Microsoft has released a new Windows 11 insider preview build to Windows insiders in the dev channel.

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25290

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25290 to the Dev Channel.

What’s new

New Widgets: Spotify and Phone Link

Last week, we promoted a preview of the widget for the  Messenger app.  Spotify and  Phone Link are now rolling out preview versions of their widgets as well. To give them a try, go to the  widgets collection in the Microsoft Store and update to the latest version of the apps. Then open the widgets board and navigate to the widgets picker by clicking the “+” button at the top-right of the board to pin your widgets.

As you give these and other new widgets a try, please let us know what you think through the Widgets feedback link in the widgets picker. You should expect to see additional new widgets as more developers create and release widgets for their apps.

With the release of  Windows App SDK 1.2 developers are now able to create widgets for their apps. Users can access these experiences on their Windows 11 widgets board in current Dev Channel Insider Preview builds. If you’re interested in developing a widget, watch our latest tutorial video:

Changes and Improvements

[Start menu]

• Back in October with  Build 25227, we started trying out a small change to the Start menu where some Insiders saw badging on their user profile notifying them that certain actions need to be taken. We concluded that initial exploration in November. Starting today, we are starting a new exploration of badging on the Start menu with two new treatments that some Insiders in the Dev Channel will see. If you see one of these treatments, give us feedback on what you think.  As a reminder, it is normal for us to try out different concepts in the Dev Channel to get feedback.

Fixes

[General]

• We fixed the issue causing Arm64 devices to fail to resume from sleep/hibernate when running Build 25281 and getting stuck at the OS boot logo.
• Fixed an issue where some Insiders may have issues accessing websites and other resources via VPN connections. If you used the workaround documented in  this forum post, please reverse those changes once you have this new build installed.
• Fixed an issue causing some Insiders to experience freezes when using the browser and certain other apps in recent Dev Channel builds.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• Fixed an explorer.exe crash which could cause the taskbar not to load for some Insiders.

[Search on the Taskbar]

The fixes only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments for how search looks on the taskbar that began rolling out to Insiders with  Build 25252:

• Fixed an issue where the search box would randomly disappear sometimes when you clicked it (leaving a blank space on the taskbar).
• Fixed an issue where the search box was shifting to the side slightly when you clicked it.

[Task Manager]

• Fixed an issue where the data content area of the Processes page might flash once when theme changes were applied in the Task Manager Settings page.
• Fixed an issue where some dialogs did not render in the correct theme when applied from Task Manager Settings page.
• Fixed an issue where properties in the Memory section of the Performance page were getting truncated even though there was space to display them.
• Reduced the transparency of graph colors in the Performance page, and adjusted the borders, to help make them stand out more.
• Fixed a few issues causing Task Manager crashes.
• Typing F in the search box should work again now.
• You now shouldn’t have to make Task Manager be as wide before the navigation pane appears.
• If text scaling has been increased, the search box shouldn’t overlap with the title bar text anymore.
• Made some tweaks to address cases where text in dialogs was getting cut off when text scaling was increased.
• Fixes an issue where certain parts of the title bar couldn’t be used to drag the window.

[Windows Spotlight]

The following fixes only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments of Windows Spotlight that began rolling out to Insiders with  Build 25281:

• We fixed the issue causing some people to not get a consistent refresh of images on a daily basis.

[Settings]

• Fixed an issue where the preview for Sans Serif Collection in Personalization > Fonts was displaying broken glyphs.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue that was preventing Narrator from announcing dropdown lists in Excel.
• Fixed an underlying issue which could cause Snipping Tool screenshots to become stretched out and distorted in the last few builds if you had multiple monitors.
• Fixed an issue which could cause a bugcheck with SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION.
• Fixed an issue which could make the Open With dialog crash on launch.
• Fixed an issue where the Open File dialog would hang if you clicked it while using an IME after having selected “Choose an app on your PC” from the Open With dialog.
• Fixed an issue which could cause Group Policy Editor to unexpectedly show “An error has occurred in the script on this page” with an invalid character error when editing a group policy.
• If you have OpenSSH Server set to start at boot (instead of manual), that preference should be remembered across OS upgrades now. Please note, you need to be on a build with this fix before it will take effect with your next upgrade.

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

Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25290