Windows 11 build 22593

Windows 11 build 22593 is the twenty-sixth Insider Preview build of Nickel, the 22H2 development semester of Windows as a service. It was released to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channels on 6 April 2022.

One day prior to its release, two photographs showing a Surface Laptop Studio running this build were shown in a tweet posted by a Microsoft employee.

File Explorer

 * The Quick Access page has been renamed to Home, with the former name being repurposed for the Pinned/Frequent folders section.
 * The Pinned files section in Home page has been renamed to Favorites.
 * The ability to search recent and pinned online files (e.g. Office files) in the search box has been added.
 * The performance of loading Home page has been improved.

Shell

 * When pressing ⊞ Win to open the snap layouts, the associated numbers will be shown on each layout to help users quickly select the desired layout using the number keys.
 * The design of the app folders in Start menu has been updated so that they're a little larger.
 * The performance of rearranging taskbar icons has been improved.
 * The tablet-optimized taskbar will stay visible over full screen apps when expanded and only hide when collapsing it.
 * When tabbing into naming a folder in Start menu with the keyboard, user can tab back out instead of having to hit Esc.
 * The names of some of the months in the Simplified and Traditional Chinese lunar calendar have been renamed to be more accurate.
 * If keyboard focus is on the chevron for a collapsible region on a Settings page (for example, the Snap windows section under Multitasking page), users can now use the left and right arrows to expand and collapse the area.
 * The pop-up text "No supported apps in use for mic mute" when pressing ⊞ Win with no supported app running has been updated to "Mic mute unavailable".
 * The backplate (colored square) from UWP app icons in Task Manager has been removed.

Input

 * Microsoft Journal will be pinned by default on the Pen menu on the taskbar and will be automatically installed from Microsoft Store when clicking it.
 * The input indicator will only show one row of text when the tablet-optimized taskbar is in a collapsed state.
 * The touch keyboard button has been updated so that pressing it always shows the touch keyboard, rather than hiding it if it's visible.
 * The Backspace key has been returned to the touch keyboard's small layout when using Chinese (Traditional) language.
 * The reliability of launching the touch keyboard on the login screen has been improved.
 * The Pashto keyboard layout has been updated so that  and   are directly accessible on the keyboard.
 * As part of this change,  and   is now done by holding ⇧ Shift and pressing the aforementioned letters, respectively.
 * The ADLaM keyboard layout has been updated to add access to brackets and Hamza character.

Accessibility

 * Narrator will read out the word minutes with the duration times listed in Settings for focus options.
 * Live captions will remember the chosen settings for position across sessions.
 * The border of the live captions window will match the style of all other borders in contrast themes.
 * The voice typing error message "Voice typing is limited on this app" has been updated to "Some voice typing features might not work in this app".
 * The reliability of voice typing has been improved.

Settings

 * Settings will remember the taskbar's auto-hide setting more consistently.
 * The text description for voice typing under Speech page has been updated in the Japanese language.

Miscellaneous

 * A 5-minute increments for everything under a half hour has been added to focus session length options.
 * Some improvements have been made to help with search indexer thread and memory usage for users with a very high number of indexed items.
 * The system will notify users if the memory integrity feature in Windows Security is turned off.

General

 * Fixed a few issues impacting  reliability in recent builds.
 * Mitigated an issue which was leading to a black (albeit interactable) screen when playing certain full screen games with Auto HDR enabled.
 * Fixed a memory leak in Connected Devices Platform User Service.
 * Addressed an issue which was leading to unexpected errors being displayed in Event Viewer when  was activated.

Taskbar

 * Fixed an issue where app icons were unexpectedly animating in from the upper left when launching a new app.
 * Addressed an issue in the previous builds leading to duplicate app icons after closing and re-opening an app.
 * Fixed an issue where the app icons would overlap the date and time on the secondary monitors when a lot of apps are opened.
 * Fixed an issue where the taskbar would disappear when entering search over a full screen window.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing icon spacing to invert so that it was large when it should be small and vice versa when switching in and out of the tablet-optimized taskbar.
 * Fixed a crash that was causing taskbar to get stuck in the tablet-optimized taskbar view.
 * Mitigated an issue where some app icons in the system tray would not flash.
 * Fixed an issue causing system tray icons to get stuck there even after the application is closed.
 * Addressed an issue leading to a decrease in Notification Center launch reliability in recent builds.
 * Mitigated an issue causing the Notification Center and its context to sometimes show the wrong color text for the system's theme, making it unreadable.

