At the end of Thanksgiving week, Microsoft released a new Windows 11 Insider build 25252 to the development channel. The new version has new status icons in the systray, offers a new style of taskbar search, and, as always, provides bug fixes.
A complete update log:
Changes and Improvements
Taskbar and System Tray:
We added a glimpse of the VPN status in the systray when connected to a recognized VPN profile. The VPN icon, a small shield, will be superimposed on the active network connection in your system accent color.
Search on the taskbar:
In this release, we'll continue to try and do things differently for how searches are done on the taskbar. We love hearing about this from your feedback, so if you're seeing something differently handled on your PC, please let us know what you think via the Feedback Hub. Insiders who get this experience will be able to change how searches are handled on the taskbar under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar Items.
Here are the bug fixes
Taskbar and system tray:
Fixed explorer.exe crashing when using Alt+F4 and turning on Show Hidden Icons Flying in the systray.
Fixed multiple explorer.exe crashes affecting system tray performance.
Updated the tooltip for the battery icon to let you know if your device is charging slowly.
A small improvement has been made for tablet-optimized taskbar users to make it easier to expand the taskbar without invoking the start menu.
Fixed an issue that could cause the taskbar jump list and preview thumbnails to not appear in the correct position for Insiders on 2-in-1s.
Start Menu:
We fixed an issue that resulted in folders in the Start Menu not opening on the first try.
Other:
Fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing a bug check for SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION after upgrading to a previous flight.
Fixed an issue that caused certain apps, including media players, to crash when playing media in the background on recent flights.
Fixed an issue that could cause your PC to go to sleep even though it was configured not to sleep.
Fixed an issue where network-to-local copies (for example, when copying files from a network share) were slower than some users expected.
Some of the fixes in the Insider Preview builds from the Dev channel mentioned here may make their way into servicing updates for Windows 11 release builds.
Finally, known issues
General Questions:
NEW:
In some cases, for a small percentage of Windows Insiders, Widgets may be missing, causing explorer.exe to crash loop after upgrading to this build. If it's missing, you can install it here. We recommend that you do this before upgrading. If you are affected after upgrading, please follow the steps below to roll back the version.
There is an issue in Build 25247+ that prevents some insiders from seeing some secondary drives - this may affect other PCI devices as well. The device is showing errors in Device Manager. We are working on a fix and once you upgrade to a version with the fix it should work again.
We're investigating reports that some Insiders' audio stopped working after upgrading to the latest flight.
We are investigating reports of crashes in a number of different applications and games in recent builds.
We're working hard to fix an issue that caused various UI elements in the app to sometimes disappear and reappear in recent builds.
Taskbar and system tray:
When using the tablet-optimized taskbar, the taskbar is sometimes cut in half.
NEW:
We are working on fixing an issue that caused the Bluetooth section in Quick Settings to crash on the last flight. If you are affected, please temporarily use Settings > Bluetooth & devices instead.
Search on the taskbar:
For some files ending in .cmd, .exe, or .bat, you will need to hit the backspace key after typing to see the results.
The following known issues apply only to Windows Insiders mentioned in this blog post who received a different treatment for how searches are done on the taskbar.
NEW:
When you change your main monitor, for example, plug in an external monitor, you will see a search box that seems to float on the desktop. You can fix this by going to Personalization > Taskbar > Search and toggling the setting.
When using multiple monitors, when the search flyout was open, the search box was not visible on the inactive monitor. This only happens when "Show my taskbar on all displays" is enabled.
When you click on the search box on the taskbar, the search box will blink momentarily before "Search" flies out of the window to show up.
In right-to-left display languages, such as Arabic, the text in the search box on the taskbar had layout issues.
Some Japanese IME candidates are clipped into the taskbar search box.
Task manager:
Filtering by publisher name was not matching correctly on the progress page.
Some services may not appear on the Services page after filtering is applied.
If a new process is started while the filter is being set, that process may appear in the filtered list for a split second.
Some dialogs may not render with the correct theme when applied from the Task Manager settings page.
When applying a theme change on the Task Manager settings page, the data content area of ​​the progress page may flicker once.
We are investigating an issue where Task Manager was not displaying light and dark content correctly, resulting in unreadable text. This happens when your mode in Settings > Personalization > Colors is set to "Custom" -- as a temporary workaround, switch it to "Light" or "dark".
The Startup Applications page in Task Manager does not list any applications for some Insiders. If you are affected, please temporarily use Settings > Applications > Startup.
Small tools
In right-to-left display languages ​​such as Arabic, when tapping into the expanded view of the widget pane, the content animates before the widget pane resizes.