Windows 11 build 22494

Windows 11 build 22494 is the tenth Insider Preview build of Nickel, the 22H1 development semester of Windows as a service. It was released to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel on 3 November 2021.

Shell

 * A microphone icon will be automatically added to the taskbar when joining in a Microsoft Teams call.
 * Users can see the status of call audio and microphone, as well as mute or unmute their call via the microphone icon.
 * The ability to show snap groups when pressing Alt or opening Task View has been added.
 * The padding for selected items as seen by clicking Show More Options in the File Explorer context menu, or the menu options in Task Manager has been increased.

Settings

 * A dropdown menu of options containing current query when searching for file type or link types under Default apps page has been added.
 * Users can now launch the installed apps settings page directly via the URI.
 * The names of the sort by options under Installed apps page has been adjusted, and a new option to sort from smallest to largest size has been added.

Bugfixes

 * Tooltips should no longer appear in random places on the taskbar after sliding mouse over volume, battery, network, or other icons in the taskbar corner.
 * Addressed an underlying issue that was leading to come unexpected duplication of certain icons in the taskbar corner.
 * Addressed an issue that was causing the context menu to crash when trying to scroll it.
 * Addressed an issue where in certain areas of the screen the context menu submenus would draw on top of the context menu instead of beside it.
 * The context menu icons should be less blurry on systems with multiple monitors with mixed DPI.
 * Addressed an issue that could cause selecting Open With in the context menu to unexpectedly just open the file in certain cases rather than actually opening the Open With dialog.
 * An adjustment has been made to the command bar underlying logic to help improve performance of command actions.
 * Fixed a few  crashes related to using windowing features.
 * The background should now be acrylic on both monitors when opening Task View on a system with multiple monitors.
 * Addressed a couple UI issues with the window thumbnails in Task View and Alt, notably that the close button might get cut off if the app window was too thin.
 * Mitigated an issue that was causing certain apps to hang when trying to drag something with the Shift or Ctrl key held down.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing the touch keyboard to not appear on tablets when tapping the text field when trying to reset PIN from the login screen.
 * Reliability of the Pen menu has been improved.
 * Fixed a recent issue that was causing the indexer database to become too fragmented, leading to the indexer unexpectedly consuming a large amount of memory and CPU for a prolonged period of time.
 * Fixed an issue causing links to Windows Update, Recovery and For developers to show under the main Windows Update Settings page.
 * Addressed an issue where Facial Recognition (Windows Hello) might be unexpectedly greyed out in Sign-in Settings in certain cases until closing and opening Settings.
 * Fixed an issue where Storage Sense wasn't cleaning up.
 * Standard users should now be able to change the time zone in Settings if Location access is not granted, rather than the dropdown menu going blank.
 * Fixed a bug where images had a yellow tonality in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic when in HDR mode.
 * Mitigated an issue related to DHCP that was causing unexpected power usage while the screen was off in recent Nickel builds.
 * Addressed an issue where Service Host: WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service would unexpectedly utilize a lot of CPU.
 * Fixed an issue that could cause some devices to have a black screen when coming out of sleep (where the lock screen wouldn't display).
 * Addressed an underlying issue that was causing some users with ARM64 PCs to experience an increase in Microsoft Teams crashes in recent Nickel builds.

Bugs and quirks

 * The clock in the taskbar may get stuck and not updated, particularly when accessing the PC via Remote Desktop.
 * Due to a UI issue, clipboard history may report that it is empty even if it's enabled and should contain content.