Start menu

 * Fixed an issue where the Windows Terminal option in the ⊞ Win menu would be replaced with Windows PowerShell even if it's not uninstalled.
 * Fixed an issue where if a folder in Start menu is created in the same position as a deleted folder, it would show the old name.
 * Fixed an issue where when using the keyboard to select options following ⊞ Win didn't work.
 * Dismissing ⊞ Win will be more consistent.
 * Fixed an issue where the prompt wasn't coming to the front when launching Windows Terminal as an admin from the ⊞ Win menu.
 * Fixed an issue where the search icon in the taskbar would unexpectedly flash when closing the Start menu.

Search

 * Fixed an issue impacting search reliability when typing into the search window or Start in recent builds.
 * Addressed an issue where the search searches flyout could get stuck on the screen in a transparent area.

File Explorer

 * Fixed a scaling issue where the context menu could be an unexpected size when invoking it on systems with mixed DPI monitors.
 * Addressed an issue where the Show More Options entry in the context menu wasn't working for items in File Explorer's navigation pane (for example, if users were to right click on This PC).
 * The chance users will see "Loading" for app entries in the context menu has been reduced.
 * Fixed an issue which was causing the "Open in Windows Terminal" context menu option to be unexpectedly missing for secondary users in some cases.
 * Fixed an issue where opening suggested results shown while entering search terms in File Explorer's search box would not work as expected.
 * Mitigated an underlying issue leading to the address bar being inaccessible in certain cases.
 * Mitigated an issue leading to increased launch time for certain file types in the previous builds.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing command bar to stack on top of each other when pressing Ctrl.

Shell

 * Addressed an issue that was preventing Quick Settings from launching with its new touch gesture.
 * Fixed an issue where Quick Settings won't show the correct icon to represent the audio output device.
 * Mitigated an issue which could lead to  crashes when using Alt.
 * Fixed an issue where the keyboard focus outline in Alt sometimes was smaller than the displayed thumbnail.
 * Addressed an underlying DWM issue which was leading to crashes when using touch gestures from the sides of the screen.
 * Fixed a DWM crash when rotating the screen.
 * Mitigated an issue leading to some lag when resizing two apps snapped side by side in certain cases.
 * Fixed an issue where snap assist could unexpectedly dismiss if the initial window wouldn't fit into the selected zone size.
 * The snap assist regions will be resized accordingly when minimum window size of the initial snapped window is larger than the selected zone.
 * Fixed an issue where the close buttons in Task View would overlap with the window titles when invoking Task View with touch.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing the desktops flyout to dismiss when hovering the mouse over the tooltip with the desktop's name.
 * Fixed an issue where using drag and drop to reorder the desktops via the desktop flyout would leave a thumbnail of the desktop users moved stuck on the screen.
 * Fixed an issue where the volume and brightness flyouts when using the hardware keys would show a focus window outline on top of them.

Widgets

 * Fixed the issue where sometimes when pinning from the Feed, the pinned widget is placed at the top instead of below other pinned widgets.
 * Fixed the issue where after rearranging widgets in the widgets board, some users experience problems with widgets in the pinned section rendering incorrectly.

Settings

 * Fixed an issue that was causing custom theme changes in Text input oage to not save properly sometimes.
 * Fixed an issue where if a custom background image is set under Text Input page, the preview wouldn't show how it looked in the candidate window for Chinese (Simplified) language.
 * Addressed an issue where the setting "Disable Touch while using Pen" under Pen & Windows Ink would arbitrarily not take effect sometimes on first boot in recent builds.
 * Fixed an issue where the custom color picker on Colors page won't appear centered in the window frame and randomly off to the side.
 * Fixed an issue impacting reliability of Power & Battery page.
 * Fixed an issue where setting the background image fit to "fit" under Background page would cause the background image preview to become a solid color.
 * Addressed another issue that could cause Windows Spotlight to unexpectedly stop updating for a prolonged period of time.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing the Settings app to crash when going to focus settings.
 * Fixed an issue that was letting keyboard focus go to elements in the contrast theme previews in Contrast Themes page.
 * Fixed an issue where leaving the contrast themes editor in Settings by selecting the breadcrumbs would clear the dropdown selection, but the buttons were still acting as if users had a theme selected.

