Ah, widgets! These little doohickeys sure have become a priority for Microsoft in how the company refines and reshuffles them around. And Windows 11 build 25227 continues these experiments.
In fact, the two main features of this build are the addition of badges in the Start Menu and the different positions of the headers for the Widgets board.
This version of the preview just landed for Insiders in the Dev channel.
And as Microsoft notes in the announcement, it has also released ISO files for this build in case someone wants to start afresh. In case you do, you can do so by downloading them here.
Back to the build, then.
Things start with improvements to update management in the OS. To that end, the company has taken steps to improve the predictability of restarts by making a few changes to a component that goes by the Update Stack Orchestrator.
The Deadline calculation for both quality and feature updates is now based on the time the client’s update scan initially discovered the update. Previously, it was based on the release date of the update for quality updates and the reboot pending date for feature updates.
Also, the Specify deadlines for automatic updates and restarts Group Policy settings have also been split into two separate settings to align with the existing configuration service provider (CSP) policies.
Then we get to the more consumer-facing changes.
Here, Microsoft is trying out a small change to the Start Menu, where some Insiders will see badging on their user profiles, notifying them that certain actions need to be taken.
The Widgets board also received some touchups, with Microsoft optimizing things by using monoline icons for the header with the new icons. The idea is to bring a consistent and clean look with icons that are not only accessible but also communicate the actions and features via simple visuals.
This build includes a few other changes and improvements in addition to a bucketload of fixes and the usual array of known issues, the details of which you can gather yourself.
Build 25227 arrives after a wait period of two weeks, as Microsoft was forced to hold the launch of a new preview build last week after it discovered a blocking bug that it had to chase down at the eleventh hour.
So, while this version may not be high on new features, it is still very welcome.
