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88% of PC players use a browser while gaming to get help, track their progress, or even listen to music or chat with friends1. These actions require you to pull out your phone or Alt-Tab to the desktop on your PC, taking you out of your game. Unless you have multiple monitors, you also can't see what's happening in the game while you're in the browser or reference a guide while you play. We believe there's a better way. Today, we're excited to introduce Microsoft Edge Game Assist (Preview), the first in-game browser that delivers a rich gaming-centric browsing experience—including access to your browser data from your PC and mobile devices. A full screen video game capture, showing the Game Bar overlay on top of it, which includes the Edge Game Assist sidebar widget Game Assist is a special version of Microsoft Edge that's optimized for PC gaming and can appear on top of your game in Game Bar. It's game-aware and will suggest tips and guides for what you're playing. It also shares the same browser data with Edge on your PC so the information you care about is always accessible while you play—including your favorites, history, cookies, form fills, and more. This means you don't need to log into sites again, and it's easy to get to what you care about. You can even quickly access your favorite services like Discord, Twitch, Spotify, or any other page or site in the sidebar. And, like other Game Bar widgets, you can pin Game Assist above your game so you can reference a guide or watch a video while you play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZadyqM7Gxs Game Assist (Preview) is accessed via Game Bar, a gaming overlay that allows you to use in-game widgets including Xbox Social for connecting with friends and tracking your achievements, Spotify, Teams, and game utilities for capturing screenshots and game clips, fine-tuning your audio settings, and monitoring your system performance. Game Assist (Preview) is available starting today on Windows 11 with Microsoft Edge Beta 132. Setting it up is simple, and it's easily accessible from within Game Bar (Win+G). Continue reading to learn more about Game Assist (Preview) and how to get started.

Browse the web without leaving your game

Game Assist helps you get the most out of your game by bringing the full power of the web to Game Bar. Simply press Win+G at any time to open the Game Bar overlay. The game is always visible in the background for peace of mind, making it easy to quickly glance at a guide and then continue on with your game. Game Assist is designed to take up as little screen real estate as possible, but you can resize or move it to fit your needs. Game Assist shares the same browser profile as Edge on PC, so you always have access to your data. Your favorites and history will appear in the address bar, saved passwords and form fills can be quickly entered on pages, and you'll already be logged into the same sites as on PC. We've also optimized Game Assist to display a unique set of gaming tabs and sidebar apps for a gaming-centric experience and the best performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_uEt9aRr5E

Game-aware new tab page

Based on our research, 40% of PC players look up tips, guides, and other help while they play1. Game Assist makes this easier than ever by highlighting helpful resources for your game whenever you open a new tab. The initial preview is localized in English and supports a selection of popular PC games while we optimize the experience based on your feedback. A full screen video game capture, showing the Game Bar overlay on top of it, which includes the Edge Game Assist sidebar widget Here are some of the games you can try today:
  • Baldur's Gate 3
  • Diablo IV
  • Fortnite
  • Hellblade II: Senua's Saga
  • League of Legends
  • Minecraft
  • Overwatch 2
  • Roblox
  • Valorant
Don't see your favorite game on the list? Stay tuned! We'll add tips and guides for more popular games throughout the preview and over time. In the meantime, you can still browse to your favorite guides in any game.

View Game Assist while you play

Ever needed to follow along with a guide or watch a video while you play? Now you can with Game Assist! Click the pin button in the top-right corner of Game Assist to display the widget above your game while you play. You can even adjust the transparency in the Game Bar settings under Personalization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwml_KaUoKQ Watching a video? Click on the video player's full screen button to automatically resize Game Assist to fit the video! Click it again to return Game Assist to the original size. Picture-in-picture makes it easy to watch your favorite guide, live stream, or even TV show while you play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oz8M0GY_KQ

Your favorite apps at your fingertips

Chat with friends on Discord, watch a live stream on Twitch, listen to music with Spotify, and more. Add your favorite sites or services to the sidebar for instant access without leaving your game. The sidebar makes it easy to find the services that matter most without having to dig through your tabs; they're always just a click away! Game Assist also lets you reorder, remove, or add new apps to your sidebar so you're always in control.

Try Game Assist today!

We're excited to bring Microsoft Edge Game Assist to PC players and it's just the start of our journey. We're initially releasing Game Assist as an opt-in public preview while we gather your feedback on what you love and what might need to be improved. We want your help to shape the final experience, so please install Game Assist (Preview) and start sending us feedback. You can share your feedback in Game Assist by going to Settings and more ("...") > Send feedback. You can also vote on which features you want to see added to Game Assist using the new Game Assist Community feedback portal, and we'll be monitoring feedback on r/MicrosoftEdge, X, and other social channels as well.

Getting started

Ready to try Game Assist (Preview)? Here's how to get started:
  1. Make sure Windows 11 and Game Bar are up to date.
  2. Game Assist requires the Beta or Preview channel of Microsoft Edge. If you're running Windows Insider builds on your PC or have opted into Edge Preview, you already have Edge Preview and can skip to Step 3. Otherwise:
    1. Install the Microsoft Edge Insider Beta channel (you can also use the Dev channel for the latest updates, but things may be slightly less stable).
    2. Set Edge Beta as your default browser: go to Windows Settings > Apps > Default apps, search for Edge and, at the top of the page, click Edge Beta > Set as default.
  3. To opt-into Game Assist (Preview) and install the Game Bar widget, in Edge, go to Settings and more ("...") > Settings, then search for Game Assist in the search box, find the Game Assist option (above the Page zoom setting), and select Install widget.
    1. If you haven't used Edge Beta/Preview before, in Edge, go to Settings and more ("...") > Close Microsoft Edge, and then re-open the browser. You may have to repeat this step a few times for the Game Assist option to appear.
You can now use Game Assist (Preview) by opening Game Bar with Win+G. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Known issues

  • The Game Assist widget is automatically closed after a period of inactivity. (Please share feedback about this!)
  • Open tabs are restored when Game Assist is re-opened, but prior navigation history is not yet retained.
  • You can't right-click on links, images, or the page.
  • Some keyboard shortcuts are not yet supported.

FAQ

Does Game Assist work with any game and/or alongside other overlays? Yes! Game Bar and the Game Assist widget work above any game, and you can use it alongside other overlays. For the initial preview, the game-aware new tab page supports a selection of popular PC games while we optimize the experience based on your feedback. Why do I have to set Edge as my default browser? Game Assist shares data with the full Edge browser on your PC. This is typically Edge Stable, but if you have another channel of Edge set as your default browser it will prefer that channel instead. Edge Stable does not yet support Game Assist, so in the interim you'll need to set your default browser to Edge Beta for Game Assist to work. If you have Edge Preview (the default version of Edge on Windows Insider builds), you already have the necessary updates for Game Assist and do not need to install Edge Beta or set it as your default browser. Which versions of Windows does Game Assist support? Game Assist supports Windows 11 24H2, 23H2, 22H2, and all Windows Insider channels. Please make sure you've installed the latest mandatory updates. How does Game Assist know which game I'm playing? Game context is provided to all Game Bar widgets. You can control which widgets have access to this data in the Game Bar settings. Does Game Assist support Compact Mode or gamepad input? The initial preview of Game Assist is optimized for mouse and keyboard. Support for Compact Mode in Game Bar, handhelds, and gamepad input will be added in the future.
1 Based on internal Microsoft research.

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4515 (KB5046756) to the Beta Channel. Changes in Beta Channel builds and updates are documented in two buckets: new features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*) and then new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Beta Channel. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

New features gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

Ability to seamlessly resume OneDrive files in 1-click from your phone to PC

We are gradually rolling out the ability to seamlessly resume working on OneDrive files from your phone (iOS and Android) on your Windows 11 PC with a single click. With this feature, you will get a notification asking you if you want to pick up where you left off editing a OneDrive file like a Word doc that you last viewed or edited on your phone within a 5-minute time window preceding unlocking your PC. [caption id="attachment_177446" align="alignnone" width="455"]A cross-device resume notification indicating that you can continue working across devices seamlessly. A cross-device resume notification indicating that you can continue working across devices seamlessly.[/caption] Upon clicking on this notification, the same file that you were viewing or editing previously on your phone will open in your default browser on your PC. Here are some important details about how this feature works:
  • This feature works only when signing into OneDrive with a Microsoft account. Work and school accounts are not supported. And you need to be using the same Microsoft account signing into OneDrive on your phone and signing into your Windows 11 PC.
  • This feature supports Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote notebooks/pages, and PDFs.
  • The OneDrive file must be opened on your phone when your PC is locked. If you then unlock your PC within 5 minutes of accessing the file on your phone, you will receive the resume notification as noted above.
  • For the best experience using this feature, you should be logged into OneDrive in your default browser on your PC.
  • Your PC should be on Build 22635.4515 and higher in the Beta Channel.
This feature can be managed and turned off via Settings > Apps > Resume. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Devices and Drivers -> Linked Phone.

Passwordless Improvements

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to a passwordless future, on Windows, we are launching API support for third-party passkey providers. Microsoft has been engaging with passkey manager partners on developing this capability. We are committed to bringing a passwordless future to all customers - together with third-party credential providers, we will raise the bar on login security with passkeys for all users on Windows. WebAuthn Plugin Authenticator APIs We are releasing updates to WebAuthn APIs to support a plugin authentication model for passkeys. In the coming months, Windows customers will be able to choose a third-party provider as an additional choice alongside the native Windows passkey provider while maintaining the Windows Hello user experience. Messages in WebAuthn flows will be forwarded to the plugin and responses are returned to the WebAuthn client applications. This enables plugins to create and authenticate with passkeys when requested by the customer. This model allows plugins to use Windows Hello as a user verification mechanism to enable a seamless passkey experience. You will notice additional user experience updates to the passkey flows and Settings alongside the new capabilities. If you are a developer for third-party passkeys, we invite you to integrate with Windows 11 to support customers in their passkey journey. To find out more about implementation detail, go to https://aka.ms/3P-Plugin-API. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Security and Privacy > Passkey.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[Start menu]

  • We are rolling out the ability to right-click and share local files under the Recommended section of the Start menu.
[caption id="attachment_177447" align="alignnone" width="343"]Share option shown when right-clicking on a local file under the Recommended section of the Start menu. Share option shown when right-clicking on a local file under the Recommended section of the Start menu.[/caption]

[Magnifier]

  • We're adding a new keyboard shortcut CTRL + ALT + Minus for Magnifier users to quickly toggle between the current zoom and 1X zoom.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an issue where sometimes you would be unable to navigate by entering a path in the address bar.
  • Fixed an issue where the File Explorer address bar was unexpectedly overlapping with content while in full screen (F11) view.
  • Improved performance of context menu launch for people when right-clicking on cloud files.
  • Made a change to help ensure thumbnails for cloud files are displayed more consistently in search results within File Explorer.
  • Fixed an issue which was causing some explorer.exe crashes in the last couple flights, including when trying to create new folders in certain locations.

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel will receive updates based on Windows 11, version 23H2 via an enablement package (Build 22635.xxxx).
  • Many features in the Beta Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.2415 (KB5046723) to the Dev Channel. With this update, we welcome Windows Insiders with Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs to join the Dev Channel to try out Recall (Preview) with Click to Do (Preview).

Join the Dev Channel on your Copilot+ PC

Here is how you can join the Dev Channel on your Copilot+ PC today (we have a video too!):
  1. Register for the Windows Insider Program here via our website with your Microsoft account or Microsoft Entra ID. This should be the same account you use to sign into your Copilot+ PC with.
  2. After you have registered, go to Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program on your PC and select the Get Started button.
  3. When asked to link an account, choose the account you’re signed into Windows with and be sure that it is the same account you registered for the program with.
  4. Choose the Dev Channel and reboot.
  5. After rebooting and signing into your Copilot+ PC, go to Settings > Windows Update and check for updates and Build 26120.2415 should be offered.
  6. Your PC will download the update and reboot to finish the update process.

New Copilot+ PC experiences

Retrace your steps with Recall (Preview)

We’re excited to release the first preview of Recall to our Windows Insider community. Recall is an entirely new way to search for things you’ve seen or done on your PC securely. With the AI capabilities of Copilot+ PCs, it’s now possible to quickly find and get back to any app, website, image, or document just by describing its content. We invite you to try out Recall and share feedback, issues, or suggestions for improvement through in-experience links or the Feedback Hub. We also want to recognize the contributions of researchers and the security community in shaping Recall. If you’re an Insider also in this group, we additionally invite feedback on Recall’s updated security and privacy architecture through participation in our Windows Insider Preview Bug Bounty Program. As is typical when first previewing new features with Windows Insiders, you may encounter some known issues listed at the bottom of this blog post we highly recommend you read. Setup: After installing this build, the models for Recall and Click to Do will start to download in the background. You can check the download status via Settings > Windows Update. To open Recall you can find it in the Start menu under the All apps list. [caption id="attachment_177437" align="alignnone" width="1024"]The first page of the first-run experience for Recall. The first page of the first-run experience for Recall.[/caption] When you open Recall, you can complete the first-run experience, which will ask you to opt-in to saving snapshots. It will also require you to enroll in Windows Hello to confirm your presence. This requires you to enable BitLocker and Secure Boot if you haven’t already. If you don’t enable saving snapshots, Recall will not save any snapshots of your activity. [caption id="attachment_177438" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Recall with timeline control to go back in time to find something you did in the past on your PC. Recall with timeline control to go back in time to find something you did in the past on your PC.[/caption] Find It: Use your PC as you normally would. When you need to find or get back to something you’ve done previously, open Recall and authenticate with Windows Hello. As we use our PCs throughout the day working on documents or presentations, taking video calls, and context switching across activities, Recall helps you find things faster and easier and reduces the strain when you can’t remember something. Search using the clues you remember. You can not only search for the text you need to get back to, but now simply describe what you're looking for (“pie chart”). You can also browse the timeline to see snapshots from a specific time you remember and get right back to that document or website quickly. Recall’s search results leverage AI to provide both text and visual matches for your query. AI can make mistakes, if the results aren’t accurate or don’t look right, please provide us with feedback using the feedback link. When you’ve found what you were looking for, you can get back to the application, website, or document, or use Click to Do to act on any image or text in the snapshot you found. You can learn more about using Recall here. [caption id="attachment_177439" align="alignnone" width="1024"]The Recall icon in the system tray indicating when Recall is in use and running and the flyout lets you pause saving snapshots and open Recall. The Recall icon in the system tray indicating when Recall is in use and running and the flyout lets you pause saving snapshots and open Recall.[/caption] Control: With Recall, you’re in control of what snapshots are saved and when Recalls saves them. A new icon in the system tray displays status and provides quick access to Recall actions. When Recall is enabled, you’ll see the Recall icon visible. It provides visual cues to remind you when snapshots are being analyzed and saved. Click the icon and you will be able to pause saving snapshots or view more status information. When paused, you see a slash through the icon. [caption id="attachment_177440" align="alignnone" width="1024"]You can delete a snapshot in Recall from the bottom actions when you no longer want it saved. You can delete a snapshot in Recall from the bottom actions when you no longer want it saved.[/caption] You can delete any snapshot in Recall that you don’t want and tell Recall to ignore that app or website in that snapshot going forward, either when viewing an individual snapshot or by searching for what you want deleted and removing those results. [caption id="attachment_177441" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Windows Hello authentication is required to unlock the Recall experience. Windows Hello authentication is required to unlock the Recall experience.[/caption] Your data: Insiders and Recall users, we want you to know your snapshots are truly yours. We do not send your snapshots off your PC to Microsoft or third parties, and don’t use them for training purposes. Microsoft can’t access the keys to view your encrypted data, so we can’t restore your snapshots if you remove Windows Hello or restore your snapshots if you need to reset your PC or move to a new PC. We will in future updates provide ways for you to store a backup of your keys for these cases. For now, your Copilot + PC only releases the keys to use Recall if you show your face, fingerprint, or PIN. Please note that while in preview, we may make updates that require a reset of your saved snapshots and will let you know here. Technical Insiders can learn more about the security and privacy architecture of Recall here. Privacy: We’ve updated Recall to detect sensitive information like credit card details, passwords, and personal identification numbers. When detected, Recall won’t save or store those snapshots. We’ll continue to improve this functionality, and if you find sensitive information that should be filtered out, for your context, language, or geography, please let us know through Feedback Hub. We’ve also provided an option in Settings that we encourage you to enable that will anonymously share the apps and sites you prefer to be excluded from Recall to help us improve the product. And you can also choose to exclude specific apps and websites through the Recall settings page which we talk about below. [caption id="attachment_177442" align="alignnone" width="1024"]The Recall settings page where you can disable saving snapshots, change your storage settings, delete snapshots and filter webs and apps from being saved. The Recall settings page where you can disable saving snapshots, change your storage settings, delete snapshots and filter webs and apps from being saved.[/caption] Settings: Try out the additional settings available to configure Recall. Changing Recall settings requires you to authenticate with Windows Hello. You can disable saving snapshots, pause temporarily, filter applications and websites in supported browsers, control disk usage, and delete your snapshots at any time via Settings > Privacy and security > Recall and snapshots. Please provide us with feedback if additional settings would improve your experience. You can also remove Recall entirely by typing “Turn Windows features on or off” in the search box on your taskbar. Uncheck Recall from the dialog and restart your PC. Enterprises:  As announced at Ignite, for our enterprise customers, Recall is removed by default on PCs managed by an IT administrator for work or school, as well as Enterprise versions of Windows 11. IT administrators fully control the availability of Recall within their organization. Employees must choose to opt-in to saving snapshots and enroll their face or fingerprint with Windows Hello for snapshots to be saved. Only the signed-in user can access and decrypt Recall data, so although enterprises cannot access employee Recall data, they can prevent Recall from being used altogether and prevent any saving of specific apps or sites. IT administrators can click here to learn more about managing Recall on Copilot+ PCs in their organizations. Recall (Preview) will begin to rollout on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs, with support for AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs coming soon. As we gradually roll out Recall in preview, Recall is supported on select languages including Chinese (simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Content-based and storage limitations apply. See here for more details. Recall is not yet available in all regions, with expanded availability coming over time. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Recall or through in-experience links.

