Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22621

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published May 11, 2022

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22621 to the Beta Channel.

TL;DR

We are releasing ISOs for this build – they can be downloaded here.
This build includes a small set of fixes that will improve the overall experience for Windows Insiders on their devices.

Changes and Improvements

[General]

[REMINDER] The build watermark at the lower right-hand corner of the desktop is no longer present in this build. This doesn’t mean we’re done, and the watermark will return to Insiders in a future build.

Fixes

[General]

Updated the underlying speech platform to improve voice activity detection for voice access, live captions, and voice typing, as well as address some issues with how punctuation is recognized.

[File Explorer]

Fixed an issue leading to Insiders seeing error 0x800703E6 when copying files from Google Drive.
Fixed an issue where if you had ever opened the context menu, doing CTRL + ALT + DEL and cancelling would lead to explorer.exe crashing.

[Taskbar]

Fixed an issue related to loading the system tray icons in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar which could cause Settings to crash when opening that page recently. This issue may have also led to some explorer.exe crashes for impacted Insiders.

[Windows Security]

Fixed an issue which could result in Smart App Control unexpectedly blocking correctly signed applications.

Known issues

[Live captions]

Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) prevent live captions from being visible.
Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run will re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top. Use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) while the app has focus to move the app’s window further down.

For developers

You can download the latest Windows Insider SDK at aka.ms/windowsinsidersdk.

SDK NuGet packages are now also flighting at NuGet Gallery | WindowsSDK which include:

.NET TFM packages for use in .NET apps as described at ms/windowsinsidersdk
C++ packages for Win32 headers and libs per architecture
BuildTools package when you just need tools like MakeAppx.exe, MakePri.exe, and SignTool.exe

These NuGet packages provide more granular access to the SDK and better integrate in CI/CD pipelines.

About the Beta Channel

The Beta Channel will be the place we preview experiences that are closer to what we will ship to our general customers. However, this does not mean every feature we try out in the Beta Channel will ship. We encourage Insiders to read this blog post from last month that outlines the ways we’ll try things out with Insiders in both the Dev and Beta Channels.

The desktop watermark you see at the lower right corner of your desktop is normal for these pre-release builds.

Important Insider Links

Want to learn how we made Windows 11? Check out our Inside Windows 11 website to hear and meet our makers from Engineering, Design and Research to share their insights and unique perspectives throughout this journey.
You can check out our Windows Insider Program documentation here.
Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.

Thanks,
Amanda & Brandon

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Windows Insider Program