It has been almost two and a half weeks since the last build release, and we finally have a new one. Microsoft missed out on a release last week but promised a new one would be released this week.
And on a blessed Friday morning, it has!
Insiders on the Dev and Beta channels can now get their hands on build 22610, which comes carrying a small array of new features. We have updates to the Family Safety widget for location sharing and the removal of the tablet-optimized Taskbar UI, among other things.
Things start with new group policies for IT administrators so that they can simplify their Windows 11 experience across Start, Taskbar, and System Tray. A handy selection of policies is available to help you enable and disable certain desktop elements.
Speaking of help, the Family Safety widget sees improvements for all family members with a new location-sharing view to help you keep track of your loved ones.
A new update for people in a member role also includes an improved view of screen time use across apps and services.
Next, we have a bucketful of small yet notable changes, like the battery icon on the Lock Screen matching the design of the battery icon on the Taskbar. On supported PCs, Windows 11 also shows estimated battery life timing in the tooltip for the battery icon in the System Tray.
A splattering of color now greets you on the Processes page of the Task Manager, with the colors used in the heatmap now based on your accent color.
File Explorer now comes with updated rename and properties icons for the sake of consistency.
Following these are countless small fixes and changes that take care of crashes and issues. They arrive with the usual helping of known issues you should know when deploying build 22610 on your machine.
Details of which you can check out in the link above.
For the record, the Dev channel release is now known as “NI_RELEASE” or Nickle branch in preparation for the next major feature update for the OS that is slated for release as Windows 11 22H2 later this year.
Microsoft again reminds Insiders that they can switch or change channels if they want to move from Dev channel over to Beta.