Click to Do (Preview) with Recall

With Click to Do in Recall, you can get more done with snapshots and improve your productivity and creativity. Click to Do recognizes text and images in snapshots and offers AI powered actions you can take on these, saving you time by helping complete tasks inline, and/or quickly getting you to the app that can best complete the job for you. [caption id="attachment_177443" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Click to Do in Recall showing image actions on a highlighted image. Click to Do in Recall showing image actions on a highlighted image.[/caption] For text, Click to Do offers the following actions:
  • Copy: Easily copy text to your clipboard.
  • Open with: Open the selected text with your preferred application.
  • Search the web: Quickly search the web for the selected text.
  • Open website: Open any URL you recognize on screen in your preferred browser
  • Send email: Send email to the email address recognized on screen in your preferred email app
For image, Click to Do provides a variety of options:
  • Copy: Copy the image to your clipboard.
  • Save as: Save the image to your desired location.
  • Share: Share the image with others.
  • Open with: Open the image with your preferred application.
  • Visual search with Bing: Perform a visual search and surface relevant contents using Bing.
  • Blur background with Photos: Blur the background of the image using Photos app.
  • Erase objects with Photos: Erase unwanted objects from the image using Photos app.
  • Remove background with Paint: Remove the background of the image using Paint app.
In this update Click to Do only works within the Recall experience. In a future update, you'll be able to effortlessly engage with Click to Do by simply pressing Windows logo key + mouse click, Windows logo key + Q, through the snipping tool menu and Print Screen, or searching “Click to Do” through Windows Search Box. These methods will make it easier than ever to take immediate action on whatever catches your eye on-screen. We're also working on introducing more intelligent text actions to enhance your experience even further. Just like with Recall noted above, Click to Do (Preview) is available only on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. Support for Intel and AMD-powered Copilot+ PCs is coming soon. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Click to Do.

Other changes included in this Dev Channel update

This update (Build 26120.2415) includes additional changes and improvements available to Windows Insiders across every Windows 11 PCs. These changes include:
  • New features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*).
  • New features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Dev Channel.
For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[Windows Hello]

  • The revamped and modernized Windows Hello user experience that is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Beta and Canary Channels will start rolling out to Insiders in the Dev Channel soon.

[Narrator]

  • We have added new functionalities to Narrator scan mode. Skip past links (N’) allows you to navigate to the text after a link. This is most helpful when navigating through long emails, news articles, and wiki pages. Jump to lists (L’) allows you to quickly access a list on a web page or a document. To try these new features, you need to turn on Narrator first (Win key + Ctrl + Enter), then turn scan mode ON by pressing Caps Lock + Spacebar and finally use the new shortcuts – ‘N’ and ‘L’. Please note that scan mode is ‘ON’ by default on most web pages (like news articles, wiki page, etc.).

[Speech in Windows]

  • We have improved our speech-to-text and text-to-speech experience on Windows. Users of Narrator, voice access, live captions, live translations, and voice typing might see a message asking them to update their language files manually. The language files will be released separately through Microsoft Store.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • Fixed an issue causing explorer.exe to crash sometimes when interacting with app icons in the taskbar in the latest flights.

[Desktop]

  • Fixed the issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

[File Explorer]

  • Did some work so the search box in File Explorer shouldn’t draw off the end of the window anymore.

[Input]

  • Fixed an underlying issue in the last few flights that could cause Windows wheel devices to not scroll.

[Narrator]

  • Fixed an issue in the previous flight which caused Narrator to crash on launch if you used one of the natural voices (like Jenny).

Known issues

[Recall with Click to Do]

The following known issues will be fixed in future updates to Windows Insiders:
  • You must have Secure Boot enabled for Recall to save snapshots. Ensure Secure Boot is enabled before trying out Recall. This support article will help you enable Secure Boot.
  • Clicking links within Recall to submit feedback may experience a delay in loading the Feedback Hub application. Be patient and it will display.
  • Recall can be enabled or disabled from “Turn Windows features on or off”. We are caching the Recall binaries on disk while we test add/remove. In a future update we will completely remove the binaries.
  • Some users experience a delay before snapshots first appear in the timeline while using their device. If snapshots do not appear after 5 minutes, reboot your device. If saving snapshots is enabled, but you see snapshots are no longer being saved, reboot your device.
  • Some users may see a message to “Make sure Recall is saving snapshots”, while the Settings page for Recall shows saving snapshots is enabled. Reboot your device to resolve this issue.
  • Websites added as filters may be saved if the content is in split screen or side bar pane in Edge. This will be addressed in an update.
  • Make sure you update Microsoft 365 apps to the latest version so you can jump back into specific documents.
  • Recall may not currently work with some accessibility applications.

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel receive updates based on Windows 11, version 24H2 via an enablement package (Build 26120.xxxx).
  • Updates delivered to the Dev Channel are in a format that offers a preview of enhancements to servicing technology on Windows 11, version 24H2. To learn more, see https://aka.ms/CheckpointCumulativeUpdates.
  • Many features in the Dev Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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AWS
Microsoft Edge is here to help you navigate the busiest time of the year. From finding the best deals on your shopping list, helping you prepare for holiday travel, or even giving you ideas for a DIY ugly holiday sweater, Edge has the built-in tools you need to shop smarter and accomplish more than you thought possible, all while staying safer online. Here is a quick guide on how Edge's AI-powered tools can help you make the holiday season more joyful:

Find the Perfect Gift

We all have that one person in our lives who is difficult to shop for but to whom we always want to give the most thoughtful gift. Copilot in Edge, conveniently built into your browser, can create a list of ideas with just a prompt. Simply ask Copilot, "what are some great gift ideas for my teenage nephew?" and you'll get a curated list of suggestions. You could even add a bit more detail to get even more refined suggestions like "what are some great gift ideas for my teenage nephew who loves gaming and movies?" Once you've found the perfect gift (or gifts!), Edge brings built-in shopping tools right to your fingertips, helping you get the best deal on the perfect gift.

Stay on Budget

On average, shoppers are shown over $400 per year in savings using Microsoft Edge. If you are someone who enjoys finding the best deals on your shopping list, Edge is the browser for you. With built-in shopping tools such as coupons, price tracking, price comparison, price history, and cashback, you can be confident you are getting a great deal. For example, once you've found the perfect gift for your nephew, clicking on the blue tag on the address bar Edge will show you available coupons, compare prices on other retailers, cashback options, and more. It is all designed to save you time and money. So, if there are coupons for the site, you won't need to manually search for and enter coupon codes one by one as Edge will automatically apply them at checkout with a single click. For those who shop on the go, coupons and cashback features are also available on the Edge mobile app. You can also start your shopping journey on Bing — the only major search engine offering cashback. The same shopping tools you know and love from Edge, like coupons and cashback, are also available on Bing, so you get the same powerful shopping experience across your browser and search engine. Shopping illustration

Stay Safer Online

While shopping online is incredibly convenient, it can cause worry about the safety of our personal information. When it comes to secure online shopping, Microsoft Edge has the tools to help keep your information safe — and even streamline your online shopping. Say, for example, you're at the airport, needing to buy a last-minute gift before you board. If you're on your laptop, chances are you're connected to the public airport Wi-Fi. Microsoft Edge can help protect your information by encrypting your data with Edge Secure Network (VPN)1. What's more, Edge is also equipped with features that not only keep your personal information safe, but also add convenience while you shop. With Wallet and Autofill, you can keep all your information on hand, helping you prefill address and payment methods, while also keeping them stored securely — giving you peace of mind and saving you time. If you're on your mobile device, Wallet and Autofill are also available on the Edge mobile app helping you stay safer online while you shop on-the-go. VPN illustration

Tackle Your Holiday To-Do List

The holidays come with endless to-do lists, and Copilot in Edge can be your go-to holiday planning assistant, helping you discover ideas, tips, and information to get through your tasks quickly. For example, if you're going to an ugly sweater party and signed up to bring cookies, simply ask Copilot in Edge, "Please give me ideas for an easy ugly holiday sweater I can DIY" and/or "Can you find me a yummy recipe for vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?" In no time, you'll have ideas to work with to be ready to serve the best cookies, and ugly sweater look - and hopefully get time back to focus on other things on your to-do list, or simply enjoy the season.

Plan Your Holiday Travels

Traveling for the holidays can add another layer of complexity and stress to an already busy time of the year. And believe it or not, this is another aspect of the holidays Edge can help with — not just in the obvious browser tasks, like booking travel and stay, but also providing you helpful and thoughtful guidance on how to plan and prepare for your upcoming trip. For example, maybe this is your first time traveling to visit family with your baby. With just one click on your browser window, you can access Copilot in Edge and either type or voice your prompt — like, "Hi Copilot! What do you suggest as a packing list for traveling with our baby for the first time?" In just a few seconds, you will see (or hear) a list of useful suggestions — and it can even provide tips for navigating family dynamics. Beyond helping you plan, Edge can also help you stay organized as you book your travels. With Workspaces, you can collaborate with your travel group to decide on flights and stays. Those you share the workspace with will see the same browser content you see, updated in real time. We hope Edge's AI-powered tools can help you with all aspects of the holidays and hopefully give you time back to enjoy the magic of the season. To learn more, visit Holiday Shopping with Microsoft Edge | Microsoft Edge and please continue to send us your feedback as we work to create web experiences and tools to give you a smarter way to browse. Remember, if you're running a Windows PC, you already have Microsoft Edge installed, so check it out and see why Microsoft Edge is the smarter way to browse. For those who want to try Microsoft Edge and are on a macOS, mobile, or Linux device, download it and let us know what you think2!
1 Users signed into Edge with their personal Microsoft account automatically receive 5 GB of free VPN data protection every month. To conserve your VPN data limit, content streaming sites such as Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and more, will not be routed through the Secure Network VPN service. 2 You can share your feedback from the browser window by going to Settings and more (...) > Help and feedback > Send feedback.

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Xbox Wire’s Danielle Partis is not a fan of scary games, but  S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl – which launches today on Xbox Series X|S and PC – is a first-person survival journey where The Zone encompasses a “unique, complex and compelling setting to unravel.” She writes, “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is an open world affair, in which you’re expected to fend for yourself in brutal and unpredictable situations, where basically any living thing you come across can and will hurt you. For those unfamiliar with the series, it is paramount to stay prepared – as with any survival game, you’ll need to constantly be on the hunt for weapon ammo, medical supplies and food. Not to mention, this entire habitat is one giant, quarantined hazard, brimming with monsters, environmental anomalies and of course, radiation.” Find out more about the game on Xbox Wire and read about the journey the studio took to finish it.

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27754 to the Canary Channel. We are also not planning to release SDKs for 27xxx series builds for the time being.

What’s new with Build 27754

Modernized Windows Hello

At Microsoft, we are committed to security and enhancing user experiences. As part of this commitment, we launched enhanced passkey features in September 2023 and are now revamping the Windows Hello user experience. This represents a significant update to Windows Hello, aligning it with contemporary Windows visual design standards. The primary focus is on making authentication intuitive and seamless. [caption id="attachment_177394" align="alignnone" width="453"]Image showing new Windows Hello iconography. Image showing new Windows Hello iconography.[/caption] Modernized Windows Hello Visual Communication: The updated Windows Hello visuals are designed to facilitate fast and clear communication and appear on the Windows Sign-in screen as well as other authentication flows such as passkey, Microsoft Store and many more. [caption id="attachment_177396" align="alignnone" width="583"]Image of the Windows 11 login screen depicting new Windows Hello iconography. Image of the Windows 11 login screen depicting new Windows Hello iconography.[/caption] Revamped Windows Hello credential user experience for passkeys and the new administrator protection experience: We redesigned Windows security credential user experiences for passkey creating a cleaner experience that supports secured and quick authentication. Users will now be able to switch between authentication options and select passkey/devices more intuitively. [caption id="attachment_177397" align="alignnone" width="585"]Image of new passkey sign-in flow screens. Image of new passkey sign-in flow screens.[/caption] This experience will also apply for the new administrator protection feature coming to Windows 11, version 24H2 and higher and currently in preview with Windows Insiders in the most recent Canary Channel builds. For more information on administrator protection – you can check out this blog post that highlights our investments in adminlesss experiences in Windows from Microsoft Ignite. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Security and Privacy > Passwordless experience.

Changes and Improvements

[General]

  • If you hold Shift and CTRL when clicking on a jump list item in Start menu or taskbar, this will now launch that item as admin, just like if you were to do Shift + CTRL and click the app icon itself. For example, if you right-click on Windows Terminal, and hold Shift and CTRL when you click PowerShell, it would open a PowerShell window as admin.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • We’ve updated the previews that show when you mouse-over/hover over apps on the taskbar. We have also improved the animations for when these previews show on the taskbar based on Insider feedback.
[caption id="attachment_177179" align="alignnone" width="555"]Updated taskbar previews shown for two open File Explorer windows. Updated taskbar previews shown for two open File Explorer windows.[/caption]
  • We are trying out a more simplified system tray to highlight the date/time in a shortened form and to show the notifications bell icon based on DND status. Without the notification bell icon, you can get to your notifications by clicking the date and time to Notification Center. You can revert to the long form of the date/time and bell icon visuals by toggling the values in the Settings via Settings > Date and Time under “Show time and day in the system tray” and Settings > System > Notifications under “Notifications”. These settings are also accessible through the context menu shown by right clicking the system tray clock/bell icon button.
[caption id="attachment_177177" align="alignnone" width="348"]Simplified system tray shown with shortened form data and time and no notification bell icon. Simplified system tray shown with shortened form data and time and no notification bell icon.[/caption]

Fixes

[General]

  • Fixed the issue with applying policy for the Digital Markets Act in EEA regions in Build 27749.
  • Fixed an issue where an update failing and rolling back could potentially result in a duplicate Windows entry in the boot menu.

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which was causing RAW images taken in portrait mode to unexpectedly display in landscape mode thumbnails.
  • Did some work so the search box in File Explorer shouldn’t draw off the end of the window anymore.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • Fixed an issue on secondary monitors for left aligned taskbar users, where the widgets text in the taskbar might overlap the date and time.

