Today, Microsoft is releasing Windows 11 build 22478 to the Dev channel, and before you get too excited, there's not a whole lot that's new. The big new feature is that it includes redesigned emojis, which use Fluent Design. The new Windows 11 emojis were announced back in July, but now you'll be able to use them.

Windows 11 emojis in light and dark modes

There are actually two parts to these new emojis. First of all, all of the existing emojis in Windows 11 have been redesigned, but on top of that, there are new Emoji 13.1 characters, such as heart on fire, face with spiral eyes, and a bunch more.

There are some minor changes as well. One is that you can now log into a laptop that's closed via an IR camera with facial recognition. Obviously, you'd be using an external camera for this, something that isn't too uncommon given how many people are working from home. You'll also find that if you use the scroll wheel on your mouse while hovering over the volume slider, you can adjust the volume.

The build also adds support for Update Stack Packages. These can be added in the Windows Update experience before a feature or quality update is downloaded and installed.

As always, there are a bunch of fixes and known issues in Windows 11 Insider Preview build 22478.

While today's new preview build is a pretty minor change, the new set of Windows 11 emojis is probably the biggest new feature to arrive in the Dev channel since Windows 11 was released. Indeed, most of these builds are just seeing fixes, despite being more unstable. Now that Windows 11 is out, we'll start to see new features in testing, such as Android app support.