Input

 * Fixed an issue preventing several input UI surfaces from displaying following  crashes in recent builds.
 * This included the emoji panel, candidate windows, clipboard history, and the touch keyboard.
 * Addressed a few more color issues with the touch keyboard, including where after changing from dark to light mode, the touch keyboard might end up with a mix of dark and light.
 * Fixed an issue where the Chinese (Traditional) IMEs were only showing 5 suggested associated phrases when they should have been showing 9.
 * Addressed a rendering issue with the corners of the IME toolbar.
 * Fixed an issue where the IME toolbar wasn't hiding and showing correctly when using the previous version of the Japanese IME.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing Japanese IME's conversion mode in the context menu on the login screen not to work.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing the  and   PowerShell commands to unexpectedly fail with error   for some languages.

Accessibility

 * Mitigated an issue where Narrator was silent when launching the emoji panel in certain cases, for example if the search box wasn’t displayed.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing some voice typing commands not to work.
 * Fixed a crash that was impacting voice access reliability.
 * Addressed an issue that was preventing voice access's speech models from downloading correctly.
 * Fixed the issue that was causing natural voices to break up sporadically in recent builds.
 * Narrator will read out the word minutes with the duration times listed in Settings for focus options.
 * Fixed an issue that was causing Narrator to read dialog buttons incorrectly in scan mode.
 * Addressed an underlying issue leading to live captions showing a download error, even though the download had actually completed successfully.
 * Mitigated an issue where the live captions position changed to floating when entering full screen, but the settings incorrectly showed the last position still.
 * The live captions notification about audio playing from multiple apps has been removed to prevent it popping up repeatedly during usage.

Task Manager

 * Mitigated an issue where the one side of the View button did not appear to do anything.
 * Fixed an issue which was causing the real time update speed to get set to Paused on its own.

General

 * Users with Lenovo devices in China may be unable to perform an in-place upgrade to this build via Windows Update due to conflicts with pre-installed apps.
 * Users in the Dev or Beta Channel may encounter a  error when trying to upgrade directly from Windows 10 to this build.
 * To bypass this issue, join the Release Preview Channel to install the offered Windows 11 build, and then switch to the Dev or Beta Channel to receive this build.
 * Users may encounter the Administrative Template error  when opening Group Policy.
 * Devices using Windows Information Protection (formerly EDP) policies may not be able to access controlled data via protected apps such as Outlook, Word, Microsoft Edge, etc. on this build.
 * Users may encounter Internet connectivity issues when certain VPNs are connected.

Shell

 * The taskbar may not always automatically collapse after launching an app or tapping outside of the expanded taskbar on 2-in-1 devices.
 * The previews or tooltips may not show when hovering over some app icons in the system tray.
 * Users may see overlapping components, such as Widgets overlapping with the taskbar as some areas of the OS are not yet tracking the height of the expanded taskbar on 2-in-1 devices.
 * Users may encounter File Explorer issues regarding icon sizing, visual bugs, and text clipping in the flyout showing OneDrive storage.
 * may stuck in a crash loop in some cases.
 * Some mouse move events may not being passed to apps for icons in the system tray.
 * Performing file operations (such as copy, move and rename) via context menu's buttons in File Explorer or on the desktop may cause  to crash due to an access violation   in.
 * To bypass this issue, complete file operations by pressing the buttons from the File Explorer command bar and the legacy context menu, or using keyboard shortcuts.

Widgets
The Widgets panel may not load as expected when using the swipe from left edge of screen touch motion.

Live captions

 * Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) may prevent live captions from being visible.
 * Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run may re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top.
 * The very top of maximized apps (e.g., title bar window management buttons) may not be reached with touch while live captions is positioned at the top.

Safe mode

 * Quick Settings and date/time clock on the taskbar may be missing due to the  service not running. Trying to start this service manually won’t work since it can’t run in safe mode.
 * Clicking Bluetooth & devices and Personalization pages may crash the Settings app due to an overrun of a stack-based buffer.