[Input]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which could cause the mouse to unlock from a game window on a system with multiple monitors after opening and closing Game Bar, so you couldn’t use it within the game.

[Other]

  • Fixed an underlying issue causing some apps used for remoting into other PCs to crash in the latest Canary builds.
  • Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to see bugchecks with SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED in the latest Canary builds.
  • Fixed an issue where sfc /scannow was unexpectedly showing errors every time it was run. This issue is not fixed.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to Registry Editor going unresponsive if you pressed Alt after clicking on the license information in the About section.

Known issues

[General]

  • [IMPORTANT NOTE FOR COPILOT+ PCs] If you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel or retail, you will lose Windows Hello pin and biometrics to sign into your PC with error 0xd0000225 and error message “Something went wrong, and your PIN isn’t available”. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking “Set up my PIN”.
  • We’re investigating reports that some Insiders are still experiencing rollbacks (with error code 0xc190010) when attempting to install the latest Canary builds.
  • [NEW] We’re investigating reports that accent colored window borders are not displaying when enabled, and shadows aren’t displaying when enabled.
  • [NEW] We’re investigating reports that people are seeing window launching (and other) animations even though the setting to show animations is turned off.

[Desktop]

  • We’re working on the fix for an issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

[Narrator]

  • [ADDED 11/22] Narrator is crashing on some builds with Natural voices like Jenny or Aria. We suggest you switch to a non-natural voice like David, Mark, etc. from Narrator settings page and restart your PC to continue using Narrator.

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel

  • The builds we release to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windowsand features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Many features in the Canary Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • Some features may show up in the Dev and Beta Channels first before showing up in the Canary Channel.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • To get off the Canary Channel, a clean install of Windows 11 will be required. As a reminder - Insiders can’t switch to a channel that is receiving builds with lower build numbers without doing a clean installation of Windows 11 due to technical setup requirements.
  • The desktop watermark shown at the lower right corner of the desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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The pilot had been missing for about a week, last seen taking off from an airport in Covington, Washington, heading home in his Piper Dakota to Puyallup, about 36 miles south of Seattle. Though he had gone down in the heavily developed and densely populated suburbs, no one had been able to find him or his small aircraft. This was 2007 and Khoi Duong was on an air mission as part of a search and rescue team.  He’d already gone up once that day looking for the missing pilot, eyes continually scanning the landscape below, looking for something, anything, that could lead them to him and his aircraft. Duong, who was raised in Seattle, was a high school intern at Microsoft. After he graduated from the University of Washington, he returned to Microsoft and is now a full-time quality engineer within Xbox Game Studios. His professional and volunteer worlds intertwine constantly. As a tester, he lent his search and rescue expertise to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which released Nov. 19 on PCs (Win 10/11 and Steam) and consoles (Xbox Series X|S). Screenshot of red helicopter rescuing people off a mountain Fans of the sim have asked repeatedly for search and rescue situations, and they’ve gotten their wish with this release. MSFS 2024 is as close as someone can get on a computer or console to flying all kinds of aircraft, from gliders to Cessnas to vintage fighter planes and commercial airliners. In this newest version, flying search and rescue missions is a career option, complete with step-by-step guides that allow players to take what they’ve learned and apply it to each stage of becoming a first responder. Find out more about Duong’s search and rescue experiences, along with others’ perspectives on this part of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, on Microsoft Source.

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At Microsoft, security is our top priority, and with every release, Windows becomes even more secure. At Ignite 2024, we will highlight new Windows security innovations that will provide the clarity and confidence our customers and organizations require while navigating this evolving digital landscape. We will also talk about our learnings from the July incident, and investments we are making as a result. Protecting your data and ensuring the integrity of your systems is paramount. From chip to cloud, Microsoft provides multiple layers of security to help protect identities and data, and enables an expansive ecosystem for innovation at a critical time. As the security landscape evolves, we continuously enhance Windows' security and resilience, ensuring it remains a secure platform for our partners, developers and customers. A strong security posture is essential for your business, and a shared responsibility across our ecosystem. This week at Ignite, we’re sharing more on our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) — our commitment to making security foundational in everything we do at Microsoft. Since launching SFI, we’ve focused the equivalent of 34,000 full-time engineers on the highest-priority security challenges. The November update dives into insights across all aspects of SFI as well as learnings that customers can implement to strengthen their own security posture. Explore the latest insights and best practices in our November update.

Security and Resiliency: Our Top Priority

Protecting your organization’s data from emerging threats and ensuring system integrity is paramount. Windows 11 raises the bar for security and reliability, while maintaining the Windows open ecosystem where customers and partners innovate freely. We are committed to ensuring that Windows remains the most reliable and resilient open platform for our customers. As part of this commitment, we are introducing the Windows Resiliency Initiative, covering four areas of focus:
  • Strengthen reliability based on learnings from the incident we saw in July.
  • Enabling more apps and users to run without admin privileges.
  • Stronger controls for what apps and drivers are allowed to run.
  • Improved identity protection to prevent phishing attacks.
Empowering IT administrators with great tools during critical times is a top priority. Our first step is born out of the learnings from the July incident with the announcement of Quick Machine Recovery. This feature will enable IT administrators to execute targeted fixes from Windows Update on PCs, even when machines are unable to boot, without needing physical access to the PC. This remote recovery will unblock your employees from broad issues much faster than what has been possible in the past.  Quick Machine Recovery will be available to the Windows Insider Program community in early 2025. We are our evolving our partnership with endpoint security partners who you rely on to keep your employees safe as part of the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI). Together, we will adopt Safe Deployment Practices, which means that all security product updates must be gradual, leverage deployment rings, as well as monitoring to ensure any negative impact from updates is kept to a minimum.  To help our customers and partners increase resilience, we are developing new Windows capabilities that will allow security product developers to build their products outside of kernel mode. This means security products, like anti-virus solutions, can run in user mode just as apps do. This change will help security developers provide a high level of security, easier recovery, and there will be less impact to Windows in the event of a crash or mistake. A private preview will be made available for our security product ecosystem in July 2025. And, in alignment with the Secure Future Initiative, we are adopting safer programming languages, gradually moving functionality from C++ implementation to Rust.

Windows 11 Secure by Default: More Secure than Windows 10 

Moving to Windows 11 provides a more protected environment with advanced security features. We are intently focused on raising the bar to ensure robust defense against sophisticated attacks. All new Windows 11 PCs require a hardware-backed security baseline, such as TPM 2.0 and virtualization-based security by default. This baseline is the starting point, and the foundation needed to help secure everything else on Windows. Copilot+ PCs feature Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security, and the built-in Microsoft Pluton security processor, ensuring they meet the high standards of secured-core PCs by default. Built into new Windows 11 PCs, including Copilot+ PCs, are a growing list of existing features now enabled by default, or with additional protections added to significantly reduce the potential for attacks. These changes make Windows 11 more secure by default than Windows 10, from the chip to the cloud. Examples include Credential Guard, vulnerable driver block list, Local Security Authority (LSA) protection now enabled by default for new consumer devices, and BitLocker enabled by default on most modern systems. In addition, insecure code and crypto algorithms have been removed, and kernel attack surfaces, like Tool Tips, have been moved to user mode. Our security teams are working hard for you, so you don’t need to spend your time manually enabling security on new or upgraded PCs. Our focused security work, driven by observing attacker patterns and behaviors, has resulted in a reported 62% drop in security incidents and a threefold reduction in firmware attacks and 2.9 times fewer instances of identity theft reported.1

New Windows 11 Security   

Security is a pursuit, and not a destination. Today, I am announcing new features to help commercial customers with three longstanding challenges with Windows security — overprivileged users and applications; unverified apps and drivers; and insecure credentials and authentications. These capabilities have been top requests from customers around the world, including our internal Microsoft security team who we are working with to ensure real-world testing in preparation for scaling to our largest customers.

Reducing Administrator Privileges

Running users and apps as administrator violated the principle of least privilege and leads to many security incidents. As noted in the 2024 Microsoft Digital Defense Report, token theft incidents, which abuse user’s privileges, have grown to an estimated 39,000 per day1. With that in mind, organizations today have a complex binary challenge when setting up policy for employees. The choice is between having users with standard user permissions or users with administrator permissions. By choosing to run with administrator permissions, you can do every modification you need — like adjusting the time-zone, making registry changes, installing applications and many other tasks without friction. However, the bad news is that if malware infects your account, it then also has direct access to critical system resources, and can silently make changes that cause disruption, result in data loss, or worse. By contrast, standard user permission offers better security. User access to critical system resources is blocked by default, and it helps block malware or apps from silently changing machine configurations. However, standard user permission is frustrating for users as they cannot do some common tasks like changing the time settings or installing productivity applications, because in many cases a standard user will not have the administrator credential. Standard user permission also creates an additional overhead for IT to help users with acceptable tasks, unless they have tools such as Microsoft Intune Endpoint Privilege Management.
  • Administrator protection, currently in preview, is a new solution where users have the security of standard user permissions by default, but can still easily make system changes, including app installation, on their PCs when needed. With administrator protection, if a system change requires administrator rights, like some app installations, the user is prompted to securely authorize the change using Windows Hello. Windows creates a temporary isolated admin token to get the job done. This temporary token is immediately destroyed once the task is complete, ensuring that admin privileges do not persist. Administrator protection helps ensure that users, and not malware, remain in control of system resources. It will also be disruptive to attackers as they no longer have automatic, direct access to the kernel or other critical system security without specific Windows Hello authorization.
[caption id="attachment_179206" align="alignnone" width="815"]User prompts for authorizing admin operations  User prompts for authorizing admin operations[/caption]

Protecting Credentials

Credential and identity theft is a prime focus of cyberattacks. In fact, Microsoft Entra data shows that of more than 600 million identity attacks per day, more than 99% are password-based2. And our findings reveal that Multifactor Authentication (MFA) offers outstanding protection, with over 99.99% of MFA-enabled accounts remaining secure during the investigation period3. We continue to add additional protection for credentials and authentications.
  • Windows Hello is the built-in MFA solution on Windows. It has been further hardened and extended to support passkeys. You no longer need to choose between a simple sign-in and a safe sign-in. Windows Hello is also being used to protect Recall and Personal Data Encryption.

Trusted Apps and Drivers

Many attacks occur due to users downloading unsafe or unsigned apps and drivers. We continue to add protections to help you defend yourself and your organization from malicious apps and drivers.
  • Smart App Control and App Control for Business policies provide peace of mind that only verified apps can run on your device. This eliminates attacks like malicious attachments or social engineered malware. With the power of AI, we’ve made it much simpler to deploy. IT admins can simply select the ‘signed and reputable policy’ template in the app control wizard. This enables millions of verified apps to run regardless of the deployment location. Line of business apps unknown to Microsoft can be easily added by the IT admin through policy changes or via Microsoft Intune managed app deployments.
  • Windows Protected Print works seamlessly with Mopria-certified devices and does not require third-party drivers. It is designed to mitigate many of the past security issues with print drivers, and offers a more streamlined experience.

Data Protection

Your commercial data is one of the most important assets for your business, and we are providing more encryption options, including Personal Data Encryption.
  • Personal Data Encryption for known folders is a new Windows 11 Enterprise capability using Windows Hello authentication to help protect files stored in the Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders. Protection is indicated by the lock icon on the file. With Personal Data Encryption enabled, a device administrator won't be able to view file content, as the files remain encrypted until you authenticate with Windows Hello. An IT admin, using Microsoft Intune (or another management tool) can select all or a subset of these folders to apply Personal Data Encryption. It integrates with OneDrive and SharePoint on Microsoft 365 to allow for easy collaboration. Personal Data Encryption can be used independently of BitLocker, or other solutions, and when combined with BitLocker, it offers double encryption protection. Enterprise developers can also leverage the Personal Data Encryption API to extend protection of their application data.

OS Management and Configuration

In addition to evolving security features, we continue to evolve tools to enable IT to manage and configure Windows at scale.
  • Hotpatch in Windows is being introduced for Windows 11 Enterprise 24H2 and Windows 365. This revolutionary feature allows businesses to apply critical security updates without requiring a system restart, shortening your time to adopt critical security updates by up to 60% from the moment a security update is offered.  With hotpatching through your Windows Autopatch settings in Microsoft Intune, you can reduce the number of system restarts for Windows updates from 12 times a year to just four, minimizing security risk while keeping systems secure and productivity uninterrupted. This means consistent protection, and a streamlined, seamless experience for your users. Hotpatch in Windows is currently in preview.
  • Zero Trust DNS. Network destinations are often defined by domain names, making enforcement challenging. Zero Trust DNS restricts Windows devices to approved domains, blocking outbound IPv4 and IPv6 traffic unless resolved by a Protected DNS server or allowed by IT admin. Learn more about the Zero Trust DNS preview.
  • Config Refresh, available now, is a frequently requested feature as configuration drift can occur when a user or app makes changes to a PCs system registry. Config Refresh helps enforce MDM-defined security policies by automatically returning PC settings to the preferred configuration. Config Refresh works locally on the PC without needing to connect to the MDM, so devices can self-manage settings drift even when offline.

Security and Innovation for a Reliable Digital Future 

Nearly 40 years after its launch, Windows continues to evolve to meet the challenges of the ever-changing digital landscape and delivering on expectations for reliability and security. Security is a team effort; by collaborating with OEM partners, app developers and others we deliver Windows from chip to cloud, secure by design and default. The updated Windows Security book is available to help you understand how to stay secure with Windows. Learn more about Windows 11 and Copilot+ PCs. To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

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Windows has been at the heart of modern computing for nearly 40 years. It is the ubiquitous, open platform that powers computing experiences around the world and plays a significant role across multiple industries, such as education, government, military, hospitals and corporations, many of which provide mission critical services requiring a high level of security and resiliency. And this responsibility that Windows holds to keep businesses of every size running is one we take seriously. In close collaboration with our ecosystem partners, we ensure that Windows remains the optimal platform for organizations to perform at their best. As we enter this new era of work, we are focused on empowering our customers and organizations to modernize their computing experience with AI experiences and the cloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aERpkd5egQ As we come together at Microsoft Ignite 2024, we're excited to unveil the latest security, AI and cloud innovations coming to Windows for our commercial customers. We're pushing the boundaries to continue making Windows the most secure and performant platform for you and your organization. Announcements include:
  • The latest security innovation, requirements and updates on our commitment to building the most secure operating system on Earth
  • Availability of new cutting-edge AI tools for our developer community designed to drive new innovation on Copilot+ PCs and Windows 11
  • Updates on AI-powered Copilot+ PCs with Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 for enhanced productivity
  • The introduction of a new class of devices built to connect securely to Windows 365 in seconds, and expansion of Cloud PC solutions to more jobs such as Frontline workers, BYOD (bring your own device) employees, high-capacity computing and cloud-powered resiliency.
Throughout the next few days, we will outline our commitment to security, productivity and user experiences across Windows 11, Copilot+ PCs and Windows 365. Windows 11 is the most secure operating system on Earth, and the best computing platform for businesses of all sizes. We will explore how, together, Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 boost employee productivity, the value and performance Copilot+ PCs provide organizations, and we will share details on the right IT controls and security layers available to safeguard your organization. Additionally, we will highlight how Windows enables management of countless mission-critical workloads and how we are extending Windows across more platforms, to more jobs, with Windows 365 Cloud PCs.

