Windows 11 Build 22526 released to the Insider Preview Dev Channel

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Build 22526 to the Developer Channel. Let's see what the first Insider Preview of 2022 brings.

The announcement article mentions that the company is testing a windowed mode for Alt + Tab.  The feature is only available for some insiders, aka A/B testing, so not everyone has access to it. There aren't any screenshots available in the official blog post to highlight what the new interface looks like.

Currently, Alt + Tab in Windows 11 displays a preview of  all running programs in a semi-full screen mode, i.e. the Taskbar is visible at the bottom, but the Task Switcher takes up the rest of the screen's real estate. The operating system blurs the background to highlight the items on the screen, the problem here is that it is a bit cumbersome since it hides the program that you were working with previously.

Microsoft has left users guessing about the windowed mode, it is hard to predict how it would work. Could it be like the old Task Switcher from Windows 7? You know, the one which just displays the program icons instead of the preview of each window? Or will the windowed mode just be a compact version of the current view, with smaller thumbnail previews? Either version would be welcome, in my opinion.

Update: Brandon LeBlanc, Senior Program Manager on the Windows Insider Program Team, tweeted a screenshot showing the new Alt + Tab windowed experience.

The panel appears to pop-up with thumbnail previews of active programs. End

What's new in Windows 11 Build 22526

The Redmond company is experimenting with search indexing, by adding more locations, to quicken the process of finding files in Explorer. The search function was causing the built-in file manager to crash, but this issue has been fixed in the latest release. Icons in search results will now look better on systems that have a display scaling setting above 100%.

Windows 11 Build 22526 improves support for Apple Airpods, Airpods Pro and Airpods Max, to provide better audio quality for voice calls. The new version corrects a problem that was causing the Widgets board to be blank, and also resolves an issue that affected the Widgets panel from rendering in the proper resolution on a secondary monitor.

Microsoft has addressed a bugcheck with the error KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED that was occurring when remote desktop users tried to shutdown or restart their computer. Users should no longer run into error 0x80073CFB while using the Microsoft Store app to install the latest Web Media Extension update. The Insider Preview release fixes another crash related to DWM (Desktop Window Manager). It's strange that DWM has caused so many issues, a previous build had excessive CPU usage issues, which users discovered was to be caused by an Intel Driver Update.

The known issues in Build 22526 are similar to the ones listed in the previous release. Windows 11 Build 22526 does not include a lot of changes, but that is quite understandable, since Microsoft, like most companies, is just returning to its regular schedule after the recently concluded holiday season.

We have already seen a few app updates being released to the stable channel users this week, including the new Photos app, the new Media Player that replaces Groove Music, and a Notepad app update which adds support for Dark Theme (reportedly available for the beta channel).

Microsoft plans to roll out a major update for Windows 11 this summer, so there's a lot to expect in the coming months. Personally, I am hoping for more optimizations especially in File Explorer, the context menu, and the overall performance which seems to be a tad slower in comparison to Windows 10.

What feature do you like to see in Windows 11?

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