Hello Windows Insiders, today marks the release of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523 (KB5072043) to both the Dev and Beta Channels. This update continues to unify the experience across these channels, both based on Windows 11, version 25H2.
For those participating in the Dev Channel, a unique opportunity arises: you can now switch to the Beta Channel. This option remains available only while we continue to release the same 25H2-based updates across both channels. Once the Dev Channel progresses to a higher build number, this switching window will close. As the Dev Channel evolves, it may introduce less stability, so we encourage you to carefully consider your channel preference during this transition period.
Changes in the builds and updates for both channels are categorized into two segments: new features, improvements, and fixes that are gradually rolled out for Insiders who opt in to receive the latest updates (accessible via Settings > Windows Update), and those that are available to all users in the Dev and Beta Channels. For further details, please refer to the Reminders section at the end 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 unveiled Ask Copilot on the taskbar for consumer users in build 26220.7051. We are now excited to roll out a version tailored for commercial customers, initially 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 possess Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
- One-click access to Copilot from your taskbar: This integrated experience allows you to engage with Copilot through voice or text, utilizing contextual information from your Work IQ during chats.
- Invoke agents: You can invoke agents directly from Ask Copilot using the tools button or by typing “@.”
- Streamlined search experience: A refreshed design provides lightning-fast results, making it easier to locate apps, files, and settings.
To begin, navigate to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Ask Copilot to enable this feature. Ask Copilot complements the familiar Windows Search experience, allowing you to continue using Search while exploring this new functionality. Importantly, Ask Copilot utilizes existing Windows APIs to return apps, files, and settings without granting access to your personal content. For more information on privacy and control options for Microsoft 365 Copilot, please visit the relevant documentation.
Feedback: We welcome your thoughts in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Ask Copilot in taskbar.
Introducing Agents on the taskbar
Windows is enhancing your ability to monitor Agents directly from the taskbar. The Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot can delve into topics and compile detailed reports, allowing you to track progress without interrupting your workflow. You can experiment by asking Researcher a question within the Microsoft 365 Copilot App.
We are also testing a hover experience—hovering over the Copilot or Researcher icon will display real-time reasoning updates, keeping you informed of task progress. Once a report is completed, you will receive a notification and see a ‘completed’ status on the taskbar. Clicking either will redirect you back to Microsoft 365 to review the report and take action on your insights.
We are exploring various ways to present Agent tasks in the taskbar to best meet customer needs.
Agent Launchers on Windows
Introducing Agent Launchers, a framework that enables Windows apps to register AI agents, making them discoverable throughout the system. This standardized approach allows apps to expose their interactive AI agents, which can be accessed by Windows and other applications. When launched, these agents provide a chat experience for seamless collaboration, asking clarifying questions and maintaining context to facilitate task completion.
With Agent Launchers, developers can register their agents once, making them available across all supporting experiences, including Ask Copilot on the taskbar and other installed apps. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already utilizing this framework with agents like Analyst and Researcher. Developers can register agents either statically at install time or dynamically at runtime, offering flexibility based on various conditions. Documentation is available at this link.
FEEDBACK: We encourage you to 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 consists of various control types, such as buttons and checkboxes, which include properties (like name and role) and values (for instance, a slider set to “75%”). Previously, Narrator announced these in a fixed order, but you can now select which properties are spoken and rearrange their order to suit your preferences.
For instance, when landing on a “Submit” button, you can choose to hear the label first, the role first, or omit unnecessary information. To customize these announcements, press Narrator key + Ctrl + P to select, unselect, and reorder properties for each control type.
Additionally, you can utilize a natural language input box available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs to quickly specify your preferences. Changes apply to that control type throughout the app, and you can preview how your personalized announcement will sound before saving. If needed, simply choose Reset to default to restore the original announcement pattern.
FEEDBACK: Please provide your feedback in the Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Accessibility > Narrator.
Enhancing the Touch Keyboard Experience for Voice Typing
The experience of using voice typing with the touch keyboard is being refined for a more intuitive feel. The updated design eliminates the previous full-screen overlay, displaying voice typing animations directly on the dictation key, allowing you to maintain focus without unnecessary visual distractions.
Before the update:
After the update:
FEEDBACK: We invite you to 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 concise, helpful tips that appear at opportune moments.
What it shows:
- Quick, actionable tips sourced from the Windows Tips website, covering shortcuts, productivity tricks, and security reminders.
- Tips will update automatically throughout the day, aligning with common usage moments.
How to add it:
- To Widgets Board: Open the Widgets Board, select Add widgets, then choose Discover.
- To Lock Screen: Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, then add the Discover widget to your lock screen widgets.
This widget can be added, removed, or ignored at any time, designed to be helpful without being intrusive. We will initially test this experience with Insiders to gather feedback before a broader rollout.
FEEDBACK: We welcome 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 the expansion of the Settings Agent experience to include French. With this release, the supported languages and locales have been further broadened:
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 quickly type a custom prompt directly into a text box, which is sent to Microsoft 365 Copilot along with selected screen content. This feature is not yet rolling out to Windows Insiders in the EEA or China, having previously been introduced last September to Dev and Beta channels outside of EEA.