Security and Resiliency: Our Top Priority

[caption id="attachment_179197" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Image of laptop computer superimposed with layers of protection chip to cloud Layers of protection chip to cloud[/caption] Protecting your organization’s data from emerging threats and ensuring system integrity is paramount. Windows 11 raises the bar for security and reliability, while maintaining the Windows open ecosystem where customers and partners innovate freely. We are committed to ensuring that Windows remains the most reliable and resilient open platform for our customers. As part of this commitment, we are introducing the Windows Resiliency Initiative, covering four areas of work:
  • Strengthen reliability based on learnings from the incident we saw in July
  • Enabling more apps and users to run without admin privileges
  • Stronger controls for what apps and drivers are allowed to run
  • Improved identity protection to prevent phishing attacks
Empowering IT administrators with great tools during critical times is a top priority.  Our first step is born out of the learnings from the July incident with the announce of Quick Machine Recovery. This feature will enable IT administrators to execute targeted fixes from Windows Update on PCs, even when machines are unable to boot, without needing physical access to the PC. This remote recovery will unblock your employees from broad issues much faster than what has been possible in the past. This feature will be available to the Windows Insider Program community in early 2025. We are also evolving our partnership with endpoint security partners you rely on to keep your employees safe.  For over 20 years, we have collaborated deeply with these partners as part of the Microsoft Virus Initiative (MVI). These partners have extensive integration with the Windows platform and play a significant role in safeguarding customers' digital portfolios. This summer we brought together a group of industry leaders and partners to discuss new ways we can work together to ensure that Windows 11 remains the most secure and resilient operating system. As an outcome of that summit, MVI partners will be required to take specific actions to improve security and reliability. In addition to increased testing and strengthened incident response processes, these partners must follow safe deployment practices for updates to your Windows endpoints. The practices include controlled gradual rollouts, and the monitoring and recovery procedures such as those recently shared by the US Cybersecurity and Secure Infrastructure Administration (CISA). The close Microsoft collaboration with MVI partners also includes working on new Windows platform capabilities to enable running anti-virus processing outside kernel mode. This will enable anti-virus products on Windows to provide a high level of security while minimizing reliability risks, as crashes outside kernel mode will only affect the anti-virus application, and not all of Windows. A private preview of these new Windows security platform capabilities will be made available to partners in July 2025. Our focus on Windows security goes well beyond the close collaboration with the MVI partners. Our Windows Secure by Design strategy is a comprehensive approach to ensuring that Windows 11 is the most secure operating system we have ever built, from the moment you power on your PC.

With Windows 11, we've achieved a remarkable 3x reported reduction in firmware attacks and 2.9x fewer instances of credential theft compared to Windows 101

We continue to raise the security bar with hardware security baseline requirements, security at every endpoint and related features enabled on by default.
  • Hardware Security Baseline: Our customers expect that every Windows 11 PC is safe and secure. Windows 11 leverages the latest hardware security features, such as TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, to provide a robust defense against sophisticated attacks. Hardware security baselines now provide organizations with a consistent foundation and the confidence they expect in their operating system.
  • User-centric security enhancements: Guided by the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative, we are making big changes to deliver the highest level of Windows security. Smart App Control and App Control for Business policies provide peace of mind that only verified apps can run on your device, helping fend off attacks like malicious attachments or even social engineered malware. Windows Hello authentication has been extended to passkeys, so that you no longer have to choose between a simple sign-in and a safe one.
  • Administrator protection: We have introduced a new feature in preview where employees have standard user permissions by default, but can still make Windows system changes, including app installation, when necessary. With administrator protection enabled, if a system change requires administrator rights, the employee is prompted to authorize the change using Windows Hello. Upon approving the change, Windows creates a temporary isolated admin token that is destroyed once the process is completed.  Administrator Protection helps to ensure that employees remain in control, not malware.
Learn more  from David Weston about these new security enhancements.

Windows 365 and Windows 11 provided us with the capability, the operational resilience, the security that we needed to be able to provide a secure platform on which to build our products and services off.

--Sandra Lee, Group Chief Information Security Officer, London Stock Exchange Group

For detailed insights into these features and our Windows security priorities, please refer to our updated Windows Security book. This book provides a comprehensive view of our commitment to the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative and our aligned Windows security goals.

Empowering Developers with Cutting-Edge AI Tools

Block diagram of Windows Copilot Runtime As we continue our journey into the AI era of computing, providing the right software tools and performant hardware to our developer community is critical to our success. This important community is at the forefront of this AI transformation, and with the introduction of Copilot+ PCs equipped with a powerful neural processing unit (NPU), we are seeing accelerated innovation around new AI experiences.  Today, I’m excited to share new capabilities for developers which are designed to assist in the integration of AI in applications. At Build 2024, we introduced Windows Copilot Runtime (WCR), a reliable platform for developers to create innovative experiences more securely and efficiently, regardless of where they are on their AI development journey. Windows Copilot Runtime encompasses AI frameworks and tool chains that enable developers to integrate their own on-device models into Windows, utilizing robust client silicon such as GPUs and NPUs. Whether they are just getting started or are already building custom models, WCR includes a set of APIs that are powered by over 40 on-device models included with Windows. Phi 3.5 Silica, built from the Phi series of models, is optimized for the Snapdragon X series NPU in Copilot+ PCs, enabling text intelligence capabilities like text summarization, text completion and text prediction. Developers can access Phi 3.5 Silica API and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) API which recognizes and extracts text present within an image in Windows App SDK 1.7 Experimental 2 release in January. Today, I’m pleased to announce four new Imaging APIs in Windows Copilot Runtime which developers can access in Windows App SDK 1.7 Experimental 2 release in January.
  • Image super resolution: API increases fidelity of the image as well as upscaling the resolution of the image. This API can be used to enhance clarity of blurry images.
  • Image segmentation: API enables separating foreground and background of an image, as well as removing specific objects or regions within an image. Creativity apps like image editing or video editing can easily bring background removal capabilities in their apps using this API.
  • Object erase: This API enables erasing unwanted objects from the image and blends the erased area with the rest of the background.
  • Image description: API provides a text description of an image.
We are seeing exciting innovation with Windows Copilot Runtime and the NPU, coming from new third-party developers such as Adobe Premiere Pro, LiquidText, Dot Vista, Promeo by Cyberlink, McAfee’s Deepfake Detector, Capture One, Affinity Photo and more. In addition to the new AI-powered APIs and frameworks, it’s important to enhance developer productivity with tools they need to be efficient in their workflow. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) offers a robust environment for AI development on Windows, allowing developers to simultaneously run Windows and Linux workloads. Starting today, we are introducing several critical enhancements to WSL and WinGet, empowering IT professionals to effectively manage their enterprise’s line-of-business applications.
  • Intune device compliance integration will provide IT professionals with an interface to control WSL distribution and version usage in their enterprise with controlled access.
  • Microsoft Entra ID integration with WSL allows enterprise developers to access protected enterprise resources from a WSL distribution. It provides an automatic connection for Linux processes to use the underlying Windows authentication.
We are excited to offer developers more choices for Linux distribution on WSL. With a new WSL distribution architecture, we are providing additional extensibility to IT professionals and enterprise developers to have more Linux distributions including Red Hat to choose from.

Harnessing the Power of AI: Windows 11 and Copilot+ PCs

AI is at the heart of our vision for the future of Windows 11, and its introduction into the productivity space is an exciting step forward. By leveraging the combined strengths of Windows 11 and Microsoft 365, we empower employees to achieve more with less effort through all-new AI experiences on Copilot+ PCs and Windows 11. With an integrated NPU capable of 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), Copilot+ PCs provide unique AI experiences and rich contextual insights across applications, with near real-time processing capabilities and support for the next generation of AI applications. When you add Microsoft 365 and the suite of innovative tools – including a large language model, graph and productivity features – employees can improve workflows, communicate effectively and collaborate more efficiently. With the introduction of Copilot+ PCs, Windows has been rearchitected, in collaboration with AMD, Intel and Qualcomm, and OEM partners, to optimize every layer of the stack for AI experiences.  Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent and the most secure PCs we've ever built. Together, Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs with Microsoft 365 deliver experiences that enrich and empower employees and businesses in valuable new ways. Our innovation focuses on three key aspects of the employee experience: simplifying workflows, helping you find information faster and improving communication tools so everyone can be seen, heard and understood. Together, Windows and Microsoft 365 offer an experience with fewer clicks, less friction, richer context and greater capabilities for everyone. [caption id="attachment_179214" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Microsoft 365 Copilot Microsoft 365 Copilot[/caption]

Simplifying Your Workflow

An important aspect of productivity is the ability for employees to quickly switch between tasks, navigate applications and identify the right tools. This all takes time and effort which may distract from the task at hand. With Microsoft 365 Copilot on Windows 11, employees with a Copilot+ PC have access to a personal assistant for work designed to scale their impact, including aiding in idea generation, collaboration and task completion. We have only just begun unlocking new possibilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot on Copilot+ PCs. Microsoft 365 Copilot can harness the power of AI by utilizing the integrated NPU, allowing models to run locally. This reduces reliance on an internet connection for tasks such as AI writing assistance in applications like Outlook and Word. In the coming months, organizations will experience even greater benefits through new AI innovations, making generative writing capabilities accessible to more employees and enabling them to achieve more with less effort. Learn more from Jared Spataro about Microsoft 365 Copilot innovations in his blog.

Recall (Preview):  Disabled by Default

Earlier this year, we introduced Recall for Copilot+ PCs, designed to make it easier to quickly find what you've seen before on your PC. We heard your feedback on needing a secure and controllable experience for using Recall in your organizations, and it will be. Recall will be disabled by default, and IT will enable this feature through new policies before it can be made available to employees for opting in and will ship with meaningful security enhancements, including additional layers of data encryption and Windows Hello protection, making it one of the most secure experiences we have ever built. Our goal is to ensure that your employee and organization data is protected from the beginning, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on this new experience. [caption id="attachment_179215" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Recall IT controls Recall IT controls[/caption]

AI Assistance at Your Fingertips

Another Copilot+ PC feature recently announced is Click to Do (preview), an all-new powerful productivity paradigm that puts AI at your fingertips to assist with many tasks across applications such as being able to summarize any content on your screen, even if it’s in a Teams call. Click to Do (preview) in Recall is releasing first to our Windows Insider community on Copilot+ PCs before rolling out more broadly to our customers. It is designed to connect you to quick AI actions based on the context of what's on your screen, making it faster and easier to get things done, all done in secure and private workflows. [caption id="attachment_179216" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Click to Do (preview) Click to Do (preview)[/caption]

Finding What You’re Looking For Faster

A seamless workflow relies on quickly finding what you need. Employees often struggle to locate files or information on their PC and across applications. Copilot+ PCs, with powerful NPUs, will reduce this frustration using Improved Windows Search, which uses federated semantic search to interpret user intent even when it doesn't match the exact file name. This feature will be released first to our Windows Insider community on Copilot+ PCs, starting early next year, before rolling out more broadly to our customers. Our Microsoft 365 Copilot customers can search both local and cloud files, boosting efficiency. These capabilities will expand to the Windows search box and Settings in the future. [caption id="attachment_179212" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Improved Windows Search Improved Windows Search[/caption]

Effective Communication and Team Collaboration

Achieving optimal productivity involves more than just completing tasks; it also includes enabling employees to communicate effectively while engaging in work they are passionate about. When using Teams on Copilot+ PCs, employees will experience optimized performance and reduced battery consumption. Teams Super Resolution enhances the quality of incoming video, improving visibility of colleagues even with weak internet connections. Live Captions with live translation support from over 40 languages into English, makes it easier than ever to connect with colleagues near and far2. And, for the days you need to look and sound your best, Windows Studio Effects provide valuable visual and audio filters, providing optimal appearance and sound quality during a video call. These innovative experiences are powered by Windows Copilot Runtime. Studio Effects, Live captions with live translations and Image super resolution are available as ready to use APIs in Windows Copilot Runtime. Organizations can leverage these APIs to bring similar experiences to life in your applications, such as WhatsApp who has upgraded their user experience adding Windows Studio Effects controls directly into the UI. Learn more. [caption id="attachment_179220" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Teams Super Resolution Teams Super Resolution[/caption]

Work Securely and with Enhanced Flexibility in the Cloud

With Windows 365, we extend Windows 11, Microsoft 365 and AI capabilities across any platform. Give employees the limitless computing power of Windows in the cloud, with access to the same Windows experience no matter which device they are on. With Windows 365 you can ensure business continuity across your entire team from remote and in-person employees, to consultants, contractors and temporary workers.

A More Secure Way to Access Your Work – Windows 365 Link

As organizations shift more workloads to the cloud for better security and flexibility, Microsoft is expanding its Cloud PC solution with a new class of devices built to connect securely to Windows 365 in seconds. Today we are excited to announce Windows 365 Link – the simple, secure and purpose-built device for Windows 365.  Windows 365 Link is now in preview and will become generally available for purchase in select markets at $349 starting April 2025. It enables desk-based users to work securely on a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences. Compact, fanless and lightweight, Windows 365 Link can be conveniently shipped directly to users. It boots in seconds, wakes instantly from sleep, and offers local processing for video conferencing solutions such as Microsoft Teams meetings and Webex by Cisco, maximizing employee productivity. Windows 365 Link supports dual 4K monitors, four USB ports, an audio port, an Ethernet Port, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, making it compatible with both wired and wireless peripherals. It is simple to manage using Microsoft Intune alongside other PCs with a small Windows-based OS footprint with minimal applicable configuration policies. Windows 365 Link is designed with security in mind. The device does not store local data or apps and employees do not have admin privileges, ensuring corporate data stays protected within the Microsoft Cloud. Security baseline policies are enabled by default and security features cannot be disabled. Login is simple and secure with password-less authentication using Microsoft Entra ID and the Microsoft Authenticator app or USB security keys. Windows is dedicated to delivering choice and flexibility for our customers. Critical to that effort is our OEM and silicon ecosystem. Just like we did with 2:1s, we’re starting with first party devices and doing the work to get the product experience right. As we continue to expand the Cloud PC category, we look forward to expanding offerings as well, scaling with our OEM partners in 2025. [caption id="attachment_179205" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Windows 365 Link Windows 365 Link[/caption]

Support for Frontline Workers and BYOD

Today at Ignite, we are also announcing Windows 365 Frontline provisioned in “shared mode,” which will provide a new way to access Windows 365 Cloud PCs and is now available in preview. This new mode is designed for users who need brief access to complete ad-hoc tasks quickly and securely from a non-personalized Windows desktop environment and their user data is deleted upon log off. Additionally, Windows App now supports Mobile application management (MAM) for iOS and Android. Now in preview, MAM enhances device redirection and strengthens security on unmanaged or externally managed devices. It allows organizations to define device security criteria and customize access, supporting BYOD scenarios.

Now with Windows 365, we have one integrated solution that leads to security, that leads to cost efficiency, that leads to much better employee productivity and employee experience.

--Vineet Gupta, Head of Employee Experience, HP

Extending Windows 11 to Mixed Reality

Windows in mixed reality brings the full capabilities of Windows 11 to mixed reality headsets, starting with Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S. Access to your local Windows PC or Windows 365 Cloud PC from a Quest headset is seamless and it takes only seconds to connect to a private, high-quality, large, multiple-monitor workstation. This will be available in public preview by the end of the year.

Endpoint Modernization

We continue to make progress on Windows endpoint modernization, designed to enhance security, productivity and management efficiency for organizations moving to Windows 11. As the end of support for Windows 10 approaches, there has never been a better time to upgrade to Windows 11, a more secure and resilient computing environment that empowers organizations to protect their data, optimize productivity and remain competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. And with features like Windows Backup for Organizations with Entra ID Accounts coming in public preview this Spring, the transition to Windows 11 is easier than ever before. Learn more about the tools and resources available to organizations. And, as more of our customers make the move to the cloud, we continue to support them with Cloud PCs, Cloud Services and Cloud Management tools. Today at Ignite we announced several new features to help IT management ensure they can minimize the impact to the already stretched resources within their teams. Windows Update for Business deployment service has now been woven into Windows Autopatch, providing a more cohesive and streamlined update experience. With this change, customers can use Windows Autopatch to simplify keeping their Windows devices up to date.  This automation helps to ensure the seamless deployment of updates for the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Edge. The unified dashboard in the Microsoft Intune admin center allows for easy management of update policies, groups, status and reports, enabling IT professionals to maintain the level of control needed for their organization. This approach aims to reduce complexity, enhance compliance and security, and improve resource allocation. This dashboard ensures timely updates, minimizes disruptions and frees IT resources for strategic initiatives, without requiring additional licensing. Hotpatch for Windows is an innovative feature in preview, aimed at boosting both productivity and security. With Hotpatch, updates are downloaded in the background and become effective immediately upon installation, eliminating the need for a device restart. This enables customers to work without interruptions, while keeping systems protected with the latest security updates. When combined with Windows Autopatch, Hotpatch streamlines the update process and significantly shortens the time needed for applying updates. Organizations utilizing Windows Autopatch have reported up to a 95% reduction in the time required to deploy feature updates. Hotpatch will also be available on Windows 365 Cloud PCs.

