Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23486

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23486

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23486 to the Dev Channel.

What’s new in Build 23486

Passwordless Improvements

Microsoft believes that the future is passwordless. Passkeys will allow you to replace passwords when you sign into a web site or application that supports them. Passkeys represent a future where bad actors will have a much harder time stealing and using your credentials when signing into a web site or application. Passkeys are phish-resistant, recoverable, and faster for users.

Enroll and use passkey to sign into apps and websites: We are improving the passkey experience for Windows users. They can now go to any app or website that supports passkeys to create and sign in using passkeys with the Windows Hello native experience. Once a passkey is created, users can use Windows Hello (face, fingerprint, PIN) to sign in. In addition, users can use their phone to complete the application logon process.

Create and Sign in using passkeys saved on your Windows device:

• Go to a website that has enabled passkeys on Windows (Example: bestbuy.com, ebay.com, google.com).
• Create a passkey from your account settings.
• Sign out of your account and sign-in using your passkey.

Sign in using passkeys saved on your phone:

• Go to a website that has enabled passkeys from your mobile device (Example: bestbuy.com, ebay.com, google.com).
• Create a passkey from your account settings.
• Go to the website on Windows and sign in using your passkey saved on your mobile device.

Manage passkeys saved to your Windows device: We are giving users a fundamental control over how they can manage the passkeys saved to their Windows device. They can now view and delete passkeys saved for their favorite apps/websites from Windows settings.

• Navigate to Settings > Accounts > Passkeys.
• You are presented with a list of all passkeys saved to your Windows device.
• You can now search and delete any passkey from the device.

Special Instructions:

• On Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, if you see the browser’s passkey UI, choose “Windows Hello or external security key” to get the Windows native experience. Try Google Chrome Canary for the latest experience there. As Microsoft Edge is Chromium-based, experiences in Chrome Canary will roll up into Microsoft Edge as well over time.

FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Security and Privacy > Passkey.

Changes and Improvements

[File Explorer]

• Thank you to all the Windows Insiders who gave us feedback on the Folder Options changes in File Explorer that removed a handful of old settings in Build 23481. We’ve rolled back this change. As is normal for the Dev Channel, we will often try things out and get feedback and adjust based on the feedback we receive.

[Dynamic Lighting]

• New Effects are now available for Dynamic Lighting via Settings > Personalization > Dynamic Lighting. Check out Wave, Wheel, and Gradient.

[Emoji]

• Unicode Emoji 15, which began rolling out with Build 23475, is now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

[Settings]

• We are improving the user experience when changing time zones, including cases of low confidence in location data. It displays a non-dismissible notification for accepting or rejecting the change and prompts the user for confirmation before adjusting the time zone.
• We are also improving the user experience while changing the time zone via Settings > Time & language > Date & time. If location settings are disabled, a warning is now shown to the user, urging them to enable location settings to ensure accurate time zone adjustments. This warning provides helpful information to the user, helping them understand why their time zone may not be correct and guiding them towards resolving the issue.

Fixes

[Dynamic Lighting]

• We fixed the issue where on first boot after installing recent builds and connecting a device, the “Use Dynamic Lighting on my devices” toggle is off in Settings and device LEDs may not turn on automatically.

[Input]

• We’re rolling a fix for an issue where a blank window whose title is “Windows Input Experience” appears after resuming the device from the sleep.

[Network]

• Fixed an issue where the login screen was crashing in the last couple flights when trying to connect to certain types of networks.

[Task Manager]

• Fixed an issue causing Task Manager crashes for some people.
• Fixed an issue where focus wasn’t getting set correctly to search if the Task Manager window was small enough that search was collapsed to an icon.
• Fixed alignment of Task Manager icon and name in the title bar.
• Right clicking the empty space in the Details page (aka so no process is actually selected) will no longer show the option to create live kernel memory dumps.
• Fixed an issue where the live kernel memory dumps weren’t being cleaned up by Storage Sense.

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.

Known issues

[Dev Drive]

• There might be variable performance on different hardware. If you notice slower performance on your machine, please file feedback!

[Search on the Taskbar]

• [NEW] After changing your Windows display language, the search box on the taskbar may continue to display in the previous language for a short time before changing to the new language you selected.
• Text scaling may not work in the search flyout.

