Today Microsoft has released two new builds for Windows Insiders – build 25281 for the Dev Channel, and builds 22621.1180 and 22623.1180 for the Beta Channel.
Dev Channel Build 25281
The big news for most of us is that Dev Channel build 25281 introduces tabs in Notepad. The build also introduces some “different treatments” for how Windows Spotlight looks:
All treatments will continue to share existing core Windows Spotlight features such as hovering over the icon on the desktop, right-clicking on the icon on the desktop, and double-clicking on the icon on the desktop. The treatments for Spotlight will include richer UI around displaying the title and description and learning more information about the image displayed on your desktop via Spotlight. We’re also trying out different ways of switching to different pictures with previews, a full-screen experience, and a minimized experience. Insiders in the Dev Channel will see different treatments across their PCs so not everyone will see the same thing and the treatments will be shown in English only.
You can enable Windows Spotlight on your Windows 11 PC by right clicking on your desktop, selecting “Personalize,” and then choosing a new Spotlight theme.
Dev Channel build 25281 also adds some design features to the Settings > Display > Graphics page to “help you get to graphics configurations such as ‘GPU preference’ and ‘Auto HDR’ with greater ease.” The settings remain the same functionally, but they now have a more “streamlined” visual appearance.
In addition to these changes, there’s a number of fixes in 25281, be sure to check out the Windows Insider blog post for all the details.
Beta Channel builds 22621.1180 and 22623.1180
Included in the Beta Channel builds released today are new visuals on your Settings > Accounts page showing a visual recap of your cloud storage usage across Microsoft products:
The new visuals include a consolidated cloud storage bar that shows your storage usage for each product and notifies you if you’re running low on storage. We removed the quota bar from our subscriptions card to eliminate duplication on these visuals. Outlook attachment data will be included in your cloud storage as displayed on the visual with today’s build. This change will gradually roll out starting with a small number of insiders, so not everyone will see it right away.
Any actual changes to the way your storage accounts are counted will not begin until at least February 1, 2023, although you may get an alert if you’re close to or over your storage limits.
There’s also a change to the way Widgets work in these new Beta Channel builds, as now Microsoft is removing the sign in requirement, making widgets like weather available without a Microsoft account.
There are fixes for the Beta Channel builds, too, as above make sure to check out the Windows Insider blog post for all the details.