Building a Future with Windows: Innovation and Security at the Forefront

As we look to the future, our mission remains clear: to create a seamless and secure experience for every customer, organization and developer. With the new capabilities in Windows 11, Copilot+ PCs and Windows 365, combined with our relentless focus on innovation, we are building a future where we will unlock the full potential of what Windows can offer. What you've seen today is just the beginning. We're committed to continuous innovation and improvement. Whether it's through enhanced security, better performance or transformative AI experiences, we're building a future where Windows empowers every user and organization to achieve more. 1 Windows 11 Survey Report. Techaisle, September 2024. Commissioned by Microsoft. Windows 11 results are in comparison with Windows 10 devices. 2 On some devices, Copilot+ PC experiences require free updates available starting later this year and continuing into 2025. Timing varies by device and region. See aka.ms/copilotpluspcs

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Today's work environment doesn't look the same as it did a few years ago. You're supporting flexible work patterns, with remote users who are often using personal devices. Cybersecurity threats are more sophisticated, complicating the task of protecting sensitive information. And seemingly overnight, the responsibility of stopping unauthorized AI use is falling on your shoulders as IT and security professionals. Combine all this with the fact that today's work relies heavily on software as a service (SaaS), and you'll see that the web browser is crucial to accessing corporate resources and AI. This makes it an endpoint you simply cannot afford to overlook. You need a secure, business-ready browser. The challenge is that not all browsers can meet that bar. And some solutions meet security requirements only to get in the way of productivity. This is where Microsoft Edge for Business aims to help: to calm the chaos by addressing this mix of needs holistically, and give you control without adding to the noise—or your costs. In this blog, you'll learn how Edge for Business as a secure enterprise browser can help you, as well as new innovations to make the workday better for you and your users. Jump to the following sections to learn more: Or watch the video to see all these features in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuql1W5mZHs

Microsoft Edge for Business is your secure enterprise browser

With the growing use of SaaS and cloud services, the browser is the most used app on a PC. And with this single app, you need to meet the wide range of use cases in your organization, including elevated security and data control scenarios. The good news is that you already have the right browser ready to go, pre-installed on Windows. Edge for Business is a secure enterprise browser optimized for AI that can help meet the security and productivity needs of your entire organization, as a single browser. It supports advanced security features such as data loss prevention, unmanaged device support, and even generative AI controls. With Edge for Business, you get more security without the hassle of a ton of extensions, since it extends the enterprise-grade protections from your Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 licenses, at no additional cost. This security is backed by Microsoft, a leader in security, compliance, identity, and endpoint management.

Management made simple

To configure your secure enterprise browser, you need a robust management solution. If you're a pro at policy management or are an enterprise customer, you likely use Microsoft Intune to configure policies, and you can manage Edge for Business there too. For browser specialists, small or medium sized businesses, or those that want a guided experience, we recommend the Edge management service in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Customers love its easy-to-use UI, AI controls, and organizational branding features, and now it's even better with the added capability to set Intune policies. This enables you to deploy both browser policies in the cloud and Intune policies from a single pane, making it easy to keep users safe and your browser workflow streamlined. The ability to deploy Intune policies in the Edge management service is now in preview.

Safely introduce and control AI in your organization

AI is a big productivity accelerator, yet it also presents a big challenge with unsanctioned AI use. The Edge management service offers a comprehensive solution for overseeing AI in Edge for Business. You can restrict access to public AI services that may not meet your organization's compliance requirements, as well as exert precise control over Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft's AI chat for the web and work. Edge for Business offers an integrated Copilot experience with enterprise data protection that addresses data leakage and other AI security concerns. Not all browsers offer integrated AI chat with enterprise-grade data protection, and at no additional cost. You also have the power to manage the browser's AI features that are independent of Copilot, such as text prediction and AI-generated themes. Managing Copilot and other AI usage in the Edge management service is generally available, and you can learn more here.

Deploy encrypted shared passwords with ease

There's a known security gap that you may have been tolerating out of necessity—a common password shared across a set of users. Whether it's a team accessing the same data repository or managing common social media accounts, passwords are often passed around in emails, chats, and even on paper. This risky practice can lead to unapproved users gaining access and serious downstream consequences. Secure password deployment in the Edge management service can help put an end to this. It enables you to deploy encrypted shared passwords to a set of users, allowing them to log into websites seamlessly without ever seeing the actual passwords, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and enhancing your organization's overall security posture. Secure password deployment will be available in preview in the coming months for Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, and E5 subscriptions. Secure password deployment UI in the Edge management service

Keep your estate up-to-date

Keeping all browser instances up-to-date is crucial to protect against threats. The Edge management service offers a single view of all managed Edge instances with their update status and possible actions to take. For out-of-date devices, you can easily schedule updates or notify users to update their browser to avoid workflow interruptions. This feature is now in public preview. admin's view in the Edge management service of the Edge update status across their organization

Protect your Microsoft Office documents on the web

Managing sensitive Microsoft Office documents on the web has traditionally posed significant challenges due to insufficient leak controls in the browser. Edge for Business now respects usage rights restrictions on sensitive Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, such as blocking screen captures. It leverages Microsoft Purview Information Protection settings that were previously only for desktop Office apps, enhancing protections for editing, printing, and copying on the web. This protection is native and exclusive to Edge for Business. Microsoft Purview Information Protection for online Microsoft 365 documents is currently in preview and will be generally available by the end of the year. To prevent unintentional sharing of sensitive information, we strongly recommend disabling other browsers that lack adequate document protection, so users do not accidentally expose content through security loopholes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xYs0stcgm4

Support any device, anywhere

Managing data security across personal and unmanaged devices has become a new norm with hybrid work. With Microsoft Intune's Mobile Application Management (MAM), you can help ensure that your organization's data remains secure even on these devices, without requiring device enrollment. By leveraging Intune's app protection policies, you can help safeguard sensitive information, enforce compliance, and provide a seamless user experience across Windows 10, Windows 11, and mobile devices. Whether your employees are using company-owned or personal devices, MAM helps ensure that your organization's data is protected, enabling secure and productive work environments. Unmanaged device support using Intune MAM is currently available. Learn more about Intune MAM and how to use it for mobile devices.

Detect scams in real time with scareware blocker

Online scams have become increasingly sophisticated, to the point where you may feel it's out of your control to protect yourself and your users—even those who are technologically savvy. One particular type of scam is "scareware". It takes over the entire browser screen, creating a sense of urgency and panic that pressures people to act quickly, potentially granting the scammer remote access to their computer. These scams appear and vanish within hours—often before any preventative action can be taken. To combat such scams, Edge is introducing new, no-cost capabilities to help identify scareware in real-time to help make the internet a safer place both inside and outside of work. Scareware blocker uses machine learning (ML) to identify these scams. Upon finding a potential danger, it displays a warning to alert users. If the user identifies the website as safe, they are still in control and can continue to the page. For organizations, using scareware blocker helps prevent attacks that could attempt to gain remote access. This helps to protect your network and your employees. Scareware blocker will be in public preview in the coming months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcJKbba2AjY

Management for partners is getting easier with new policies in Microsoft 365 Lighthouse

For partners, Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is a game-changer. It provides Managed Service Providers (MSPs) with a powerful tool to manage customers at scale. Lighthouse facilitates multi-tenant management, giving you a clear view and control over all your customers. You can quickly set up security settings for Microsoft Edge for Business, so that policies are consistently applied across all your customers, saving you time while enhancing security. We're excited to announce that additional Edge for Business policies will be coming to Lighthouse, making it even easier for partners to manage and secure their customers' web browsers. These new policies include customization abilities, such as adding organization branding; enhanced security features, such as password monitoring and generation; and other configurations, such as allowing Copilot to access page content and allowing single sign-on. These policies will be available in Lighthouse in public preview in the coming months. Learn more here.

Calm tab chaos with just a few clicks

We know security is a top concern, but you also want to drive productivity for your organization. Edge for Business comes packed with useful tools that help your users stay organized and tame the chaos. If you're someone who constantly has a ton of tabs open, you probably know how chaotic it can be to locate the specific tab you need. With vertical tabs, you can more easily read the page titles by displaying the tabs on the side rather than horizontally on top. Furthermore, you can group your tabs together with a name and color, so they are even more organized. If you don't have time to group your tabs individually, Edge for Business can do it for you. AI detects the common themes across your tabs and groups them together for instant organization. And, you can easily adjust the groupings to suit your preferences. These tab groups remain synced across your devices, ensuring you stay organized regardless of your location. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PICEfaEZ4f0 When you're working on multiple projects, it's easy for project tabs to get mixed together, wasting your time as you search for the right one. But what if all your tabs for each project were separated into their own neatly organized windows? Edge workspaces do just that. Workspaces let you open a group of tabs together, so you can bring up a whole project's tabs in one go. You can also share the workspace with others, so your team can access all the project resources with just one link. Workspaces allow you to switch between projects quickly, and you can close out of your workspace with all your tabs auto-saved to come back to it later. Between tab groups and workspaces, using Edge for Business makes it easier to manage your work and projects. To get started with these, download and share the tip sheet. Vertical tabs, tab groups, and Workspaces are currently available. Learn more here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k68GRWzZDF8

Learn more

As a secure enterprise browser optimized for AI, Edge for Business is flexible to meet the needs of users across your entire organization. Tap into the security investments you've already made with Microsoft 365 and extend protections into the browser, at no additional cost. Watch this secure enterprise browser explainer video Editor's note – November 19, 2024 – The scareware blocker section has been revised to clarify impact that scareware is designed to gain remote access.

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4510 (KB5046716) to the Beta Channel. Changes in Beta Channel builds and updates are documented in two buckets: new features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*) and then new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Beta Channel. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • We are rolling out the ability to share files directly from the jump lists on the taskbar, which appears when you right-click on an app with a jump list like Notepad the taskbar.
[caption id="attachment_177429" align="alignnone" width="318"]Share icon appearing on a txt file on the jump list for Notepad. Share icon appearing on a txt file on the jump list for Notepad.[/caption]

[Input]

  • We are beginning to roll out the new Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 again that began rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel with Build 22635.4145.
[caption id="attachment_177283" align="alignnone" width="692"]New Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type. New Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type.[/caption]

[Narrator]

  • We have added new functionalities to Narrator scan mode. Skip past links (N’) allows you to navigate to the text after a link. This is most helpful when navigating through long emails, news articles, and wiki pages. Jump to lists (L’) allows you to quickly access a list on a web page or a document. To try these new features, you need to turn on Narrator first (Win key + Ctrl + Enter), then turn scan mode ON by pressing Caps Lock + Spacebar and finally use the new shortcuts – ‘N’ and ‘L’. Please note that scan mode is ‘ON’ by default on most web pages (like news articles, wiki page, etc.).

[Speech in Windows]

  • We have improved our speech-to-text and text-to-speech experience on Windows. Users of Narrator, voice access, live captions, live translations, and voice typing might see a message asking them to update their language files manually. The language files will be released separately through Microsoft Store.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[Lock screen]

  • Fixed an issue where you might unexpectedly see a message saying “You’re offline. Widgets are unavailable”.

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel will receive updates based on Windows 11, version 23H2 via an enablement package (Build 22635.xxxx).
  • Many features in the Beta Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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The holidays are fast approaching and time with loved ones is right around the corner. Spend more time making memories and less time shopping by scoring hot holiday deals from Microsoft Store that make purchasing the top tech of the season as easy as going back for seconds at Thanksgiving.

Shop with confidence at Microsoft Store

Choose from the most innovative Surface Copilot+ PCs around, equipped with AI-powered experiences, or give the gift of gaming with a variety of Xbox offerings. And with Microsoft Store’s 24/7 online support and flexible ways to pay, it’s easy to find and purchase the perfect present. Don’t sweat the little things, ensure gifts arrive on time with fast and free 2-3-day shipping on most products. Give yourself the gift of peace of mind with free extended returns and price protection through Jan. 31, 2025. Looking to upgrade? For a limited time, get up to $600 cash back when you trade in an eligible used device and buy a new Copilot+ PC Surface Laptop or Surface Pro. Offer ends Dec. 14. Not sure what to gift? Microsoft Store’s new AI-powered Store Assistant chat experience can help you learn about Microsoft products and assist you in searching for the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Simply click on the Store Assistant chat to help you determine which device is right for your loved one.

Surface Laptop and Surface Pro devicesSave big on Surface and upgrade your Windows experience today

Save up to $400 on select Surface Pro and 20% on Surface Pro Flex Keyboard
  • With the versatility to transform from a tablet, to a laptop, to a multi-monitor setup, the Surface Pro has the flexibility to meet the demands of a busy student, a frequent traveler, an on-the-go creator and anyone in between. Give the gift of supercharged productivity and endless creativity with a device featuring all-day battery life and unique Copilot+ PC AI experiences.
  • The Surface Pro Flex Keyboard unlocks new levels of flexibility with the ability to either attach to your Pro for the ultimate laptop set-up or detach as a standalone keyboard.
  • Offers begin Nov. 18 and end Dec. 2.
Save up to $400 on select Surface Laptop
  • Help your loved ones work smarter, stay connected and boost their productivity with the most intelligent Surface Laptop that unlocks new Copilot+ PC AI experiences. This sleek and lightweight touchscreen laptop - with the longest battery life on any Surface - offers speeds up to 86% faster than before, the most inclusive touchpad on the market and comes in immersive 13.8” and 15” displays. Offer begins Nov. 21 and ends Dec. 7.
Save up to $600 on Surface Laptop Studio 2
  • Perfect for the creative on your list who needs a powerhouse device, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 seamlessly transitions from a powerful touchscreen laptop to a perfectly angled display for entertainment, to a creative canvas for drawing with Surface Pen. Offer ends Dec. 11. 

Collection of Xbox title artGive the gift of gaming and entertainment this holiday

From movies to TV shows and games, we have something for every person in your life. Enjoy $50 off Xbox Series S - 512GB from Nov. 21 to Dec. 2. Plus, save $10 on select Xbox Wireless controllers from Nov. 22 to Dec. 2, and take deep discounts on popular games like EA SPORTS FC 25 Standard Edition and NBA 2K25 Standard Edition. Xbox console and controller along with the words save $50 on Xbox Series S Save up to 60% on PC games. Keep the fun going all year long with PC games like Ace Attorney Anthology, Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy and Forza Motorsport Premium Edition. Save up to 55% on games purchased from the Microsoft Store on Xbox. Find your favorite games like NBA 2K25, EA SPORTS FC 25 or Star Wars: Outlaws on sale, and check out more exclusive offers below:
  • Customers that purchase Diablo® IV: Vessel of Hatred™ - Standard Edition, Diablo® IV: Vessel of Hatred™ - Deluxe Edition or Diablo® IV: Vessel of Hatred™ - Ultimate Edition between today and Dec. 2 will receive a promotional $5 Xbox gift card and Sound of Slaughter Bundle. Terms and conditions apply.
  • Customers that purchase EA SPORTS College Football 25, EA SPORTS College Football 25 – Deluxe Edition or EA SPORTS MVP Bundle (Madden NFL Deluxe Edition and College Football 25 Deluxe Edition) from now through Dec. 2 will receive a promotional $5 Xbox gift card and EA SPORTS College Football 25 – 500 College Football Points. Terms and conditions apply.
  • Customers that purchase F1 24 or F1 24 Champions Edition will receive a promotional $5 Xbox gift card and an F1 24 VIP Podium Pass. Terms and conditions apply.
  • Customers that purchase NHL 25 Standard Edition Xbox Series X|S or NHL 25 Deluxe Edition Xbox Series X|S will receive a promotional $5 Xbox gift card and NHL 25 550 Points Pack. Terms and conditions apply.
Save up to 50% on select movies and TV shows. Cozy up by the fire with the family and watch hit movies from the Godzilla vs Kong 5 Film Collection, Harry Potter: The Complete 8 Film Collection and Transformers 7 Movie Collection. Save up to 50% on select apps in the Microsoft Store on Windows. Enhance your music-listening experience, entertainment capabilities and more with savings on apps like Dolby Access, DTS Sound Unbound and Karaoke One available in the Microsoft Store on Windows. For more deals on Xbox consoles, controllers, and Xbox and PC games, visit Xbox Wire. Select offers live now and end Dec. 2. Available while supplies last; offers vary by market. Microsoft Store offers discounts throughout the holiday, visit microsoft.com to find the perfect gift. Editor’s note – Nov. 15, 2024 – The Dolby offer was updated. Note: Offers are U.S.-only. Please check your local Microsoft Store for deals in your region.

