New Windows 11 Build 25290 – Start Menu Badging, New Spotify and Phone Link Widgets and Fixes (Dev)

In this article, we will talk about the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build for the Dev Channel, which is Build 25290.

This build is available for Arm64 devices as the known issue that resulted in not releasing Build 25284 to Arm64 last week has been fixed.

New Spotify and Phone Link Widgets

Starting with Build 25290, Microsoft is testing 2 new different Widgets, the Spotify and the Phone Link Widgets. You can add them in the Widgets board, after you’ve updated your Apps through the Microsoft Store.

With the release of Windows App SDK 1.2 developers are now able to create widgets for their apps. Users can access these experiences on their Windows 11 widgets board in current Dev Channel Insider Preview builds. If you’re interested in developing a widget, watch Microsoft’s latest tutorial video:

New Start Menu Badging

  • Back in October with Build 25227, Microsoft started trying out a small change to the Start menu where some Insiders saw badging on their user profile notifying them that certain actions need to be taken. Starting today, Microsoft is starting a new exploration of badging on the Start menu with two new treatments that some Insiders in the Dev Channel will see.
Different treatments of badging on the Start menu.

Fixes in Build 25290

General Fixes

  • We fixed the issue causing Arm64 devices to fail to resume from sleep/hibernate when running Build 25281 and getting stuck at the OS boot logo.
  • Fixed an issue where some Insiders may have issues accessing websites and other resources via VPN connections. If you used the workaround documented in this forum post, please reverse those changes once you have this new build installed.
  • Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to experience freezes when using the browser and certain other apps in recent Dev Channel builds.

Taskbar and System Tray

  • Fixed an explorer.exe crash which could cause the taskbar not to load for some Insiders.

Search on the Taskbar

  • Fixed an issue where the search box would randomly disappear sometimes when you clicked it (leaving a blank space on the taskbar).
  • Fixed an issue where the search box was shifting to the side slightly when you clicked it.

Task Manager

  • Fixed an issue where the data content area of the Processes page might flash once when theme changes were applied in the Task Manager Settings page.
  • Fixed an issue where some dialogs did not render in the correct theme when applied from Task Manager Settings page.
  • Fixed an issue where properties in the Memory section of the Performance page were getting truncated even though there was space to display them.
  • Reduced the transparency of graph colors in the Performance page, and adjusted the borders, to help make them stand out more.
  • Fixed a few issues causing Task Manager crashes.
  • Typing F in the search box should work again now.
  • You now shouldn’t have to make Task Manager be as wide before the navigation pane appears.
  • If text scaling has been increased, the search box shouldn’t overlap with the title bar text anymore.
  • Made some tweaks to address cases where text in dialogs was getting cut off when text scaling was increased.
  • Fixes an issue where certain parts of the title bar couldn’t be used to drag the window.

Windows Spotlight

  • We fixed the issue causing some people to not get a consistent refresh of images on a daily basis.

Settings

  • Fixed an issue where the preview for Sans Serif Collection in Personalization > Fonts was displaying broken glyphs.

Other Fixes

  • Fixed an issue that was preventing Narrator from announcing dropdown lists in Excel.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which could cause Snipping Tool screenshots to become stretched out and distorted in the last few builds if you had multiple monitors.
  • Fixed an issue which could cause a bugcheck with SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION.
  • Fixed an issue which could make the Open With dialog crash on launch.
  • Fixed an issue where the Open File dialog would hang if you clicked it while using an IME after having selected “Choose an app on your PC” from the Open With dialog.
  • Fixed an issue which could cause Group Policy Editor to unexpectedly show “An error has occurred in the script on this page” with an invalid character error when editing a group policy.
  • If you have OpenSSH Server set to start at boot (instead of manual), that preference should be remembered across OS upgrades now. Please note, you need to be on a build with this fix before it will take effect with your next upgrade.

For more information and the full list of Known Issues in this Build, you can check this article from the Microsoft Blog.

For a more in-depth presentation of the New Build, you can watch the video below from the youtube channel.

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