Windows 11 build 22621.1

Windows 11 build 22621 (ni_release) is the thirtieth and final Insider Preview build of Nickel, the 22H2 development semester of Windows as a service. It was released to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel on 11 May 2022, along with Copper build 25115.

Two days prior to this build being released, the build number was mentioned in an issue posted to the GitHub repository of Windows Terminal.

In a Tech Community blog post posted on 24 May 2022, this build has been confirmed as one of the release candidates to the RTM build of Windows 11, version 22H2, which will be released in fall 2022.

Shell
The ability to place customizable stickers on the desktop, which partially implemented in build 22563, has been fully presented in this build. It can be accessed by the "Add or edit stickers" option in the right-click context menu on the desktop, as well as under the Background page in the Settings app.

This feature is disabled by default, but can be enabled by applying the following registry value:

Miscellaneous
The underlying speech platform has been updated to improve voice activity detection for voice access, live captions, and voice typing, as well as address some issues with how punctuation is recognized.

Shell

 * Fixed an issue leading to users encountering the  error when copying files from Google Drive.
 * Fixed an issue where if users had ever opened the context menu, doing Ctrl and cancelling would lead to  crashing.
 * Fixed an issue related to loading the system tray icons under the Taskbar page in the Settings app which could cause it to crash when opening that page recently.

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

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.

Safe mode

 * Quick Settings and date/time clock on the taskbar may be missing due to the  service not running.
 * Clicking Bluetooth & devices and Personalization pages may crash the Settings app due to an overrun of a stack-based buffer.