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 11 Build 26100.2448 (KB5046740) to Insiders in the Release Preview Channel on Windows 11, version 24H2 (Build 26100). Below is a summary of the new features and improvements included as part of this update separated into two sections: gradual rollout and normal rollout. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change we are documenting.

Gradual rollout

The following features and improvements might not be available to all users because they will roll out gradually. Text bolded in brackets indicate the area of the change being documented.
  • [Start menu] New! When you right-click apps that you have pinned to the Start menu, jump lists will appear for apps that have jump lists.
  • [Taskbar] New! The system tray shows a shortened date and time. Also, the notification bell icon might not show if you have set the toggle for “Do not disturb” to on. If the bell icon does not show, click the date and time to view your messages in the notification center. To go back to the long form of the date and time, go to Settings > Date and Time. Then turn on the toggle for “Show time and day in the system tray.” To show the bell icon, go to Settings > System > Notifications. Turn on the toggle for “Notifications.” You can also get to these settings using the context menu. Just right click the system tray clock or bell icon.
  • [Touchscreen] New! This update adds a new section for touchscreen edge gestures. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touch. There, you can choose if you would like to turn off the left or right screen edge touch gesture.
  • [Task Manager]
    • New! The Disconnect and Logoff dialogs now support dark mode and text scaling.
    • New! The Performance section now shows the type for each disk.
  • [Input Method Editor (IME)] New! After you install this update, the IME toolbar will hide when apps are in full screen mode. This only occurs when the IME toolbar is active, and you type Chinese or Japanese characters.
  • [File Explorer] New! You can share content to an Android device from the context menu in File Explorer and on the desktop. To use this feature, you must install and configure Phone Link on your PC.
  • [IFilters] New! Windows Search runs IFilters in Less Privileged App Containers (LPAC). LPACs are like app containers, but they deny more permissions by default. A process that runs in an LPAC only has access to the resources it needs. The process does not have access to sensitive system components and data. This reduces the potential damage that a compromised process can cause.
  • [Dynamic Lighting Settings page]
    • New! Its page will show a placeholder message when there is no compatible device attached to your computer. Also, the Brightness and Effects controls will be off.
    • New! This update adds the Forward, Backward, Outward, and Inward direction options to the Wave effect. The Gradient effect now has the Forward direction option.
  • [Narrator] New! We have added new functionalities to Narrator scan mode. Skip past links (N’) allows you to navigate to the text after a link. This is most helpful when navigating through long emails, news articles, and wiki pages. Jump to lists (L’) allows you to quickly access a list on a web page or a document. To try these new features, you need to turn on Narrator first (Win key + Ctrl + Enter), then turn scan mode ON by pressing Caps Lock + Spacebar and finally use the new shortcuts – ‘N’ and ‘L’. Please note that scan mode is ‘ON’ by default on most web pages (like news articles, wiki page, etc.).
  • [Speech in Windows] New! We have improved our speech-to-text and text-to-speech experience on Windows. Users of Narrator, voice access, live captions, live translations, and voice typing might see a message asking them to update their language files manually. The language files will be released separately through Microsoft Store.
  • [Settings] New! Tailored Experiences is now Personalized offers in the out of box experience (OOBE). You can find it on the Recommendations and offers page. Go to Settings > Privacy & security. Here, you can turn off the setting that sends data about your device to enhance Windows.
  • [Jump lists] New! If you hold Shift and CTRL and click a jump list item, this opens the item as an admin.  
  • [DISM] Fixed: The StartComponentCleanup task does not work properly. It stops at 71% and shows error 6842. 
  • [PowerShell] Fixed: The Get-WindowsCapability command sometimes fails. Then you have to restart your PC. 
  • [Windows Update] Fixed: When you install an update, you might get error 0x800f0905. 
  • [JPG files] Fixed: You cannot use an API to find rotation information. 
  • [Display]  
    • Fixed: App windows might collect in the corner of a monitor after your device goes to sleep. This occurs when you use multiple monitors. 
    • Fixed: Mica material might not display correctly. This occurs when you use a slideshow background. 
  • [Mouse] Fixed: When you use the "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key," the circles might be tiny on some displays. 
  • [Clipboard] Fixed: Clipboard history (Windows logo key plus sign (+) V) might show no content. This issue occurs even though it is on, and you have copied text and images. 
  • [Taskbar] Fixed: When you choose "Automatically hide the taskbar," the search box shows as an icon, not as a search box. 
  • [File Explorer]  
    • Fixed: There might be more space than you expect between the items listed in the left pane. 
    • Fixed: The search box is cut off when the File Explorer window is small. 

Normal rollout

This update includes the following features and improvements that are rolling out as part of this update. Text bolded in brackets indicates the area of the change being documented.
  • [File Explorer] Fixed: When you select the See more button, the menu expands upward instead of dropping down. Because of this, the menu might go off the screen, depending on the position of File Explorer.
  • [HTML Applications (HTA)] Fixed: HTA optional components (OC) are now in ARM64 Windows PE.
  • [Task Manager] Fixed: The Users page might cause Task Manager to stop responding when you use the keyboard.
  • [Graphics Device Interface Plus (GDI+)]
  • Fixed: You cannot get the properties of image files using GDI+).
  • Fixed: Scaling is wrong when you re-encode images in GDI+.
  • [RAW format images] Fixed: They show in the wrong orientation.
  • [Exporting chart objects] Fixed: An app stops responding when it exports chart objects in PDF and XLSX formats.
  • [Mouse and Xbox game bar] Fixed: Your mouse might unlock from the game window. This occurs when you have multiple monitors and open and close the Xbox game bar.
  • [ADDED] [Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)] Fixed: It stops working and will not start up. 
Thanks, Windows Insider Program Team

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.5194 (KB5046714) to BOTH the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel for Insiders who are on Windows 10, version 22H2. The Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel will receive the same Windows 10 build today just like we’ve been doing since June. However, this will be the last time we release a Windows 10 build to the Beta Channel as we will be shutting down the Beta Channel for Windows 10. Insiders on Windows 10 in the Beta Channel will be moved over to the Release Preview Channel, and we will continue to release builds for Windows 10 in the Release Preview Channel only going forward. Insiders on Windows 10 today in the Beta Channel can also move to the Release Preview Channel on their own via Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program and choosing the Release Preview Channel. We recommend customers prepare for Windows 10 end of support by moving to Windows 11 today.

For Windows Insiders on Windows 10 in the Beta Channel, we’re beginning to roll out the following improvements

  • [Start menu] New! The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available. If you want to turn this off, go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off the toggle for Show suggestions occasionally in Start.
Insiders in the Beta Channel on Windows 10 who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Updated & Security > Windows Update. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your device over time once they are ready.

This update includes the following features and improvements for Windows Insiders in BOTH the Beta and Release Preview Channels

Items bolded in brackets indicate the area of the change being documented:
  • [App list backup] Fixed: Win32 shortcuts might not back up to the cloud. ​​​​​​​
  • [Copy cloud files] Fixed: When you drag and drop files from a cloud files provider folder, it might result in a move instead of a copy. ​​​​​​​
  • [Motherboard replacement] Fixed: Windows does not activate after you replace a motherboard.
  • [Country and Operator Settings Asset (COSA)] Fixed: This update brings profiles up to date for certain mobile operators.
  • [Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) printer] Fixed: Windows stops responding when you use an IPP USB printer.
Thanks, The Windows Insider Program Team

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 11 Build 22631.4534 (KB5046732) to Insiders in the Release Preview Channel on Windows 11, version 23H2 (Build 22631).   Below is a summary of the new features and improvements included as part of this update separated into two sections: gradual rollout and normal rollout. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change we are documenting.

Gradual rollout

The following features and improvements might not be available to all users because they will roll out gradually. Text bolded in brackets indicate the area of the change being documented.
  • [Start menu] New! When you right-click apps that you have pinned to the Start menu, jump lists will appear for apps that have jump lists.
  • [Taskbar] New! The system tray shows a shortened date and time. Also, the notification bell icon might not show if you have set the toggle for “Do not disturb” to on. If the bell icon does not show, click the date and time to view your messages in the notification center. To go back to the long form of the date and time, go to Settings > Date and Time. Then turn on the toggle for “Show time and day in the system tray.” To show the bell icon, go to Settings > System > Notifications. Turn on the toggle for “Notifications.” You can also get to these settings using the context menu. Just right click the system tray clock or bell icon.
  • [Touchscreen] New! This update adds a new section for touchscreen edge gestures. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touch. There, you can choose if you would like to turn off the left or right screen edge touch gesture.
  • [Mouse] New! This update adds the option to turn off enhanced mouse pointer precision to Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Mouse. There is also a new option to change the direction in which the mouse scrolls.
  • [Task Manager]
    • New! The Disconnect and Logoff dialogs now support dark mode and text scaling.
    • New! The Performance section now shows the type for each disk.
  • [Input Method Editor (IME)] New! After you install this update, the IME toolbar will hide when apps are in full screen mode. This only occurs when the IME toolbar is active, and you type Chinese or Japanese characters.
  • [File Explorer] New! You can share content to an Android device from the context menu in File Explorer and on the desktop. To use this feature, you must install and configure Phone Link on your PC.
  • [IFilters] New! Windows Search runs IFilters in Less Privileged App Containers (LPAC). LPACs are like app containers, but they deny more permissions by default. A process that runs in an LPAC only has access to the resources it needs. The process does not have access to sensitive system components and data. This reduces the potential damage that a compromised process can cause.
  • [Dynamic Lighting Settings page]
    • New! Its page will show a placeholder message when there is no compatible device attached to your computer. Also, the Brightness and Effects controls will be off.
    • New! This update adds the Forward, Backward, Outward, and Inward direction options to the Wave effect. The Gradient effect now has the Forward direction option.
  • [Narrator] New! We have added new functionalities to Narrator scan mode. Skip past links (N’) allows you to navigate to the text after a link. This is most helpful when navigating through long emails, news articles, and wiki pages. Jump to lists (L’) allows you to quickly access a list on a web page or a document. To try these new features, you need to turn on Narrator first (Win key + Ctrl + Enter), then turn scan mode ON by pressing Caps Lock + Spacebar and finally use the new shortcuts – ‘N’ and ‘L’. Please note that scan mode is ‘ON’ by default on most web pages (like news articles, wiki page, etc.).
  • [Speech in Windows] New! We have improved our speech-to-text and text-to-speech experience on Windows. Users of Narrator, voice access, live captions, live translations, and voice typing might see a message asking them to update their language files manually. The language files will be released separately through Microsoft Store.
  • [Settings] New! Tailored Experiences is now Personalized offers in the out of box experience (OOBE). You can find it on the Recommendations and offers page. Go to Settings > Privacy & security. Here, you can turn off the setting that sends data about your device to enhance Windows.
  • [Taskbar] Fixed: When you choose "Automatically hide the taskbar," the search box shows as an icon, not as a search box.
  • [File Explorer]
    • Fixed: There might be more space than you expect between the items listed in the left pane.
    • Fixed: The search box is cut off when the File Explorer window is small.
  • [Jump lists] New! If you hold Shift and CTRL and click a jump list item, this opens the item as an admin.

Normal rollout

This update includes the following features and improvements that are rolling out as part of this update. Text bolded in brackets indicates the area of the change being documented.
  • [Motherboard replacement] Fixed: Windows does not activate after you replace a motherboard.
  • [Country and Operator Settings Asset (COSA)] Fixed: This update brings profiles up to date for certain mobile operators.
  • [Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) printer] Fixed: Windows stops responding when you use an IPP USB printer.
  • [Bluetooth LE Audio] Fixed: Some devices, like hearing aids, do not stream Bluetooth audio.
  • [ADDED] [Mouse and game bar] Fixed: Your mouse might unlock from the game window. This occurs when you have multiple monitors and open and close the game bar. 
Thanks, Windows Insider Program Team

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27749 to the Canary Channel. We are releasing ISOs for this build – they can be downloaded here. We are also not planning to release SDKs for 27xxx series builds for the time being.

Changes and Improvements

[Narrator]

  • We have added a new shortcut “Narrator key + control + X” to copy what Narrator last spoke to clipboard. It follows the pattern of using “Narrator key + X” which repeats the last spoken phrase out loud and is a good way to memorize similar shortcuts. You can use these shortcuts to review and copy what Narrator spoke, useful in cases you want to quickly copy some content or descriptions or codes/numbers for use.
  • Narrator will now auto-read contents of a mail in the new Outlook app similar to behavior in Outlook classic.

Fixes

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an issue which was causing the items in the navigation pane to become very spread out (with unexpected padding between each item) for some people.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which was causing RAW images taken in portrait mode to unexpectedly display in landscape mode thumbnails.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

  • Made a change so you will now see a search box if the taskbar auto-hides when the setting for search on the taskbar is set to “Search box” (rather than an icon).

[Input]

  • Updated the mouse option “Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key”, so that the circles displayed are now DPI-aware, and aren’t really small on high DPI monitors.

[Narrator]

  • We have addressed a performance issue where Narrator would slow down after 15 minutes of continuous use with a single application. If you continue to experience any performance delays, do report using Feedback Hub.
  • Fixed an issue where Narrator would add an additional announcement “contains style” whenever its focus is on text that has styling attributes such as bullets, numbers across applications such as Microsoft Edge, Teams, Outlook, etc.
  • Fixed an issue where few dialogs in Narrator were not adopting the 200% text scaling setting in Windows.

[Task Manager]

  • Fixed an issue causing Task Manager to show a 0 count for apps and processes.

[Audio]

  • Fixed an underlying issue that could lead to the audio on certain audio devices unexpectedly going to 100% on boot or after sleep.
  • Fixed a blank entry in Settings > Privacy, which was crashing Settings if you clicked it.

[Other]

  • Mitigated an issue resulting in Git not working for Insiders with Arm PCs in the previous flight.
  • Fixed an issue causing some insiders to see a bugcheck with KERNEL_MODE_HEAP_CORRUPTION in the previous flight.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which could potentially lead to not being able to join a domain.
  • Fixed an issue where DirectAccess wasn’t working and might stay stuck in a connecting state.

Known issues

[General]

  • [IMPORTANT NOTE FOR COPILOT+ PCs] If you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel or retail, you will lose Windows Hello pin and biometrics to sign into your PC with error 0xd0000225 and error message “Something went wrong, and your PIN isn’t available”. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking “Set up my PIN”.
  • We’re investigating reports that some Insiders are still experiencing rollbacks (with error code 0xc190010) when attempting to install the latest Canary builds.
  • [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an underlying issue causing some apps used for remoting into other PCs to crash in the latest Canary builds.
  • [NEW] This build has an issue with applying policy for the Digital Markets Act in EEA regions.

[Desktop]

  • We’re working on the fix for an issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel

  • The builds we release to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows and features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Many features in the Canary Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • Some features may show up in the Dev and Beta Channels first before showing up in the Canary Channel.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • To get off the Canary Channel, a clean install of Windows 11 will be required. As a reminder - Insiders can’t switch to a channel that is receiving builds with lower build numbers without doing a clean installation of Windows 11 due to technical setup requirements.
  • The desktop watermark shown at the lower right corner of the desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon

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October was an exciting month of amazing showcases and announcements for applications leveraging the power of the NPU on the new Copilot+ PCs to deploy their AI innovations on Windows. Windows’ diverse hardware ecosystem empowers developers with a range of options at their fingertips to develop and deploy AI. From client to web apps, DirectML, foundational to Windows Copilot Runtime, aims to uniquely simplify how developers can scale their AI innovations across Windows. Through a single, cross-hardware DirectX API, DirectML works across different hardware architectures, local device accelerators and machine learning frameworks, supporting an open platform for AI on Windows. Let’s see some of the amazing AI innovations leveraging DirectML on Copilot+ PC NPUs.

