Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25346

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25346 to the Canary Channel. We are releasing ISOs for this build – they can be downloaded here.

If you miss this month’s Windows Insider webcast featuring the Phone Link team, you can watch it on demand here: https://aka.ms/April2023WIPWebcast.

REMINDER: As builds released to the Canary Channel are “hot off the presses,” we will offer limited documentation for builds flighted to the Canary Channel (no known issues for example), but we will not publish a blog post for every flight – only when new features are available in a build. And like the previous Canary Channel build, this build has a few new features and changes to document.

What’s new in Build 25346

Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) on plugged in devices including desktop PCs

Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) is already a feature that users are familiar with. This feature in Windows 11 will dim or brighten areas of a display or monitor based on the content being displayed with the goal of striking a balance between reduced power consumption with visual experience to save battery life. Starting with this build, we are allowing this feature to run on devices such as laptops and 2-in-1’s that are plugged into a charger. For most users, this change won’t be noticeable and should reduce energy consumption.

This feature can be adjusted via Settings > System > Display under “Brightness & color” and through a drop-down menu with 3 options: Off, Always, and “On Battery Only”. For battery powered devices such as laptops and 2-in-1’s, the default is “On Battery Only”.  We encourage Insiders across laptops, 2-in1’s, to try the  “Always” option and give us feedback on the visual quality of CABC so we can ensure it is properly tuned.

Please note: Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) needs to be enabled by the OEM (the manufacturer of the device). As a result, this feature is not available on all laptop or 2-in-1 devices.

FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Display and Graphics > Adaptive Brightness.

Changes and Improvements

[Remote Desktop]

• Redesigned the connection bar for remote desktop sessions to a new refreshed light / dark mode design that aligns with our Windows 11 design principles.

• When sharing a local file in File Explorer to Outlook contacts – you will now see the option to quickly email the file to yourself. In addition, we’ve made improvements in loading your contacts from Outlook. This capability is not available for files stored in OneDrive folders as OneDrive has its own share experience.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• [ADDED] When right-clicking on the network icon in the system tray, we’ve added the option to diagnose network problems.

[Settings]

• We are introducing new presence sensor privacy settings and APIs. If you have a device with compatible presence sensors, you can now manage your privacy and block/allow certain apps from accessing these sensors. No images or metadata is collected by Microsoft and all processing is done locally on the device hardware to maximize privacy. You will find these settings under Settings > Privacy & security > Presence sensing here if your device supports it. App developers with devices with compatible presence sensors can target apps to request and read user presence information after requesting a human presence capability. Learn more about the API here.

[Windows Security]

• After fixing some issues based off Insider feedback, we are re-introducing the updated Windows Security (firewall) notification dialogs that match the Windows 11 visuals.

[Narrator]

• Narrator users who interact with Traditional Chinese characters are now able to do this with confidence while using Narrator and the IME candidate window in Windows. This was accomplished by creating a Traditional Chinese dictionary for detail reading. Narrator now consumes the dictionary to disambiguate each Traditional Chinese word. Users should be aware that Narrator detailed reading is only supported for the Taiwan language pack. The Hong-Kong language pack is not supported with Narrator.

[Graphics]

• It’s now easier to configure the state of HDR when running on battery! Simply go to Settings > System > Display > HDR and choose whether you want HDR (or HDR video streaming) to remain turned on when your PC is running on battery.

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 aka.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 integration in CI/CD pipelines.

SDK flights are now published for both the Canary and Dev Channels, so be sure to choose the right version for your Insider Channel.

Remember to use adaptive code when targeting new APIs to make sure your app runs on all customer machines, particularly when building against the Dev Channel SDK. Feature detection is recommended over OS version checks, as OS version checks are unreliable and will not work as expected in all cases.

About the Canary Channel

The Canary Channel is the place to preview platform changes that require longer-lead time before getting released to customers. Some examples of this include major changes to the Windows kernel, new APIs, etc. Builds that we release to the Canary Channel should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows and some of the changes we try out in the Canary Channel will never ship, and others could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.

The builds that will be flighted to the Canary Channel are “hot off the presses,” flighting very soon after they are built, which means very little validation and documentation will be done before they are offered to Insiders. These builds could include major issues that could result in not being able to use your PC correctly or even in some rare cases require you to reinstall Windows. We will offer limited documentation for the Canary Channel, but we will not publish a blog post for every flight – only when new features are available in a build.

Our Canary Channel won’t receive daily builds; however, we may ramp up releasing builds more frequently in the future.

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

Important Insider Links

• 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