Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557 to Windows insiders in the dev channel.

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557 to the Dev Channel. 

What’s new in Build 22557

Create and curate folders in the pinned apps area of Start

We’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to customize your pins in Start by organizing them into folders, so we’re introducing the first version of folders in this build. Simply drag an app on top of another to create a folder. You can add more apps to a folder, rearrange apps within a folder, and remove apps from a folder. Keep an eye out for further improvements like the ability to name and rename folders in one of our upcoming builds.

Introducing Do Not Disturb and Focus

We’ve reimagined focus experiences on Windows. Do not disturb makes it easy to silence notifications. Focus is a new experience that enables everyone to stay in the moment and minimize distractions on their PC. To help you stay on track, focus integrates with the Clock app for other focus tools, such as a focus timer and calming music.

Live Captions

Live captions will help everyone, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing, better understand audio by viewing captions of spoken content. Captions are automatically generated on-device from any content with audio. Captions can be displayed at the top or bottom of the screen, or in a floating window. The caption window can be resized, and caption appearance can be personalized by applying or customizing a caption style. Microphone audio can be included, which can be helpful during in-person conversations. Live captions support English (U.S.) content.

Improving Quick Access in File Explorer

We are rolling out an update to File Explorer’s Quick Access view. First, “Pin to Quick Access” support has been extended from only supporting Folders to now also supporting Files. Pinned files are shown in a new section above Recent files in Quick Access.

See your OneDrive storage in File Explorer

Backing up your files and managing your cloud storage is important for the safety of your stuff. To help you have control over storage consumption and ensure your files are syncing, we’ve added OneDrive integration into File Explorer. When browsing your OneDrive folders, you can now see your sync status and quota usage without having to leave File Explorer.

New Touch Gestures

This build includes 5 new touch gestures to make it easier and quicker to navigate Windows 11 on a PC with touch:

Swipe to invoke and dismiss Start: Swipe with your finger from the middle of the taskbar to invoke the Start menu and swipe back down to dismiss it.

Improving Snap Layouts

We’ve added a new way to snap windows into snap layouts that works wonderfully with both touch and mouse! To try it out, just drag a window to the top of the screen to reveal the snap layouts, drop the window on top of a zone to snap it, and use snap assist to finish building your layout.

More sustainable power settings and recommendations

The default values for Sleep and Screen off have been updated to reduce energy consumption, and carbon emissions, when PCs are idle. We will also provide power saving recommendations to help reduce carbon emissions to those with Sleep and Screen off set to Never.

More improvements to browsing the web in Microsoft Edge with Narrator

Building off the collection of improvements for Narrator and Microsoft Edge from  Build 22509, we have been working on more improvements to web browsing with Microsoft Edge and Narrator. Specifically, when navigating the web more useful information is provided, navigating dialogs is more natural, and editing text should now be more reliable.

Task Manager Redesign & Efficiency Mode

We have updated the design of Task Manager to match the new Windows 11 design principles. This includes a new hamburger style navigation bar and a new settings page. A new command bar on each page gives access to common actions. We are also excited to bring dark theme to Task manager and will automatically match the system-wide theme configured in the Settings app.

Introducing a new PowerShell module to provision language and language related features

This new PowerShell Module allows users to easily add languages and related language features and manage settings like System Preferred UI Language, System Locale, Input method (Keyboard), Locale, Speech Recognizer, User Preferred Language List using the PowerShell prompt. These commands work in conjunction with the existing  International PowerShell Module to provide the user control over various elements of the UI language on a PC.

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557