Adobe® Premiere® Pro is the first Adobe app to leverage NPU on Copilot+ PCs, powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra and DirectML

Adobe is at the forefront of machine learning (ML) for creatives by providing a variety of hardware-accelerated features throughout their product suite. Now, Adobe Premiere Pro has enabled the machine learning efficiency of the latest Intel Core Ultra processors, opening up even more platform possibilities for Adobe customers. Through collaboration with Intel and Microsoft, Adobe enabled Audio Category Tagger to optionally utilize Intel’s latest generation NPU using DirectML as a beta capability in Premiere Pro. This feature automatically tags audio, classifying clips as sound effects, music, dialog or ambience, which makes it easy for creatives to just get started editing their audio files right away. Each clip is marked with an Essential Sound Badge, and clicking on that badge opens the Essential Sound Panel to give access to parameters needed for that sound category. [caption id="attachment_57164" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]A screen capture of Premier Pro showing audio clips marked by icons indicating audio categories A, B, C, and D. A is Music, B is SFX, C is Dialogue, and D is Ambience. Audio Category Tagger labeling A. Music B. SFX C. Dialogue D. Ambience[/caption] We are excited to partner with an AI innovator like Adobe to deliver on the promise of DirectML. Adobe’s extensive portfolio of applications and AI-driven scenarios offers a unique proving ground for DirectML and we’ll continue our partnership across GPU- and NPU-accelerated applications.

Capture One to bring NPU-enhanced Match Look and AI Crop features to Copilot+ PCs

Capture One is an imaging software commercial studio photographers use in the fashion and e-commerce industries. It helps professionals quickly edit many images while maintaining complete control over the creative expression and artistry behind every shot. At Snapdragon Summit, Capture One showcased two advanced AI-powered features on Copilot+ PCs powered by the Qualcomm NPU. [caption id="attachment_57165" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]A screenshot of the Capture One application, where the Match Look feature is being applied to an image of a woman holding pears to her ears. The Match Look feature being applied to an image in Capture One[/caption] Match Look is a brand new tool that lets you instantly match the style or edits of a reference image — whether from a previous project, a film still or a mood board. It uses AI selection to dynamically adjust multiple editing sliders, giving you a strong starting point for editing and color grading. [caption id="attachment_57167" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]A screenshot of the Capture One application where there is a crop reference set on an image of a purse in order to use the AI Crop feature. AI Crop is displayed on the right hand side of the screenshot where it's consistently applying the crop to other images. The AI Crop feature in use in Capture One[/caption] AI Crop allows you to make instant and consistent crops. Avoid errors and reduce manual effort. Set a crop reference on a single photo and automatically create consistent crops for all other images, even while shooting. Capture One continues to utilize AI innovation in a way that maintains the creative artistry their photographers required and DirectML is excited to partner with them to bring their vision to life.

Affinity Photo 2 accelerates Object and Subject Selection capabilities with NPU

Affinity Photo 2 is a popular image-editing app that is used by millions of digital creators worldwide. Human creativity is the heart of Affinity products, so it’s no surprise that the first AI enhanced tools they announced are focused on optimizing artist workflows — eliminating tedious tasks and friction between creator and canvas. Affinity Photo 2 will scale these features to their creator base by using DirectML on Copilot+ PCs. Like stated during the Snapdragon Summit, they have already achieved the optimized workflow of these AI experiences with DirectML, powered by the Qualcomm® Hexagon NPU in the Snapdragon® X Elite Compute Platform. Object Selection is a newly announced feature that eliminates the grunt work of manually creating layer masks, by using ML to quickly isolate and segment objects within an image. Automating this process gives artists a shortcut to the ‘real’ creative work — applying visual adjustments and effects to targeted areas within an image. Using the Qualcomm® Hexagon NPU in the Snapdragon® X Elite Compute Platform, Object Selection tasks will increase overall efficiency and productivity for creators. [caption id="attachment_57168" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]A screenshot of Affinity Photo 2 with Object Selection being applied to select a car in an image of a car with smoke all around it. Object Selection being applied within Affinity Photo 2[/caption] Affinity is at the forefront of identifying ML innovations that deliver to their promise of incredible speed, power and precision image editing software and DirectML looks forward to scaling this promise across Windows’ diverse hardware ecosystem.

What’s next?

The DirectML team is always excited to see the creative and amazing ways developers are innovating with AI to enhance the experience for their customers across Windows. Stay tuned for more DirectML features coming soon, as we continue to invest in features to support an open platform for AI on Windows! To learn more about DirectML and to get started today, visit aka.ms/directml or check us out at various sessions at Microsoft Ignite.

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Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4445 (KB5046745) to the Beta Channel. Changes in Beta Channel builds and updates are documented in two buckets: new features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*) and then new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Beta Channel. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[File Explorer] 

  • We’ve added a New Folder option in the context menu when right-clicking locations in the navigation pane.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Beta Channel with toggle on*

[Taskbar]

  • Fixed a few issues impacting explorer.exe reliability in the latest flights related to the taskbar, including an issue impacting some Insiders which could cause explorer.exe to crash sometimes when right clicking apps in the taskbar.
  • Fixed an issue on secondary monitors for left aligned taskbar users, where the widgets text in the taskbar might overlap the date and time.

[File Explorer]

  • We fixed an issue where the date/time properties of files were unexpectedly updated in some cases after copying them.
  • We fixed an issue where the Details Pane icons weren’t responding correctly to theme changes, making it hard to see if you switched from dark to light or vice versa.
  • We fixed a black flash in File Explorer that appeared when duplicating a tab.
  • We made a change to help improve performance of context menu launch and File Explorer navigation.
  • We fixed an issue where when you did a search it may unexpectedly trigger the search happening repeatedly.

[Other]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which could result in Snipping Tool screenshots being distorted on certain displays.

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel will receive updates based on Windows 11, version 23H2 via an enablement package (Build 22635.xxxx).
  • Many features in the Beta Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your device over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon
AWS
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.2222 (KB5046746) to the Dev Channel. Changes in Dev Channel builds and updates are documented in two buckets: new features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*) and then new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Dev Channel. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[General]

  • If you hold Shift and CTRL when clicking on a jump list item in Start menu or taskbar, this will now launch that item as admin, just like if you were to do Shift + CTRL and click the app icon itself. For example, if you right-click on Windows Terminal, and hold Shift and CTRL when you click PowerShell, it would open a PowerShell window as admin.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an issue causing the See More (“…”) menu to open in the wrong direction (and potentially display offscreen as a result).

[Input]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which could cause the mouse to unlock from a game window on a system with multiple monitors after opening and closing Game Bar, so you couldn’t use it within the game.

[Windowing]

  • Fixed a recent issue causing windows to potentially unexpectedly move around after waking from sleep if you had multiple monitors.

[Other]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to Registry Editor going unresponsive if you pressed Alt after clicking on the license information in the About section.

Known issues

[Narrator]

  • [NEW] [IMPORTANT] There is an issue in this build which will cause Narrator to crash on launch if you use one of the natural voices (like Jenny). If you are a Narrator user, we recommend pausing updates from Settings under Windows Update > “Pause Updates”. If you do install this update and encounter this issue, switching to another voice, like Microsoft David, in Settings under Accessibility > Narrator will stop the crashes. As Narrator is crashing, you will need to use a secondary screen reader, or have someone assist in order to do this.

[Desktop]

  • We’re working on the fix for an issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel receive updates based on Windows 11, version 24H2 via an enablement package (Build 26120.xxxx).
  • Updates delivered to the Dev Channel are in a format that offers a preview of enhancements to servicing technology on Windows 11, version 24H2. To learn more, see https://aka.ms/CheckpointCumulativeUpdates.
  • Many features in the Dev Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your device over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon
AWS
Client apps are often the first interaction users have with your services, whether those are cloud native intelligent apps, web-hosted backends or business data. They set the tone for user experience and can offer personalized interactions right from the start. With over 1.5 billion Windows devices worldwide, you have an opportunity to build beautiful, responsive and engaging user experiences that target these devices. Regardless of whether you are a web developer or a native app developer, you likely want to reach the most client devices possible with great user experiences in the most efficient way possible. Developing great client apps helps you connect with users, scale your services and keep users coming back. To help you achieve these goals, Microsoft invests in a wide variety of client application frameworks and technologies for developers to build custom client experiences. Chart showing Microsoft investments in client developmentMicrosoft is actively investing across all these areas for client development, which includes multiple technologies for building Windows native, Cross-platform, Hybrid and Web client apps. This post outlines the native client application frameworks for Windows that we are investing in and features some of the incredible work we’ve been doing in those areas.

WinUI

WinUI, along with the two WinUI-based cross platform frameworks React Native for Desktop and .NET MAUI, are the three technologies we recommend for developing new applications that truly align with the Windows native experience. WinUI enables developers to create fast and polished apps with the same rich set of modern UI controls and styles that powers key experiences in Windows. Its powerful toolkit has been refined in the most recent Windows App SDK 1.6 release, offering developers new performance improvements and control updates. In WinAppSDK 1.6, WinUI adds Native Ahead-of-Time compilation support, one of the major new features in .NET development that results in apps with significantly reduced startup times and memory footprints. [caption id="attachment_57148" align="aligncenter" width="800"]GIF of Bloom screensaver moving Side-by-side comparison of Contoso Camera app launching with and without Native AOT[/caption] In addition, the TabView control now features a new tab tear-out mode that lets users drag tabs out of a WinUI app just like they do in Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, creating a new window and enabling snapping or maximizing in one smooth motion as they drag. The PipsPager control also received a new wrapping mode, and RatingControl is now more customizable through theme resources. [caption id="attachment_57149" align="aligncenter" width="504"]GIF of new CanTearOutTabs mode in your TabView, showing paragraph moving A mouse cursor tearing out a tab from a multi-tabbed window and forming a new window from the tab[/caption] To learn more about Windows App SDK 1.6, including WinUI and other features, check out our blog post. You can also try the always up-to-date WinUI Gallery app that showcases all the controls and styles available to make a WinUI 3 app with the Windows App SDK (source code available on GitHub at https://github.com/microsoft/WinUI-Gallery). [caption id="attachment_57153" align="aligncenter" width="1008"]The WinUI 3 Gallery app showcased in dark mode The WinUI 3 Gallery app showcased in dark mode[/caption] As a sneak peek for what’s coming to WinUI in the upcoming Windows App SDK 1.7-experimental1 release, developers can look forward to the reintroduction of the highly anticipated TitleBar control with a fresh set of community-driven feedback improvements, as well as windowing enhancements and convenience APIs for controlling window size, remembering position and more.

React Native for Desktop

React Native lets you use your React and JavaScript skills and tools to create native applications that target iOS, Android, Windows (via WinAppSDK and WinUI), macOS, TVs and more. Over the last several years, Meta has been working towards enabling the “new architecture” which includes new capabilities such as synchronous layout and effects, the concurrent renderer and better JS to native interfacing. At Microsoft, we’ve partnered with Meta to bring the new architecture to Windows and macOS. In React Native for Desktop version 0.76 (Fall 2024), new apps can optionally opt into the new architecture preview when creating new apps from the CLI. On Windows, the new architecture unlocks new capabilities like deep integration with the Windows App SDK (including the Scene Graph and Windows Copilot Library), as well as support for Win32-based applications. v0.76 also provides a template for library authors to write modules that simultaneously target both the old and new architectures. Although the new architecture is still in preview, several of our key apps are validating the updated React Native for Desktop platform and are beginning to flight experiences on top of the new architecture. If you’re interested in seeing the capabilities of React Native for Desktop, you can download the React Native Gallery from the Microsoft Store. [caption id="attachment_57154" align="aligncenter" width="975"]React Native Gallery app The React Native Gallery app includes samples of React Native components and modules that you can use in React Native for Windows apps.[/caption] If you’re curious about how you can use your React and JavaScript skills to build native apps for desktop, you can learn more at https://aka.ms/reactnative. Finally, if you want to try out the preview version of the new architecture, please visit https://aka.ms/rnw-new-arch.

.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)

.NET MAUI continues to push the boundaries of cross-platform development for .NET developers, offering a unified framework for building native applications. With a single C# codebase and .NET project system you can build apps that run on Windows (via WinUI3), Mac (via MacCatalyst), iOS and Android. The latest release for .NET 9 contains many quality improvements as well as new features and enhancements. New features that may be of interest to Windows developers are the addition of the TitleBar control, enhancements to Multi-window to bring a window to the forefront with ActivateWindow, and supporting Unpackaged Windows apps by default to help developers with quicker debug and deploy times. There are many other features that benefit all device platforms like the addition of the HybridWebView control that enables hosting arbitrary HTML/JS/CSS content in a web view and communicate between the JavaScript code in the web view and the C# code in the .NET MAUI app. There are also many other control enhancements, new solution templates to help you also target the web, Visual Studio and VS Code tooling updates, inner-loop performance increases and a whole lot more in .NET 9. In addition to the .NET MAUI built-in controls, the team is collaborating with Syncfusion who released the Syncfusion Toolkit for .NET MAUI containing 14 of their popular .NET MAUI controls as free and open source. They also announced their dedication to the .NET MAUI project. Syncfusion is investing their expertise as control builders into .NET MAUI by openly contributing on issues and submitting PRs in the dotnet/maui repository on GitHub to increase the velocity of .NET MAUI development. The .NET MAUI team is very excited to showcase all of the amazing work they have done with the community (including a few surprises) at .NET Conf on Nov. 12-14. Be sure to tune in! [caption id="attachment_57155" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]new project template for .NET MAUI The new project template for .NET MAUI showcases best practices and new open-source controls from Syncfusion to create a full-featured ToDo app that runs on desktop and mobile devices.[/caption]

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)

Modern Apps As part of the ongoing modernization of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), applications built on WPF and running on Windows 10 or later can now take advantage of cutting-edge design elements and behaviors. Key enhancements include:
  • Support for light and dark themes
  • Rounded corners for controls
  • Compliance with Windows 11 design guidelines
  • Accent color support for controls
The introduction of the new Fluent theme delivers a fresh, modern Windows 11 aesthetic to WPF applications. With integrated Light/Dark mode and system accent color support, this update is set to enhance user engagement by giving WPF applications a contemporary, polished appearance. First showcased at Build 2024, the Fluent theme is now generally available as part of the official .NET 9 release for Windows 10, Windows 11 and also Windows Server 2019. WPF Gallery App is a sample tool that demonstrates WPF controls and styles to a WPF application in .NET 9 and onwards. The source code for this app is available on GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/WPF-Samples. [caption id="attachment_57156" align="aligncenter" width="624"]WPF Gallery app showcased in Light mode WPF Gallery app showcased in Light mode[/caption] [caption id="attachment_57157" align="aligncenter" width="624"]WPF Gallery app showcased in Dark mode WPF Gallery app showcased in Dark mode[/caption]

Hyphen based ligature support in WPF

Based on valuable feedback from the WPF community (Issue#109), we’ve addressed a longstanding issue with hyphen-based ligatures not working in WPF. This improvement is aimed at enhancing the developer experience by ensuring better text rendering and more polished typography in WPF applications.  

WinForms (Windows Forms)

Windows Forms has long been a favorite technology for lightweight desktop applications built on Win32 APIs, particularly within the enterprise Line of Business space. Beloved for the ease of use, now the latest updates to WinForms allow developers to start leveraging modern technology in their existing applications. Over the course of .NET 9, WinForms has modernized thousands of lines of code to leverage modern C# capabilities. In response to operating system enhancements WinForms has added multi-select support for the FolderBrowserDialog, click-through capabilities to the ToolStrip control, and more than 100 new and updated System.Drawing APIs to leverage more GDI+ capabilities than before. In response to overwhelming demand, WinForms also added a Dark Mode detection feature (in experimental mode)! For the first time, with .NET 9, developers are able to quickly and easily leverage the async capabilities of Windows and .NET. In this release, WinForms has introduced Control.InvokeAsync. This new API allows WinForms applications to more easily leverage Web APIs, Semantic Kernel, AI and more! These enhancements ensure that WinForms remains a powerful and versatile tool for modern desktop application development, bridging the gap between legacy systems and the cutting-edge technology of today.

