It’s near the end of the week, but Microsoft has some treats and new builds for Windows Insiders. Those with PCs in the Dev Channel will be getting Windows 11 build 23471, which adds a new way to add your phone photos to the File Explorer gallery. Meanwhile, on the Beta Channel, there’s build 22621.1830 for those with new features turned on and build 22631.1830 (KB5026443) for those with new features turned off. There’s a lot to dig into here, so let’s dive right into it for you.
Dev Channel build 23471
Starting first with the Dev channel, Microsoft’s added a huge new feature for the Windows 11 File Explorer. Now, you can access your phone’s camera roll easier. There’s a new button in the File Explorer for Add Phone Photos that you can click on. Clicking the button will give you a QR code that you can scan with your phone to get started with the process of showing your phone’s photos in the File Explorer Gallery. This feature depends on OneDrive’s Insider Program, which has a special version to handle the protocol when you click that button. You might have to join the OneDrive Insider Program to use this feature.
Other highlights from this build include natural narrator voices in Spanish for Spain and Mexico regions and an updated network flyout on the lock screen that now matches Windows 11’s design language. You’ll also notice that you can tear out and merge tabs in the File Explorer, and a new toggle in the cellular network settings to control to use of cellular when Wi-Fi is available. The smaller things from this release can be seen below.
- Fixed an issue where pressing Shift + F10 wasn’t opening the context menu in File Explorer.
- Fixed an issue where access keys appeared inconsistently if no button was pressed.
- Fixed an issue that was causing explorer.exe to crash when opening the context menu for some Insiders. This same issue is believed to be the cause of some Insiders seeing an older design instead of the updated one.
- Fixed an explorer.exe crash in the last flight related to loading/interacting with the scrollbar in Gallery.
- Fixed an issue where Gallery may require clicking twice on the node in the navigation pane for initial load.
- Fixed an issue where minimizing and reopening File Explorer would lose your scroll position in Gallery.
- Hovering your mouse over pictures in Gallery should now show a tooltip with information about the picture.
- Live updates (including filtering) are now enabled and no longer require using the Refresh button manually.
- Fixed an issue where some file types (e.g., .heic) were not rendered correctly or performantly.
- Made the background for thumbnails a little lighter in light mode so it doesn’t stand out as much.
- If you have Narrator running when you open the details pane, it should now announce the file name.
- If the setting to show file name extensions has been enabled, that will now be reflected in the details pane too.
- Fixed an issue that was causing the taskbar to get cut off when switching to and from the tablet-optimized taskbar.
- We have fixed the issue causing Insiders to see an empty tooltip displayed momentarily in certain cases including while the gleam is hovered if the new hover behavior for the search box and search highlight gleam is enabled.
- Fixed an issue where Narrator with Braille support wasn’t reading numbered lists correctly in Microsoft 365 apps.
As for the known issues in this release, there are a couple that you’ll want to keep in mind if you’re installing this build. Dev Drive, Taskbar, File Explorer, System Tray, notifications, and Backup and Restore all have bugs you might run into. Check it out below.
- On a reboot, additional filters beyond AV might be attached to your Dev Drive. To check what filters are attached, please run ‘fsutil devdrv query :’ in Windows PowerShell. If you are seeing more than your AV filters, you can run ‘fsutil volume dismount :’ and then ‘fsutil devdrv query :’. After those steps, you should only see your AV filters.
- There might be variable performance on different hardware. If you notice slower performance on your machine, please file feedback
- [NEW] Navigating the search flyout on the taskbar with the keyboard arrow keys will not work as expected.
- Narrator customers may not be able to navigate down the left side panel of the search flyout.
- Text scaling may not work in the search flyout.
- Insiders may experience a File Explorer crash when dragging the scroll bar or attempting to close the window during an extended file-loading process.
- Thumbnail loading performance for dehydrated cloud files and memory usage in large collections are known issues we are focused on improving. Please capture Performance traces in Feedback Hub for any performance-related issues. Rebuilding your Indexer can help if thumbnails are missing for cloud files; Search for “Indexing Options” and look in Advanced settings to find the rebuild tool.
- Clicking on the Share command will currently bring up the Windows share sheet (non-OneDrive).
- The taskbar may not show the correct apps if you’re using multiple desktops.
- The copy button for quickly copying two-factor authentication (2FA) codes in notification toasts (first introduced in Build 23403) is currently not working in this build. A fix is coming in a future flight.
- Backups of a PC that was set up using a restore may not show up in subsequent restores.
- Restore of solid color desktop backgrounds are not yet supported.
Beta Channel build 22621.1830 and build 22631.1830
There’s not much to report in the beta channel this week. While there’s a new build, there’s only one feature that you’ll get. Microsoft added WPA3 support to the Phone Link instant hotspot feature for more secure connections to a phone’s hotspot. They also made fixes to respect metered connection settings, reduce duplicate profiles, and show the phone’s display name in the network list.
That’s all there is to report! So far, Microsoft has yet to release a Canary channel build, but this isn’t too surprising. You’ll often get that new Canary channel builds without change logs. Happy downloading, and remember to submit your feedback to Microsoft.