New Windows 11 Build 27749 – New Taskbar Change, New Mouse Pointer Change, and Fixes (Canary)

In this article, we will talk about the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build for the Canary Channel, which is Build 27749.

Things that you need to keep in mind in the Canary Channel:

• The builds that Microsoft releases to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows and features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as they try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
• Many features in the Canary Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a small subset of Insiders.
• Some features may show up in the Dev and Beta Channels first before showing up in the Canary Channel.
• To get off the Canary Channel, a clean install of Windows 11 will be required. As a reminder – Insiders can’t switch to a channel that is receiving builds with lower build numbers without doing a clean installation of Windows 11 due to technical setup requirements.
• The desktop watermark shown at the lower right corner of the desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.

ISOs available for this Build

Microsoft is releasing ISOs for this build – they can be downloaded here.

Narrator Changes

• Microsoft have added a new shortcut “Narrator key + control + X” to copy what Narrator last spoke to clipboard. It follows the pattern of using “Narrator key + X” which repeats the last spoken phrase out loud and is a good way to memorize similar shortcuts. You can use these shortcuts to review and copy what Narrator spoke, useful in cases you want to quickly copy some content or descriptions or codes/numbers for use.
• Narrator will now auto-read contents of a mail in the new Outlook app similar to behavior in Outlook classic.

New Notification

27749 introduces a new tip if your battery gets low several times in a week “Your device appears to have gotten low on battery several times this week. Turning Energy Saver on will extend battery life.”

Thanks to XenoPanther on Twitter for discovering this.

Fixes in this Build

File Explorer

• Fixed an issue which was causing the items in the navigation pane to become very spread out (with unexpected padding between each item) for some people.
• Fixed an underlying issue which was causing RAW images taken in portrait mode to unexpectedly display in landscape mode thumbnails.

Taskbar and System Tray

• Made a change so you will now see a search box if the taskbar auto-hides when the setting for search on the taskbar is set to “Search box” (rather than an icon).

Input

• Updated the mouse option “Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key”, so that the circles displayed are now DPI-aware, and aren’t really small on high DPI monitors.

Narrator

• We have addressed a performance issue where Narrator would slow down after 15 minutes of continuous use with a single application. If you continue to experience any performance delays, do report using Feedback Hub.
• Fixed an issue where Narrator would add an additional announcement “contains style” whenever its focus is on text that has styling attributes such as bullets, numbers across applications such as Microsoft Edge, Teams, Outlook, etc.
• Fixed an issue where few dialogs in Narrator were not adopting the 200% text scaling setting in Windows.

Task Manager

• Fixed an issue causing Task Manager to show a 0 count for apps and processes.

Audio

• Fixed an underlying issue that could lead to the audio on certain audio devices unexpectedly going to 100% on boot or after sleep.
• Fixed a blank entry in Settings > Privacy, which was crashing Settings if you clicked it.

Other

• Mitigated an issue resulting in Git not working for Insiders with Arm PCs in the previous flight.
• Fixed an issue causing some insiders to see a bugcheck with KERNEL_MODE_HEAP_CORRUPTION in the previous flight.
• Fixed an underlying issue which could potentially lead to not being able to join a domain.
• Fixed an issue where DirectAccess wasn’t working and might stay stuck in a connecting state.

For more information about 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.