The designated Windows 11 preview build for this week is here. Windows 11 build 25217 has landed in the Dev channel for Insiders, and it is low on features but high on fixes.
This particular version is still 22H2, as the Sun Valley 3 development that was destined to become Windows 11 23H2 has seemingly been canceled in favor of launching a major new version of the OS every three years.
For this reason, the Dev channel is sticking with version 22H2, which may eventually take shape as the feature update release for 2023.
As Microsoft notes, build 25217 is primarily about taking care of a number of bugs. A few remain open, but the company has gotten around to fixing many of these issues reported in recent weeks.
The bug fixes section highlights these fixes, which will only show up if the tablet-optimized taskbar is enabled on your device. This feature is still rolling out to Windows Insiders, and not everyone has access to this UI improvement.
At least four such problems have been reported in this build, related to issues where the taskbar sometimes collapsed when it should expand and instances where it crashed explorer.exe while switching apps.
In other news, Microsoft has given the green signal for developers to start building third-party widgets that are now supported on Windows 11. The company even put together a bunch of articles to guide developers through the basics.
To that end, the WinAppSDK 1.2 preview 2 release is in town that will allow developers to create widgets for their packaged Win32 software and test them locally on the Windows 11 Widgets board.
Redmond is also trying out some changes that enable users to easily type fresh, hot, and popular words in Simplified Chinese. Improved cloud suggestions and integrated search suggestions are to thank for this welcome new addition.
Finally, be sure to glance at the known issues section, which is rather short this time around, before you install this build on your test system.
