Microsoft is rolling out a new build of Windows 11 to Windows Insiders enrolled in the Dev channel, this time being build 25163. The big news with this build is the re-introduction of the taskbar overflow experience. This makes it possible to see all your open apps on the taskbar, even when they exceed the maximum available space.
Now, when you have a lot of open or pinned apps on the taskbar and they no longer fit on the screen, you'll see an overflow button that lets you display the apps that don't fit. This was a feature in previous versions of Windows, but oddly removed in Windows 11, which made it a lot harder to switch apps if you have a lot of them open at the same time. This new overflow menu supports "many" the same features as the taskbar itself, so you can see pinned apps, jump lists, and so on.
In addition to this, Microsoft is adding improved sharing experiences with this build, though they actually made their debut earlier this week with an update for Windows Insiders in the Beta channel. There are two notable additions here. First, nearby sharing now supports discovery over UDP, so you can easily share files and content with PCs on the same network. Secondly, OneDrive is now available as a share target for locally-stored files. This is essentially a way to back up your files to OneDrive, which also makes them easier to share with others using a link.
That's about it for new features in this build, but there's a long list of fixes for various parts of the OS. However, there are still some known issues, as you'd expect from pre-release software. You can check out those lists below.
Fixes in Windows 11 build 25163
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Fixed an explorer.exe crash when dragging tabs around.
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Did some work to fix a memory leak when using tabs with File Explorer.
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Fixed an issue where the preview thumbnail for File Explorer in the taskbar, ALT + Tab, and Task View might show the title of an adjacent tab and not the currently selected one.
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If “Show all folders” is enabled, the dividers in File Explorer’s navigation pane should no longer show. With this change, it should also address the issues where dividers were unexpectedly showing in some other folder pickers.
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Fixed an issue where Narrator wasn’t reading out the titles of tabs as focus moved through them.
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Fixed an issue where a closed tab might appear again in File Explorer after you dragged File Explorer across your monitors.
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Fixed an issue where the tab row might unexpectedly expand vertically, covering the command bar contents.
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Removable drives should no longer unexpectedly be displayed in a section by themselves in the navigation pane, which was breaking up the section with This PC and Network.
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Fixed an issue where the add new tab button wasn’t clearly visible when using Aquatic or Desert contrast themes.
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The add new tab button shouldn’t overlap with the minimize button in the title bar when using text scaling with a lot of tabs open anymore.
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Fixed a rare explorer.exe crash that could happen while on a Microsoft Teams call, related to sharing windows from the taskbar.
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Made a change to help fix an issue where using Windows Spotlight on the desktop might revert to a solid color background.
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Improved the padding around the uninstall button when using Apps > Installed Apps in grid view.
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Fixed a couple issues that could lead to Quick Settings crashing on launch.
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Fixed an issue which was leading to certain apps freezing after a copy action if Suggested Actions was enabled.
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Fixed a high hitting crash impacting suggested actions reliability.
Known issues in Windows 11 build 25163
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We’re investigating reports that SQL Server Management Studio is failing to launch for some Insiders.
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Some games that use Easy Anti-Cheat may crash or cause your PC to bugcheck.
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The up arrow is misaligned in File Explorer tabs. This will be fixed in a future update.
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We’re working on a fix to address reports that launching File Explorer in certain ways when using dark mode (for example, from the command line) is showing the body of File Explorer unexpectedly in light mode.
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Notification badge number may appear misaligned on the taskbar.
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In some cases, the notification banner for some badging will not appear in the widgets board.
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We’re working on the fix for an issue causing Widgets preferences (temperature units and pinned widgets) to unexpectedly get reset to default.
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Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) prevent live captions from being visible.
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Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run will re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top. Use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) while the app has focus to move the app’s window further down.
As per usual, if you're enrolled in the Windows Insider Dev channel, all you need to do is check for updates to get Windows 11 build 25163, though they'll install automatically after a while. These updates are part of an ongoing development cycle, and it's not clear when they'll be released to the general public. Recent reports suggest Microsoft could release Windows 12 in a couple of years, and some features might be reserved for that update.
Source: Microsoft
