Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25217 Announcement (Dev Channel)

Good evening, friends! Microsoft has released a new preview build of Windows 11 25217 for Windows Insider program members using the Dev channel.

Complete build number: 10.0.25217.1000.rs_prerelease.221001-1723.

Innovations

Third Party Widgets

Microsoft has added support for third-party widgets in WinApp SDK 1.2 Preview 2. This means that from now on, all developers can create their own widgets for packaged WIn32 applications and test them locally in the widget panel in Windows 11.

Peculiarities:

• Developers of packaged WIn32 applications can create and locally test their own widgets if Developer Mode is enabled on the computer under Options -> Privacy & Security -> For Developers. To get started with development, you’ll need an up-to-date build of Windows 11 from the Dev channel, as well as a newer version of the widget bar (521.20060.1205.0 or later). Detailed information about widget design and developer documentation can be found on the Microsoft website.

Known limitations:

• Third party widgets can only be tested locally in the latest Insider builds for the Dev channel. After the release of WinAppSDK 1.2 GA, users of stable versions of Windows 11 will be able to get widgets through the Microsoft Store for published applications.
• Widget support from third-party apps for PWAs will come in future versions of Microsoft Edge.

Video calls to Chat apps

Now the Chat app powered by Microsoft Teams will offer an intuitive and convenient way to create a video conference with anyone in the world.

When you open Chat from the taskbar, at the top of the window you will see an image from your webcam, as well as a list of ways to create a video conference. If your contact uses Microsoft Teams for personal purposes, you can start a call instantly. If the other party is not registered with Microsoft Teams, you can send them a link via email or SMS to join the meeting.

This feature will become available to all users in the coming months. Now only a small group of insiders can evaluate it as a preliminary version.

Microsoft Store update

Microsoft has begun rolling out a new Microsoft Store update (version 22209) that includes the following improvements:

• When searching for a game in the Microsoft Store, it will now be clearly shown that it is available with a Game Pass subscription. On the game details page, the button design has been updated, and a section has been added with information about the benefits of a subscription. The full cost of the game is also present.
• The application library has been improved, settings have been simplified and performance has been improved.

Word prediction cloud for Simplified Chinese IME

Microsoft is testing some changes that will make it easy to type modern and popular words in Simplified Chinese. For this, an improved cloud-based word prediction feature has been added. This feature will add the most relevant word from the Bing search engine to the IME suggestion box. The logic has also been updated so that the system can offer you better results.

Search suggestions are also integrated, which are similar to what you see when you type a search term in Bing. You can either paste the suggestion as text or search for it in Bing.

To enable these features, you must click on the chevron button in the upper right corner of the IME suggestion window.

This change is not yet available to all Insiders in the Dev channel. Microsoft wants to collect feedback from a small group of users before the change is made available to all Insiders.

Changes and improvements

• Input:
  • With Build 25179, Microsoft introduced the new Tamil Anjal keyboard for Tamil. Starting today, it is available to all members of the Windows Insider program. To evaluate it, make sure that under Options -> Time & Language -> Language & Region, the language is set to Tamil (Singapore), Tamil (Malaysia), Tamil (Sri Lanka), or Tamil (India). If so, then click on the “…” next to the language, select “Language Options” and add Tamil Anjal (QWERTY) to the list of keyboards.
  • Microsoft has disabled the new touch keyboard setting that was introduced in build 25188. The developers plan to return it after the design is finalized. As a reminder, features that are tested on the Dev and Beta channels may never make it to release versions of the OS.

Corrections

• Taskbar optimized for tablets:
  Note. These fixes will only appear if your device has a tablet-optimized taskbar enabled. This feature is currently not available to all Insiders in the Dev channel.
  • We fixed an issue that caused the taskbar to collapse when there were no windows running, when it should be maximized.
  • We fixed an issue that caused the taskbar to appear on top of the Widgets and Action Center panels when they were invoked with gestures from the left and right edges of the screen.
  • We fixed an issue where the taskbar optimized for tablets was causing explorer.exe to crash when switching between apps.
  • We fixed an issue where the taskbar optimized for tablets was causing explorer.exe to crash when opening the taskbar overflow menu.
• Window:
  • We fixed an issue that caused the close button on window thumbnails in Task View to appear slightly outside the thumbnail.
  • We fixed an issue that caused the entire window to momentarily turn black when switching between windows during rendering.
  • We fixed an issue resulting in video streaming quality drops over Miracast in recent builds even though network connections were stable.
• System tray updates:
  Note. These fixes will only appear if your device has a tablet-optimized taskbar enabled. This feature is currently not available to all Insiders in the Dev channel.
  • We fixed an issue that prevented dragging quick action items using the touch screen.
• Options:
  • We fixed an issue in Network and Internet -> Advanced Network Settings that caused some networks to display incorrect connection speeds.
• Other:
  • We fixed an issue where Remote Desktop on ARM64 processors only used TCP and did not use UDP.

Note. Some of the fixes listed above may be included in cumulative updates for release versions of Windows 11.

Known Issues

• General:
  • We are investigating reports that audio playback has stopped working for some Insiders after upgrading to previous builds.
  • We are investigating reports that recent Insider builds have seen an increase in crashes in some applications.
  • We are investigating reports of some UI elements sometimes disappearing and reappearing in apps in the last few builds.
• Taskbar optimized for tablets:
  • The taskbar may flicker when switching between desktop mode and tablet mode.
  • Switching the taskbar to the touch version is taking longer than expected. This will be noticeable when switching between desktop mode and tablet mode.
  • When opening the Quick Actions menu with a gesture in the lower right corner of the screen, the taskbar may not collapse and remain in an expanded state.
• Widgets:
  • In right-to-left languages ​​(such as Arabic), the content of the widget bar animates out of view when switching to the full-screen version of the widget bar.
  • The number in the notification indicator on the taskbar may be displayed in an offset.

I wish you a successful update!