Microsoft has released a new build of Windows 11 for Windows Insiders on the dev channel. Build 25309 has new UI for volume mixer, updated File Explorer and touch keyboard.
Update: Here is my hands on video

New Sound Mixer

In quick settings there is fresh look volume mixer that allows you to do quick customization of audio settings on a per-app basic. There is also a new keyboard shortcut Win + CTRL + V to take you directly to the volume mixer.

We’re introducing a new enhanced volume mixer into Quick Settings! The updated audio quick settings experience brings a modern volume mixer that allows for quick customization of audio on a per-app basis, with additional control to swap devices on the fly. We’ve also added a new keyboard shortcut (WIN + CTRL + V) to bring you directly to the volume mixer for faster control of the experience. With this change, you can now tailor your audio experience better with more control and fewer clicks to better manage your favorite apps.

Touch keyboard changes

Microsoft has re-introduced the change to the touch keyboard options from a few builds ago (25188) which gives you three options for the touch keyboard:

  • “Never” suppresses the touch keyboard even when no hardware keyboard is attached.
  • “When no keyboard attached” will show the touch keyboard only when the device is used as a tablet without the hardware keyboard.
  • “Always” will show the touch keyboard even when the hardware keyboard is attached.

File Explorer Update

Microsoft are switching File Explorer from WinUI 2 to WinUI 3 and you will see a pizza icon showing if you are running the new version.

Windows Insiders will begin noticing a “pizza” icon on the command bar in File Explorer. This icon denotes that an Insider is previewing the Windows App SDK version of File Explorer. Functionality in File Explorer remains unchanged, it just switches from using WinUI 2 to using WinUI 3.

Returning features

With this build two experimental features are returning: Windows Spotlight experiments are back as are Snap Layouts.

Other changes

Other changes include theme-aware icons for Widgets that respect dark and light modes as well as changes to the search bar colour:

The search box on taskbar will be lighter when Windows is set to a custom color mode. Specifically, when the Windows 11 mode is set to dark, and the app mode is set to light under Settings > Personalization > Colors you will see a lighter search box on taskbar.

Here are the fixes and known issues with the build:

Fixes

[General]

  • Fixed an issue causing USB devices (including keyboard and mouse) to not work for some Insiders after upgrading to Build 25295+.
  • Fixed an issue for some Insiders where if you’d uninstalled the previous flight, it would cause your Start menu and taskbar to cyclically crash.
  • Fixed an issue where when using Windows Hello to sign in with facial recognition, it may not have worked on Arm64 PCs.
  • Fixed an issue with the Windows Insider Program settings page showing a newer build was available in Windows Update even though you were on the latest available build in the Dev Channel.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • Fixed multiple Explorer.exe crashes impacting taskbar and system tray.
  • Fixed a display issue that could result in the taskbar appearing duplicated when making resolution changes.
  • Fixed an issue which was causing app icons on the taskbar to appear on the wrong monitor for some Insiders with multiple monitors.

[Widgets]

  • We fixed an issue where under certain circumstances third-party widgets were not loading as expected.

[Search on the Taskbar]

  • Fixed rendering issues when using the touch keyboard with the search box on taskbar.
  • Fixed an issue when double clicking the search highlight glyph in the search box makes it disappear.
  • Fixed an issue where the search box would randomly disappear.
  • Fixed an issue where the search icon flips incorrectly for right-to-left (RTL) languages.
  • Fixed on issue where you might have seen some text flicker in the search box when you click into it.
  • Fixed an issue where the search box might disappear on one monitor if you are using multiple monitors.
  • Made some accessibility fixes to the settings for search under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an issue which caused Insiders with custom desktop icon arrangements / sizes to get set back to default in the previous build.
  • Fixed an underlying issue believed to be the cause of File Explorer unexpectedly jumping into the foreground sometimes.
  • The “Open in new tab” context menu option and middle clicking folders will now open the tab in the background rather than switching focus.
  • Fixed an issue where the close button could get stuck in a highlighted state when you moved your mouse across it.

[Input]

  • Fix an issue where when using the French-Canadian layout for the touch keyboard, the letters output when typing didn’t always match what was displayed on the keys.
  • When using the Korean IME, CTRL + F10 should no longer open the IME context menu.

[Settings]

  • Fixed an underlying issue believed to be the root cause of why some Insiders saw their startup app settings get reset with the previous build.
  • Going to Privacy & Security > Phone Calls should no longer crash Settings.

[Windowing]

  • Fixed a high hitting DWM.exe crash in the last couple flights.

[Other]

  • Fixed multiple issues that were preventing some of the new live captions language models from downloading correctly.
  • Fixed an underlying issue causing Insiders on Arm64 PCs to not be able to activate M365, with it citing a network issue.
  • Fixed a search indexer crash.
  • Fixed an underlying issue that could cause UWP apps to appear in English after upgrading although that wasn’t your display language.
  • Fixed an issue which was causing .appinstaller packages to fail to install with an error message that says “The parameter is incorrect” (even though it wasn’t).
  • Fixed an underlying issue causing certain cameras to not work in apps with the last flight.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which was leading to Microsoft Edge crashes for some Insiders in the last few flights.

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

[General]

  • We are investigating an issue where some users are experiencing longer than expected update times installing recent builds. If you experienced this issue, please submit a new feedback item with logs in Feedback Hub.
  • Some AAD (Azure Active Directory joined users are now seeing “Getting ready for you” screens when signing into Windows after updating the latest builds. We are investigating the issue.
  • Launching Group Policy Editor may show an error about a displayName attribute not being found.

[Snipping Tool]

  • We’re working on the fix for an issue causing the New button in Snipping Tool to not work for some Insiders after upgrading to Build 25295. If you are impacted by this, going to Settings > Apps > Default apps, and setting screen snipping as the default for ms-screenclip, it should resolve the issue.

[Live captions]

  • On ARM64 devices, enhanced speech recognition support installed through the Language & Region settings page will require restarting live captions if you switch languages in the live captions Caption language menu.
  • Certain languages shown on the Language & Region settings page will indicate speech recognition support (e.g., Korean) but don’t yet have support for live captions.
  • When adding a language through the Language & Region settings page, language feature installation progress may become hidden, and you may not see install completion of “Enhanced speech recognition” (required by Live Captions). (You can use the language’s “Language options” to monitor progress.) If this happens, there may be an unexpected delay before the live caption setup experience detects this and lets you continue.
  • The Language & Region settings page may not offer the necessary speech recognition language support for live captions for up to an hour after first login.
  • Captioning performance may be degraded in non-English languages and missing out-of-language filtering in non-English (United States) languages which means that incorrect captions will be shown for speech not in the caption language.

[Voice access]

Via

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