New Windows 11 Build 22504 – Custom Emoji, New Your Phone App Design & Fixes (Dev Channel)

In this article, we will talk about the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build for the Dev Channel, which is 22504. This Build brings up a lot of changes and improvements, fixes, and of course other issues.

Changes and Improvements

• Microsoft is expanding the 13 themes for the touch keyboard to now apply to other input experiences, including IMEs, the emoji panel, and voice typing. There is also a new Theme Engine that allows you to create a fully customized theme including background images. You can find all this under the new “Text Input” section under Settings > Personalization. This isn’t available for all Insiders yet, so if you don’t have it, you need to wait.

• Microsoft added the Custom Emoji feature in this Build. This feature will be based on face and skin tones of family members, couples with heart, kissing, and people holding hands.

• New Design for the Your Phone App is also rolling out. The Your Phone app is evolving with an updated design that puts notifications at the center.  The Your Phone app brings you an organized feed of your real-time notifications across all your most used apps. In this new view, you’ll always have access to your messages, calls, and photos with the added benefit to stay on top of important messages and other notifications more efficiently with this glanceable view. The app also adopts the beauty of Windows 11 design to tie together your seamless experience on your Windows desktop.

• Microsoft created a new keyboard combination, which is Windows + Alt + K. This will help you bring up the new mute icon in the taskbar, that is available while in a Microsoft Teams meeting.
• Microsoft is also introducing .NET Framework 4.8.1, that will bring ARM64 support for the .NET Framework runtime.
• As Settings > System > Sound in Windows 11 shows a warning when microphone access has been restricted in your privacy settings, Microsoft is removing the notification to alert you about this.
• They are making a change so that going forward on new installs the touch indicator option will now be turned off by default under Settings > Accessibility > Mouse pointer and touch. As part of this change, they added a link to this Settings page from Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touch and made it so that the press and hold visual is now always displayed regardless of the setting state.
• Apps will now launch maximized by default when in the tablet posture on small devices (11-inch screens diagonal and under).

Fixes

[Start]

• Fixed an issue believed to be the root cause of icons not displaying correctly in the Recommended section of Start (showing the wrong or a generic icon) sometimes.
• If you open Start and immediate press Shift + F10 or the context menu key, the context menu should be aligned with the search box now.

[Taskbar]

• Fixed an issue leading to an explorer.exe crash in recent builds if there were issues loading the battery icon in the Taskbar.
• Made some changes to help the clock in the Taskbar update more reliably, including addressing a recent issue where it wasn’t updating at all over Remote Desktop.
• Mitigated a positioning issue that could cause the date and time to get clipped off the end of the Taskbar.
• If you’ve updated the critical and low battery level notification definitions, the battery icon in the Taskbar will now align with that, rather than using the default values to show a warning.
• Right clicking the date and time in the Taskbar will now dismiss the Notification Center if it’s open, so that you can see the context menu options.

[Input]

• Keyboard lights (for example, for caps lock) should work properly again now with this build.
• We’ve made a few more tweaks to our emoji search keywords based on feedback, including improving results for day, night, and face with raised eyebrow. Please continue sharing feedback with us about this under Input and Language > Emoji Panel in the Feedback Hub.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the kaomoji list in WIN + . to be blank when accessed while using a Chinese IME.
• Fixed an issue with the emoji panel search results that could lead to a single gif being displayed repeatedly with certain queries.
• Mitigated an issue resulting in IMEs not working with certain games.
• Addressed an issue where the options under Settings > Personalization > Typing to change the settings “Show text suggestions & add a spacebar after I choose a text suggestions” for the touch keyboard might unexpectedly not display.
• If you make a long pause while using voice typing (WIN + H), it should be able to resume listening more reliability now.
• Fixed some inconsistencies between actual listening status and the microphone visual in voice typing.
• Text should no longer be unexpectedly duplicated if the caret is moved while using voice typing.

[Windowing]

• Selecting snap layout options should no longer randomly put windows on your other monitor sometimes.

[Settings]

• The brightness and volume sliders in Quick Settings should no longer randomly become invisible.
• Fixed an issue preventing Adjusting active hours from being set to manually.
• Addressed an issue which could result in the touch keyboard occluding the password entry field when connecting to a network in Quick Settings.

[Other]

• Fixed a scaling issue that was causing the update prompt dialog (and other dialogs of that style) to get cut off and not draw correctly after the DPI changed.
• Improved the positioning of the context menu when right clicking the bottom corner of the desktop.
• Mitigated an issue related to TCPIP which could result in bug checks when waking a device.
• Fixed an issue where high priority notifications (such as an alarm) would sometimes unexpectedly dismiss without you engaging with it, leading to it randomly reappearing the next time a normal priority notification came in.

To see all the known issues from this Build, read this article.

For a more in-depth view of the new Build, you can check the video below from the youtube channel.