[Input]
- The AltGr layer is now enabled for the Arabic 101 keyboard layout, allowing the right Alt key to function as a modifier for accessing additional symbols. The first new symbol mapped to AltGr on the Arabic 101 layout is the Saudi Riyal currency symbol (AltGr + S).
[Voice Access]
- A more streamlined setup flow for Voice Access has been introduced, simplifying the process of selecting your preferred input microphone and highlighting what Voice Access can assist you with on your PC.
[Taskbar]
- The rollout of new animations for sliding between open apps on the taskbar has been temporarily halted to investigate some issues. We appreciate your patience during this time.
[File Explorer]
- Windows Insiders signed in with a Microsoft account will now see people icons under the “Activity” column in File Explorer Home, Recommended, Favorites, and Recent sections. Hovering or clicking on a people icon will display the new Windows People Card, providing context about recent interactions with files and offering quick actions like starting a chat or call through preferred communication apps.
<figure id="attachment178484″ aria-describedby=”caption-attachment-178484″ class=”wp-image wp-image–caption alignnone”><figcaption id="caption-attachment178484″ class=”wp-caption-text”>UI showing the File Explorer Windows People Card for a family member.
This enhancement brings the people context experience—previously available only for work and school files—to consumer cloud files, fostering a more consistent and intuitive collaboration experience across File Explorer.
Fixes gradually being rolled out with toggle on*
[Taskbar and System Tray]
- When the taskbar is set to uncombined, open apps with multiple windows will now only move to the overflow area if there is no space for those specific windows, improving the overflow area’s appearance.
- Fixed an issue where labels in the taskbar might not display correctly for apps with multiple windows open.
[File Explorer]
- Resolved an issue causing a white flash when navigating between pages in File Explorer.
- Improved search performance by eliminating duplicate file indexing operations, resulting in faster searches and reduced resource usage.
- Enhanced search reliability with better handling of system and secondary drive locations, ensuring more accurate results across all storage devices.
- Fixed an issue preventing OneDrive files from opening in RemoteApp sessions.
- Improved Voice Access support in File Explorer’s Gallery view, allowing users to open photos by saying ‘click [number]’ instead of requiring ‘double click.’
[Login and lock screens]
- Addressed additional issues that could cause the login screen to become unresponsive.
[Display and Graphics]
- Fixed an issue affecting Adaptive Brightness functionality immediately after rebooting the PC.
[Windows Update]
- Resolved an issue that led to an increase in Insiders encountering error 0x800F0922 when attempting to install recent updates.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue where text might not display correctly in Windows Recovery when using the Japanese display language.
- Addressed a problem where valid Windows license migration might fail during upgrades due to registration issues with the Windows Activation server.
- Fixed an issue causing external virtual switches to lose their physical network adapter bindings after a host restart.
- Resolved 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 to align better with modern dialog designs.
- Fixed a message indicating “There’s a newer build available” in Windows Insider Program Settings when there wasn’t one.
Known issues
[Agents on the Taskbar]
- Researcher may appear unresponsive if the taskbar icon or status card is clicked during an ongoing task. Switching conversations within Microsoft 365 Copilot should resolve this issue.
[Xbox full screen experience for PC]
- Some apps may exhibit unexpected behavior when using Full-Screen Experience, particularly those that expect to be locked to a specific size or launch additional windows.
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- We are addressing an issue causing the Start menu not to open for some Insiders on click, although it opens with the Windows key. This issue may also affect the notification center and quick settings.
- We are investigating an issue where some apps are not appearing in the system tray as expected.
- We are working on a fix for a new issue where the taskbar, when set to auto-hide, may invoke unexpectedly, blocking app usage in that area.
[File Explorer]
- Scrollbar and footer may be missing and display as a white block when text is scaled in dark mode in the copy dialog.
- We are addressing an issue causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders when opening the context menu after the previous flight.
[Bluetooth]
- We are working on a fix for an issue causing Bluetooth device battery levels not to display for some Insiders.
[Click to Do]
- We are investigating an issue where the Microsoft 365 Copilot prompt box does not function on selected images 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 are introducing the collapse toolbar feature. To enable it, open Paint and click the chevron icon at the bottom-right of the ribbon to activate Automatically hide toolbar. Once collapsed, 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. To revert 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.
- For those who wish to be the first to receive features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates via Settings > Windows Update. Over time, we will increase the rollout of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. If you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC as they become ready.
- Features and experiences included in these builds may never be released as we explore different concepts and gather feedback. Features may evolve, be removed, or replaced, and may not be released beyond Windows Insiders. Some features may appear in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
- Some features in active development may not be fully localized, and localization will occur over time as features are finalized. Please report any localization issues via Feedback Hub.
- For a complete overview of which build is in which Insider channel, please check out Flight Hub.
Thanks,
Windows Insider Program Team
