It's been a long time coming, but the first non-Microsoft widget to appear on Windows 11 is finally here — as long as you're a Windows Insider, at least. Microosft is rolling out Windows 11 build 25284 to Insiders in the Dev channel, and with it comes a widget for Facebook Messenger, the first third-party widget to ever grace the OS.
Microsoft enabled support for third-party widgets a few months ago with an earlier build, and then updated the Windows App SDK to allow these widgets to be developed. Now, we're seeing the first results of that. The Messenger widget will make your most recent messages easily available on the Widgets board, so it's easier to get to your recent conversations.
That's really all that's new in this build, but it's pretty exciting news all by itself. You'll need to install the latest version of the Messenger app from the Microsoft Store to be able to try out the new widget. It's not yet clear when we can expect third-party widgets to be more widely available, but this release signals that we're getting increasingly close to a broad rollout.
As usual, there's an array of fixes and minor improvements in Windows 11 build 25284, as well. You can find the full list of fixes below:
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Fixed an issue where right clicking on certain icons in the hidden icons flyout would make the flyout dismiss rather than bringing up the context menu for that icon.
The fixes only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments for how search looks on the taskbar that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25252:
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Fixed an explorer.exe crash which was impacting some Insiders, related to the search box in the taskbar.
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When search suggestions are triggered while using the Pinyin IME, keyboard focus will now stay on the current candidate. To move focus to the search suggestions, press Tab.
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Fixed an issue for PCs with touch, where when using certain apps in full screen mode it wasn’t possible to swipe down from the top of the screen to make the title bar appear.
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Fixed an issue which was causing certain apps to hang or crash when saving files as PDF in the last few builds.
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Fixed an issue where using the cast option in an app may unexpectedly not show any devices in recent builds.
And of course, there are also some known issues in this release, which includes a ling-standing issue with Windows Hello facial recognition on Arm64 devices. Here's what you need to look out for:
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[NEW] Some Insiders may have issues accessing websites and other resources via VPN connections. See this forum post for details and how to workaround the issue.
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IMPORTANT: Some Arm64 devices may fail to resume from sleep/hibernate when running Build 25281, experiencing a hang at the OS boot logo. To bypass this bug, please use the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) to roll your device back to the previous build. Instructions can be found here: ms/WinRERollback.
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Using Windows Hello to sign in with facial recognition may not work on Arm64 PCs. A workaround for this is to use the Hello PIN path.
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Some users are experiencing longer than expected update times installing recent builds. We are actively investigating this issue.
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We’re investigating reports that some Insiders are experiencing freezes when using the browser and certain other apps after the previous Dev Channel flight.
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[NEW] Third-party widgets may occasionally disappear from the widgets board. They can be re-added by clicking refresh or by re-pinning them from the widgets picker.
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[NEW] Third-party widgets may occasionally get unpinned when the Microsoft account is used to sign-in multiple Windows 11 devices.
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[NEW] The undo button on the widget pinned/unpinned toast notification sometimes doesn’t work.
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The taskbar is sometimes cropped in half when using the tablet-optimized taskbar. You may also see this issue on secondary monitors.
The following known issues only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments for how search looks on the taskbar that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25252:
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There is an issue where you will be unable to change taskbar search box to show as icon only via taskbar settings in some cases. To work around this issue, first change to a different option and then after, you should be able to choose to show as icon only.
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Some dialogs may not render in the correct theme when applied from Task Manager Settings page.
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The data content area of the Processes page may flash once when theme changes are applied in the Task Manager Settings page.
The following known issues only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments of Windows Spotlight that began rolling out to Insiders with Build 25281:
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[NEW] Clicking on a secondary monitor does not dismiss the full screen experience.
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[NEW] Spotlight wallpaper doesn’t show the correct resolution on multiple / mixed resolution monitors.
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[NEW] In some cases, people are not getting a consistent refresh on a daily basis.
As with every Insider build, you can get Windows 11 build 25284 by checking for updates in the Settings app, as long as you're enrolled in the Dev channel.
Source: Microsoft
