Windows Insiders in the Dev channel are being treated to build 25211 of Windows 11 today, and it's packing a few interesting changes. While it's coming a little later than its usual Wednesday schedule, Insiders can now find this build through Windows Update, and there's quite a bit that's interesting here.

For starters, Microsoft is tweaking the behavior of the Widgets panel, specifically in regards to the buttons in the top right corner. Now, the + (plus) button and the settings button (marked by your profile picture) are separate, so you can more easily access your Widgets settings. When you click your profile picture, you'll now see three options related to behavior of the Widgets button on the taskbar, such as whether you want to see notification badges. The + button is is still used to manage your widgets and add new ones to the board.

Screenshot of the new Widget taskbar behavior settings

On top of that, Microsoft is making another long-awaited change - the Task Manager will once again be accessible when you right-click the taskbar. Indeed, this was one of the options removed going from Windows 10 to Windows 11, but now it's making a return, presumably because many of us had muscle memory telling us that's the fastest way to get there.

A screenshot showing the Task Manager option in the Windows 11 taskbar

For users that have received the new system tray experience starting with build 25197, Microsoft is also making it possible to arrange your system tray icons. Microsoft says this is "preliminary" for now, and more improvements to the experience are on the way. It's also worth noting that you still can't manage apps with inter-dependencies, such as Steam, from the Settings app. This had initially been enabled a few builds ago, but Microsoft has temporarily disabled it, presumably to work out some issues.

While it's independent from the new build itself, Microsoft is also rolling out an update to the Snipping Tool to Insiders in the Dev channel starting today. Now, screenshots you take with the Snipping Tool are automatically saved to your Screenshots folder. You can disbale this behavior if you don't like the change.

Aside from this, Windows 11 build 25211 comes with the usual array of fixes that every build includes. Notably, Microsoft has fixed a problem where you might be unable to access the top part of the File Explorer when it was in full-screen mode. You can find the rest of the fixes below:

Of course, there are also some known bugs with this build, which also tends to be the case with every release. Those are as follows:

As per usual, Windows 11 build 26211 is available through Windows Update if you're currently enrolled in the Dev channel. As to when these features will be available to everyone, it's hard to say. Microsoft is going to be doing occasional feature drops for Windows 11 every few months, so it's possible we'll see some of these changes sometime in 2023.

Source: Microsoft