[File Explorer]

• [NEW] In some cases, the context menu background in File Explorer may appear transparent.
• Insiders may experience a File Explorer crash when dragging the scroll bar or attempting to close the window during an extended file-loading process.
• Thumbnail loading performance in Gallery for dehydrated cloud files and memory usage in large collections are known issues we are focused on improving. Please capture Performance traces in Feedback Hub for any performance-related issues. Rebuilding your Indexer can help if thumbnails are missing for cloud files; Search for “Indexing Options” and look in Advanced settings to find the rebuild tool.
• The count shown for selected files in the details pane may be extremely large.

Insiders who have the modernized File Explorer Home that began rolling out with Build 23475:

• File Type icons are displayed in place of file thumbnails for ‘Recommended’ section (applicable to Enterprise users).
• Insiders signed in with an AAD account and try to navigate the Recommended section on File Explorer Home with the tab key on the keyboard may experience an explorer.exe crash.
• When navigating from another group to the Recommended section using a keyboard, focus does not appear on the group header or files appropriately.
• Files display file extensions with the Show file extensions setting disabled.

Insiders who have the modernized File Explorer address bar that began rolling out with Build 23475:

• Windows Insiders may notice missing craftmanship polish with the modernized address bar and search box. The team greatly appreciates the use of Feedback Hub to help call out important details to address.
• Users might experience lost keyboard focus and missing keyboard shortcuts. The team implemented improved tabbing with keyboard shortcuts that will be available soon.
• If “…” shows in the address bar path, selecting it will crash explorer.exe.

Insiders will have issues with the following commands on recommended files in File Explorer that began rolling out with Build 23403:

• Clicking on the Share command will currently bring up the Windows share sheet (non-OneDrive).

[Notifications]

• The copy button for quickly copying two-factor authentication (2FA) codes in notification toasts (first introduced in Build 23403) is currently not working in this build. A fix is coming in a future flight.

[Dynamic Lighting]

• [NEW] Using Wave and Wheel effects can result in typing not working in certain apps.
• All-device settings changes are not propagating to per-device Settings.
• Device icons are missing from the device cards in Settings.
• Switching user accounts can turn off device LEDs.

[Windows Ink]

• Users can’t use handwriting to erase text in Microsoft Edge.
• The address box in Microsoft Edge might not work correctly.
• Windows Ink does not convert handwriting to text into the main content (e.g., Word documents and Excel spreadsheets) in Microsoft 365 applications.
• Search boxes in Microsoft 365 applications (e.g., Microsoft Word) might not work correctly.
• Comment fields in Microsoft 365 applications (e.g., Microsoft Word) might not work correctly.

For developers

You can download the latest Windows Insider SDK at aka.ms/windowsinsidersdk.

SDK NuGet packages are now also flighting at NuGet Gallery | WindowsSDK which include:

• .NET TFM packages for use in .NET apps as described at ms/windowsinsidersdk
• C++ packages for Win32 headers and libs per architecture
• BuildTools package when you just need tools like MakeAppx.exe, MakePri.exe, and SignTool.exe

These NuGet packages provide more granular access to the SDK and better integration in CI/CD pipelines.

SDK flights are now published for both the Canary and Dev Channels, so be sure to choose the right version for your Insider Channel.

Remember to use adaptive code when targeting new APIs to make sure your app runs on all customer machines, particularly when building against the Dev Channel SDK. Feature detection is recommended over OS version checks, as OS version checks are unreliable and will not work as expected in all cases.

About the Dev Channel

REMINDER: The Dev Channel has been rebooted. Windows Insiders who were in the Dev Channel on 25000 series builds are being moved to the new Canary Channel. Going forward, the Dev Channel will receive 23000 series builds. Insiders who were moved to the Canary Channel and want to move back to the Dev Channel can follow these instructions to do a clean installation of Windows 11 and then re-join the Dev Channel to receive 23000 series builds.

The Dev Channel receives builds that represent long lead work from our engineers with features and experiences that may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. It is important to remember that the builds we release to the Dev Channel should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows and the features included may change over time, be removed, or replaced in Insider builds or may never be released beyond Windows Insiders to general customers. For more information, please read this blog post about how we plan to use the Dev Channel to incubate new ideas, work on long lead items, and control the states of individual features.

In some cases, features and experiences may go out to the Canary Channel first before going out to the Dev Channel however the Dev Channel will provide better platform stability. As we get closer to shipping, some features and experiences will also make their way to the Beta Channel when they are ready.

The desktop watermark you see at the lower right corner of your desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.

Important Insider Links

• You can check out our Windows Insider Program documentation here.
• Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.

Thanks,
Amanda & Brandon
Source: Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23486