button to bring it back and switch tools. To hide it again, click the Hide toolbar button or anywhere outside the toolbar. When you’re ready to return to the default view, click the chevron icon and select Always show toolbar.
Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Dev & Beta Channels
- Updates are based on Windows 11, version 25H2 via an enablement package (Build 26220.xxxx).
- Many features are rolled out using Controlled Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to assess their reception before broader deployment.
- For Windows Insiders eager to be among the first to receive features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to access the latest updates as they become available via Settings > Windows Update. Over time, we will increase the rollout of features to everyone with the toggle enabled. If you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC as they are ready.
- Features and experiences included in these builds may never be released as we explore different concepts and gather feedback. Features may evolve over time, be removed, or replaced and may not be released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features could appear in future Windows releases when they are ready.
- Some features in active development that we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized, and localization will occur over time as features are finalized. If you encounter localization issues in your language, please report them via the Feedback Hub.
- Check out Flight Hub for a comprehensive overview of which build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks,
Windows Insider Program Team