What’s next?

Tune in at .NET Conf (Nov. 12-14) and then at Ignite (Nov. 19-22) to learn more about these technologies via the following sessions. You can check the full agenda for .NET Conf and for Ignite. For more guidance and documentation about how to develop apps for Windows using those technologies, head to https://aka.ms/windev. Sessions at .NET Conf
Session title Date
What's New in .NET MAUI in .NET 9 Nov 12, 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM PST
Build hybrid apps with .NET MAUI Nov 12, 3:15 PM - 3:45 PM PST
.NET MAUI Performance Optimizations with NativeAOT and Trimming Nov 13, 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM PST
What's new in WinUI and Windows App SDK 1.6 Nov 13, 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM PST
Modern WinForms Development with .NET 9 Nov 13, 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM PST
Empowering WPF Developers: A Journey Through .NET 9 and the Road Ahead Nov 14, 4:00 AM - 4:30 AM PST
WPF Reborn: Avalonia's Cross-Platform Magic Nov 14, 4:30 AM - 5:00 AM PST
Community Toolkit Roundup Nov 14, 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM PST
.NET Cross-Platform Development Supercharged with .NET 9, and Uno Platform. Our friends at Uno Platform* are preparing a special announcement for .NET Conf! If you’d like to be among the first to receive the beta invite, join their waitlist. Nov 14, 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM PST
"Intelligenize" your WinForms Apps for an amazing new customer experience! Nov 15, 12:00 PM - 12:30 PM PST
Boosting WPF Performance - Upcoming Improvements Nov 15, 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM PST
Create great MIDI 2.0 apps using Windows MIDI Services and C# Nov 15, 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM PST
Infuse AI in your Windows apps with .NET Nov 15, 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM PST
MVVM Building Blocks for WinUI and WPF Development Nov 15, 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM PST
Session at Ignite
Session title Date
Modernize commercial apps with Win32 and the Windows App Nov 21, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM PST
*For those new to Uno Platform – it enables the creation of pixel-perfect, single-source C# and XAML apps that run natively on Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux and the web via WebAssembly. Uno Platform offers Figma integration for design-to-development handoff, along with a set of extensions to bootstrap your projects. It’s free, open-source (Apache 2.0) and available on GitHub.
AWS
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27744 to the Canary Channel. We are also not planning to release SDKs for 27xxx series builds for the time being.

What’s new with Build 27744

New Processor Feature Support in Prism

In today’s Canary Channel Insider Preview build, we're previewing a major feature update to Prism, our emulator for Windows on Arm, that will make it possible for more 64-bit x86 (x64) applications to run under emulation by adding support for more CPU features under emulation. This new support in Prism is already in limited use today in the retail version of Windows 11, version 24H2, where it enables the ability to run Adobe Premiere Pro 25 on Arm. Starting with Build 27744, the support is being opened to any x64 application under emulation. You may find some games or creative apps that were blocked due to CPU requirements before will be able to run using Prism on this build of Windows. At a technical level, the virtual CPU used by x64 emulated applications through Prism will now have support for additional extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture. These extensions include AVX and AVX2, as well as BMI, FMA, F16C, and others, that are not required to run Windows but have become sufficiently commonplace that some apps expect them to be present. You can see some of the new features in the output of a tool like Coreinfo64.exe. [caption id="attachment_177409" align="alignnone" width="784"]You can see some of the new features in the output of a tool like Coreinfo64.exe with newly exposed CPU features are highlighted above in green. You can see some of the new features in the output of a tool like Coreinfo64.exe with newly exposed CPU features are highlighted above in green.[/caption] Note that in today’s preview, only x64 applications can use these new CPU features. If you have a 32-bit app or a 64-bit app that uses a 32-bit helper to detect CPU feature support, that app won't detect the new features in Prism. We welcome any feedback from Insiders who are interested in trying out apps and games using this early preview of Prism. Please submit any feedback on compatibility issues or performance regressions through the Feedback Hub (Win + F) under Apps and the specific app you’re seeing issues with (if you don’t see the app listed, use "All other apps") to help us to ensure that this updated Prism provides a great experience. Thanks for helping us improve emulation on Windows. We're excited to see customers able to run more apps and games that they care about on Windows on Arm!

Changes and Improvements

[Start menu]

  • “All apps” is now just “All” on the Start menu.

[Input]

  • We’re beginning to roll out a new Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type. This includes button accelerators (example: X button for backspace, Y button for spacebar) additionally the keyboard keys have been vertically aligned for better controller navigation patterns.
[caption id="attachment_177283" align="alignnone" width="861"]New Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type. New Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that supports the ability to use your Xbox controller to navigate and type.[/caption]

[Task Manager]

  • We’ve updated the design of the Disconnect and Logoff dialogs in Task Manager to now support dark mode and text scaling.
  • In the Performance section we now label listed disks with their type.

[Settings]

  • The detach virtual hard disk (VHD/VHDx) button we added under Settings > System > Storage > Disks & Volumes introduced with Build 27686 is now back with this build after being temporarily disabled starting with Build 27718.

Fixes

[General]

  • We fixed the issue causing some Insiders with PCs that have older NVIDIA GPUs (like the GTX 970, Quadro K620, etc.) to experience issues where their displays appear stuck at a black screen and unresponsive or seeing their GPUs showing errors in Device Manager and not working correctly.

[Input]

  • Fixed an underlying issue causing the Emoji Panel and Clipboard History to not open in certain surfaces anymore, including in Registry Editor.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to clipboard history not displaying items you’d copied.

[Windows Sandbox]

  • Fixed an issue impacting performance of Windows Sandbox for some Insiders after the latest updates.

[Graphics]

  • Fixed an which could lead dynamic refresh rate to get stuck at 60Hz on first boot.

[Other]

  • Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to see a bugcheck with error PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA starting in Build 27723.
  • Fixed an issue causing remote desktop connection (mstsc.exe) to crash in the previous flight.
  • Fixed a msmpeg2vdec.dll related issue in the last couple flights which was leading to some apps crashing.
  • Fixed an issue where rotation info about JPGs couldn’t be queried via APIs (for example, via PowerShell).
  • Fixed an underlying issue which was causing the Get-WindowsCapability command to get into a state sometimes where it would fail unexpectedly until rebooting your PC.
  • Fixed an issue causing mica to not work correctly when using a slideshow for your desktop background.
  • Fixed an issue which could lead to certain apps not detecting a scanner, although one was connected.

Known issues

[General]

  • [IMPORTANT NOTE FOR COPILOT+ PCs] If you are joining the Canary Channel on a new Copilot+ PC from the Dev Channel, Release Preview Channel or retail, you will lose Windows Hello pin and biometrics to sign into your PC with error 0xd0000225 and error message “Something went wrong, and your PIN isn’t available”. You should be able to re-create your PIN by clicking “Set up my PIN”.
  • We’re investigating reports that some Insiders are still experiencing rollbacks (with error code 0xc190010) when attempting to install the latest Canary builds.

[Desktop]

  • [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel

  • The builds we release to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windowsand features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Many features in the Canary Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • Some features may show up in the Dev and Beta Channels first before showing up in the Canary Channel.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • To get off the Canary Channel, a clean install of Windows 11 will be required. As a reminder - Insiders can’t switch to a channel that is receiving builds with lower build numbers without doing a clean installation of Windows 11 due to technical setup requirements.
  • The desktop watermark shown at the lower right corner of the desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon
AWS
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are beginning to roll out updates to Paint and Notepad to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11.

Paint (version 11.2410.28.0)

Generative fill

In this update, we are introducing generative fill, a powerful new creation tool designed to help you make your artistic process more fun and intuitive. With generative fill, you can make edits and additions with just a few words while maintaining the existing art style of your project. Whether you’re a seasoned artist looking to add intricate details or a hobbyist experimenting with new ideas, generative fill helps you fine-tune your digital art, with just enough AI to assist you in realizing your creative vision while remaining in full control of the output. [caption id="attachment_177403" align="alignnone" width="900"]Paint app open with generative fill dialog open. Paint app open with generative fill dialog open.[/caption] To get started, use the Selection tool in Paint toolbar to make a Rectangle or Free-form selection. Upon selecting the area, you will see a small menu pop up anchored to your selection. Select the Generative fill option on the menu, use the text box to describe what you want to add to your selection, and hit Create. If you don’t like what was generated, simply press the Try again button. You can also try refining your selection or text prompt. Use the arrow buttons to cycle through the generated options, and once you are satisfied with one of the generated images, press the Keep button to apply it to your Paint canvas. You can learn about generative fill in Paint here. Generative fill will initially be available on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. To use generative fill, you will need to sign in with your Microsoft account. This feature is only available for Windows Insiders in supported markets, where availability may vary based on regional criteria.  

Generative erase

We are also introducing generative erase, a new AI-powered tool that helps you remove unwanted objects from the canvas, filling in the empty space left behind to make it look like the object was never there. [caption id="attachment_177404" align="alignnone" width="901"]Paint app open with generative erase active. Paint app open with generative erase active.[/caption] To get started, select Generative erase on the left side of the canvas while using the eraser tool. With the generative erase brush, you can manually brush over one or multiple areas of the canvas to select the content you want to remove. “Add area to erase” lets you select more and “Reduce area to erase” lets you reduce your selection. After you are satisfied with your selection, click Apply to remove the object! You can also use rectangular or free-from selection tools to specify an area that you want to remove with the Generative erase command in the small menu pop up anchored to your selection or the right-click menu. Generative erase is available to users on all Windows 11 PCs.

Update to Cocreator

With this update, we have improved the underlying diffusion-based model for Cocreator to deliver better results faster, and with built-in moderation, it’s a creative experience you can trust. Cocreator is available on Snapdragon powered Copilot+ PCs. You can learn more about Paint Cocreator here.

Update to Image Creator

We launched Image Creator in Paint last year in preview, and we hope you have been enjoying the creative possibilities of AI image creation. We are excited to be expanding the preview to additional markets. Image Creator in Paint is available in preview to all Windows 11 users in the following regions: United States, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. To use Image Creator, you need to sign in with your Microsoft account. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family and Copilot Pro subscribers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand will also now be able to use AI credits to use Image Creator in Paint. Learn more about AI credits. You can learn more about Image Creator in Paint here. FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Apps > Paint.

Notepad (version 11.2410.15.0)

With this update, we are introducing the ability to rewrite content in Notepad with the help of generative AI. You can rephrase sentences, adjust the tone, and modify the length of your content based on your preferences to refine your text. [caption id="attachment_177405" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Notepad app with rewrite dialog open. Notepad app with rewrite dialog open.[/caption] To get started, select the text you want to rewrite, then right-click and choose the Rewrite option, select Rewrite from the menu bar, or use the Ctrl + I keyboard shortcut. Notepad will generate three variations of the rewritten text for you to choose from. Select one, or if you want to further refine the output, you can customize rewrite settings and click Retry to generate additional versions. Options to make your content longer or shorter and modifying the tone or format let you easily adjust your content for specific goals. The previous versions are still preserved in the current dialog, so you can easily revert to earlier versions if needed. If you prefer, you can disable the rewrite feature in app settings. Rewrite in Notepad is available in preview to all users on Windows 11 in the following regions: United States, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. To use rewrite, you need to sign in with your Microsoft account. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family and Copilot Pro subscribers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand will also be able to use AI credits to use rewrite in Notepad. Learn more about AI credits. You can learn more about Rewrite in Notepad here. We have also continued to improve Notepad launch performance. With this update, most users will see app launch time improve by more than 35%, with some users seeing improvements of 55% or more. FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Apps > Notepad. [These features in Paint and Notepad are beginning to rollout in these updates, so it may not be available to all Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels just yet as we plan to monitor feedback and see how it lands before pushing them out to everyone.] As always, we love getting feedback from the community and we will be looking out for your thoughts and suggestions on these updates! Thanks, Dave Grochocki, Principal Group Product Manager – Windows Inbox Apps
AWS
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.2213 (KB5045885) to the Dev Channel. Changes in Dev Channel builds and updates are documented in two buckets: new features, improvements, and fixes that are being gradually rolled out for Insiders who have turned on the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available (via Settings > Windows Update*) and then new features, improvements, and fixes rolling out to everyone in the Dev Channel. For more information, see the Reminders section at the bottom of this blog post.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[Input]

  • We are beginning to roll out a change where we now hide the IME toolbar when apps are in full screen mode for those who have the IME toolbar enabled and type in Chinese or Japanese.
  • We have temporarily disabled the new Gamepad keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard in Windows 11 that began rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel with Build 26120.2130 to address some issues. This feature will roll out again in a future flight.

Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*

[Start menu]

  • Fixed an issue impacting Start menu reliability.
  • Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to see an unexpected amount of spacing between items in the Start menu apps list.
  • Fixed an issue where ability to pin / unpin apps to and from Start menu was unexpectedly unavailable for some people.

[File Explorer]

  • Fixed an issue which was causing the items in the navigation pane to become very spread out (with unexpected padding between each item) for some people.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which was causing RAW images taken in portrait mode to unexpectedly display in landscape mode thumbnails.

[Taskbar]

  • Made a change so you will now see a search box if the taskbar auto-hides when the setting for search on the taskbar is set to “Search box” (rather than an icon).
  • Made a fix for WIN + <# associated with position on taskbar> not working in some cases in the latest flights.
  • Fixed an issue where the X button to close an app window from the taskbar wasn’t working for some Insiders.
  • Fixed an issue on secondary monitors for left aligned taskbar users, where the widgets text in the taskbar might overlap the date and time.

[Dev Drive]

  • Fixed an underlying issue leading to Dev Drives potentially not being accessible within WSL after the latest flights.

[Other]

  • Fixed an underlying issue which could potentially lead to not being able to join a domain.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to DISM /StartComponentCleanup not working properly, getting stuck at 71% and showing error 6842.
  • Fixed an underlying issue which was causing the Get-WindowsCapability command to get into a state sometimes where it would fail unexpectedly until rebooting your PC.
  • Fixed an issue where rotation info about JPGs couldn't be queried via APIs (for example, via PowerShell).

Fixes for everyone in the Dev Channel

[General]

  • Fixed an underlying issue leading to some games not launching in the previous flight.

[Task Manager]

  • Fixed an issue causing Task Manager to show a 0 count for apps and processes.

[Network]

  • Fixed an underlying issue impacting DHCP where unexpected duplicate options would fail lease acquisition, which could cause DHCP to not get an IP address, leading to Wi-Fi not working.
  • Fixed an issue where DirectAccess wasn’t working and might stay stuck in a connecting state.

Known issues

[Desktop]

  • [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an issue where your desktop background may not show correctly sometimes with multiple monitors (showing big black areas).

Reminders for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel

  • Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel receive updates based on Windows 11, version 24H2 via an enablement package (Build 26120.xxxx).
  • Updates delivered to the Dev Channel are in a format that offers a preview of enhancements to servicing technology on Windows 11, version 24H2. To learn more, see https://aka.ms/CheckpointCumulativeUpdates.
  • Many features in the Dev Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
  • For Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your device over time once they are ready.
  • Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
  • Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
  • Because the Dev and Beta Channels represent parallel development paths from our engineers, there may be cases where features and experiences show up in the Beta Channel first.
  • Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.
Thanks, Amanda & Brandon
AWS
As Halo 2 celebrates its 20th anniversary in November, Halo Studios is paying homage to its legacy, including revisiting faithful recreations of Halo 2 multiplayer maps and gameplay in Halo Infinite’s Delta Arena Playlist. This milestone also comes with a fully playable version of the demo shown at E3 2003, featuring gameplay that didn’t make it into the final version of the game, which will be added to the Steam Workshop as a mod for the Halo: The Master Chief Collection for fans to play for the first time ever. Danielle Partis also chatted with some core Halo Studios members. They share some nostalgic memories and revisit the importance of this groundbreaking title and the legacy it shoulders like a Brute Gravity Hammer. Head over to Xbox Wire to read all about it.