After releasing a massive update with Windows 11 build 22557 last week, Microsoft is back with a new build for Windows Insiders in the Dev channel. This time, we're getting Windows 11 build 22563, and it's a little later than usual because of the US holiday this past Monday. We've only had a week since the last build, so there isn't as much new content here, but it's still packing some goodies. For users with ARM64 PCs, this build will now be offered, so you-re also getting all the new features from last week for the first time.

Windows 11 build 22563 continues to focus on improvements for tablets. Last week, we got a bunch of new gestures to make touch interactions more natural, and now, there's a new taskbar. When using a tablet, or if you disconnect the keyboard from a 2-in-1 PC, the taskbar will now collapse into a simplified view that only shows core system icons, such as battery, internet, and volume indicators. If you want to see all your open apps, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the full taskbar with your app icons. This is only applied to tablets, so desktop and laptop users won't see this change.

Windows 11 tablet taskbar modes

Microsoft is making some tweaks to the Widgets panel, too, so the new content and your personal widgets now blend together. This way, more content is visible at once, and if you don't have a lot of pinned widgets, news will be more accessible. You can still pin widgets to the top of the panel, though.

If you use Edge, this build also comes with some multi-tasking news. When using Snap Assist, you'll now be able to see specific Edge tabs as snapping suggestions, so you can easily organize tabs into separate windows and view them all at once.

For emoji fans, this build also adds support for Emoji 14.0, the latest version of the Unicode standard, adding 37 new unique emoji, some of which include skin tone variations. On that note, the handshake emoji now lets you choose the skin tone for both hands, and there are a total of 112 new emoji when you include skin tone variations.

Other tweaks in this build include a new group policy setting for Windows Update notifications. Meanwhile, the search bar in File Explorer now includes OneDrive, the Downloads folder, and other indexed locations when searching from the Quick Access page. Additionally, files in Quick Access that aren't saved locally can now show thumbnails and they'll support OneDrive sharing.

Aside from all the new features and improvements, this build includes a handful of bug fixes, which you can see in full detail below.

And, of course, there are still some known issues to be wary of. That's what you should expect with Insider builds.

Microsoft recently shared some insight into what you can expect from the Windows Insider Program in 2022, and mentioned that you'll soon have a window to switch to the Beta channel to avoid receiving builds with too many experimental features. Since we don't know when that will happen yet, that seems to suggest all these improvements will be part of the next feature update for Windows 11, which we're expecting later this year. We'll have to wait for confirmation on that, however. As standard practice, features in the Dev channel are never guaranteed to make it to stable builds.

Source: Microsoft