Microsoft released its weekly version of Windows 11 to Insiders in the Dev channel, and with it, some important additions are also here. Last week the company launched its first third-party widget for Windows 11 with the Meta Messenger app, and this week there’s another – Spotify – coming with Windows 11 build 25290. This new widget gives you access Quick to your playlists so you can start playing them right away.
Plus, there’s a new widget for Microsoft’s own Phone Link app. Although developed by Microsoft, this widget is not web-based like the widgets Windows 11 had before. This is actually based on the Phone Link app, and it can show you content like your phone’s battery information as well as recent messages from it.
As usual, to get these widgets, you will just need to update the apps to the latest versions available on the Microsoft Store. Next, open the Widgets panel and click on + to add a widget, where you should find your installed apps. You should also start to see more widgets become available now that the Windows App SDK 1.2 allows developers to create them, although they are still exclusive to the Dev channel build.
In addition to the new widgets, Windows 11 build 25290 brings only a small change to the Start menu, especially to the user menu. Microsoft is experimenting with a new user interface that displays alerts when you may need to perform certain actions related to your account. For example, you may be prompted to create a backup of your data using OneDrive.
That’s about it in terms of user-facing changes, but there’s also the usual round of fixes. Notably, Microsoft fixed an issue that prevented Arm64 devices from being able to update to a new version. Here is the full list:
[General]
- We fixed the issue where Arm64 devices would not wake up from sleep/hibernate mode when running build 25281 and get stuck on OS boot logo.
- Fixed an issue where some Insiders could have trouble accessing websites and other resources over VPN connections. If you used the workaround documented in this message on the forumplease undo these changes once you have installed this new version.
- Fixed an issue that caused some Insiders to get stuck when using the Browser and some other apps in recent Dev Channel builds.
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Fixed an explorer.exe crash that could prevent the taskbar from loading for some Insiders.
[Search on the Taskbar]
The fixes only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of several different Taskbar Search appearance treatments that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25252:
- Fixed an issue where the search box would sometimes randomly disappear when clicked (leaving an empty space in the taskbar).
- Fixed an issue where the search box moved slightly to the side when clicked.
[Task Manager]
- Fixed an issue where the Processes page data content area could flicker once when applying theme changes in the Task Manager Settings page.
- Fixed an issue where some dialogs would not display in the correct theme when applied from the Task Manager Settings page.
- Fixed an issue where properties in the Memory section of the Performance page were truncated even though there was space to display them.
- Reduced color transparency of charts in the Performance page and adjusted borders to make them stand out more.
- Fixed some issues causing task manager crashes.
- Typing F in the search field should work again now.
- You should no longer have to make Task Manager so wide before the navigation pane appears.
- If the text scaling has been increased, the search box should no longer overlap the title bar text.
- Made some adjustments to address cases where text in dialogs was clipping when text scaling was increased.
- Fixes an issue where some parts of the title bar could not be used to drag the window.
[Windows Spotlight]
The following fixes only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of the various Windows Spotlight treatments that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25281:
- We fixed the issue where some people were not getting consistent frame refreshes on a daily basis.
[Settings]
- Fixed an issue where the Sans Serif collection preview in Customization > Fonts displayed broken glyphs.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue that prevented Narrator from announcing drop-down lists in Excel.
- Fixed an underlying issue that could cause Snipping Tool screenshots to stretch and distort in later builds if you have multiple monitors.
- Fixed an issue that could cause a bug check with SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Open With dialog to crash on launch.
- Fixed an issue where the Open File dialog would crash if clicked on while using an IME after selecting “Choose an app from your PC” in the Open with dialog.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Group Policy Editor to unexpectedly display “An error has occurred in the script on this page” with an invalid character error when editing a policy band.
- If you configured OpenSSH Server to start on boot (instead of manual), this preference should now be remembered in OS upgrades. Please note that you must be on a build with this fix before it takes effect with your next upgrade.
There are also known issues, as you’d expect with any preview build. Here’s what you need to be aware of:
[General]
- [NEW] The Update History page under Settings > Windows Update > Update History is blank for some users after installing Build 25290. This issue will be addressed via a new update stack package provided through Windows Update when it becomes available.
- [NEW[ Investigating reports that some Insiders are experiencing repeated bugchecks after upgrading to Build 25284.
- [NEW] Launching the Group Policy Editor may show an error that a displayName attribute was not found.
- Using Windows Hello to sign in with facial recognition may not work on Arm64 PCs. A workaround is to use the Hello PIN path.
- Some users are experiencing longer than expected update times when installing recent versions. We are actively investigating this issue.
- [NEW] The link for “Find more widgets” in the widget selector is currently broken. This will be fixed and linked to the Store collection here in a future update.
- Third-party widgets can sometimes disappear from the widgets table. They can be re-pinned by clicking Refresh or re-pinning them from the Widget Picker.
- Third-party widgets can sometimes be unpinned when the Microsoft account is used to sign in to multiple Windows 11 devices.
- Widget pinned/unpinned toast notification undo button sometimes not working.
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- [NEW] Application icons on the taskbar may appear on the wrong monitor for some Insiders with multiple monitors.
- The taskbar is sometimes reduced to half when using the tablet-optimized taskbar. You may also see this issue on secondary monitors.
[Search on the Taskbar]
The following known issues only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of several different Taskbar Search appearance treatments that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25252:
- There is an issue where you will not be able to change the taskbar search box to only show as an icon through the taskbar settings in some cases. As a workaround, first change to a different option, then afterwards you should be able to choose to display only as an icon.
[Windows Spotlight]
The following known issues only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of the various Windows Spotlight treatments that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25281:
- Clicking on a secondary monitor does not remove the full-screen experience.
- Spotlight wallpaper does not display the correct resolution on multiple/mixed resolution monitors.
If you’re signed up to the Insider Program Dev Channel, you can grab the latest build now by checking for updates in the Settings app. New widgets don’t require the latest version, although you should be running a relatively recent version.
Source: Microsoft
