In this article, we will talk about the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build for the Beta Channel, which is Build 22623.1037.
Before talking about anything that is new in the Beta Channel, we need to talk about the changes regarding the Beta Channel System.
Starting today, Microsoft is releasing updates to the Beta Channel that put Windows Insiders into one of two groups similar to what they did back in 2019:
- A group of Insiders in the Beta Channel will receive Build 22623.xxx updates that will have new features getting rolled out or turned on via an enablement package like how we release updates for Windows 10 today.
- A group of Insiders in the Beta Channel will receive Build 22621.xxx updates that will have new features turned off by default.
This way, Microsoft will be able to test out new features easier.
If you receive the Build that has all the features automatically turned off, you can enable them manually in 2 ways:
- Search for Update in the Settings App Windows Update
- Use Vivetool to manually enable the features
What’s New in Build 22623.1037
Voice Access Improvements
Voice access is now more flexible and supports interaction with UI controls having different names such as:
- Names which contain numbers in them, for example the Calculator app where you can now directly say “Click 5”.
- Names without any whitespaces between them, for example in Excel, under the Insert tab, you can interact with UI controls like “PivotTable” and “PivotChart” directly by saying “click pivot table” or “click pivot chart”.
- Names with special characters in them, for example items like “Bluetooth & devices” or “Dial – up”. You can now say “click Bluetooth and devices” or “click dial hyphen up” and interact with these UI controls.
More info about this feature, you can find in this article from the Microsoft Blog.
Search on the Taskbar
Insiders in the Beta Channel will begin seeing an updated treatment with more rounded corners starting with this build. If you see the new treatment, you can right-click on the taskbar to open taskbar settings and adjust the experience.
Fixes in Build 22623.1037
Taskbar and System Tray
- Updated the Quick Settings icons in the taskbar when using a screen reader so if you set focus to each of the icons it no longer includes the words system state and instead just says what the icon is (for example instead of “system volume state” it just says “volume”).
- Fixed a few more explorer.exe crashes relating to recent taskbar changes.
Task Manager
- We fixed the issue causing Task Manager to become unresponsive when using the search box at the top of Task Manager.
Fixes for Both Build 22621.1037 and Build 22623.1037
- We fixed a known issue that might have affected Task Manager. It might have displayed certain elements in the user interface (UI) in unexpected colors. Some parts of the UI might not have been readable. This issue might have occurred if you had “Choose your mode” set to “Custom” in the Personalization > Colors section of Settings.
- We fixed an issue that might have affected Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) decryption. The decryption of a certificate private key might have failed. Because of that, virtual private network (VPN) and other 802.1 certificate-based authentication might have failed. This issue might have occurred when you encrypted the DPAPI master key with a wrong value.
For more info regarding Known Issues, 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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