Microsoft is ending the week with a huge Windows 11 Canary Channel release. Coming in at build 26040, this week’s update brings two big new features and many other changes. For those who might be clean installing Windows 11 with installation media, there’s now an updated Windows Setup experience to enjoy. Other than that, the build enables Voice Clarity for video calling on more devices. If you have this build waiting for you to download in Windows Update, here’s what to expect.
A new Windows Setup Experience
If you download the ISO for today’s build and opt to clean install on a new PC or a Virtual Machine, you’ll notice a setup experience. While most of the steps should feel familiar, the way the setup experience physically looks now lines up with the looks of Windows 11 itself. It is simple and clean.
Microsoft has showcased one example of what has changed, with there now being radio buttons for what you’d like to do on the initial step, either installing Windows 11 or repairing your PC. There’s also an opt-out box for using the previous version of the setup. If you’re curious about what else has changed, X user PhantomOcen3 provided a neat look at the whole experience, as we linked above.
Voice Clarity
In this build, if you’re using a Windows application that leverages Communications Signal Processing Mode, like WhatsApp or Phone Link, your device is now going to be able to use Voice Clarity. This was previously exclusive to Surface devices, but Microsoft is expanding it out to more PCs. With this AI-backed feature, you’ll enjoy suppressed background noise, reduced echoes, and reduced reverberation. PC games that use Communications Signal Processing Mode for their online communications will also benefit from Voice Clarity. This will work both on x64 and Arm-based PCs.
Other changes
There are a bunch of other changes in this build today. You can now instantly access new photos and screenshots from your mobile device and edit your most recent photos and screenshots from your Android mobile device in the Snipping Tool on your PC. Microsoft is also rolling out USB 80GBps support in the Canary Channel now, too, for devices that support it. You’ll even see a new Task Manager icon. Other of the more notable changes are below.
- We have introduced a new keyboard command for navigating between the images/graphics on a screen/page. Now, you can use the keys “G” or “Shift + G” to navigate forward or backwards between images in Scan mode (Narrator key + spacebar).
- Recognition of text in images, including handwriting, is improved along with improvements to overall image descriptions. You can try the enhanced experience by navigating to the image and pressing Narrator key + CTRL + D key combination when the focus is on an image. This feature requires an active internet connection, and the setting to get Image Descriptions must be enabled in Narrator Settings.
- Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) has been improved with a new automatic account management feature. Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to automatically create the managed local account.
- Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) has been improved with a new PasswordComplexity setting. Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to generate less confusing passwords.
- Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) has been improved with a new passphrase feature. Using this feature, IT admins can now configure Windows LAPS to generate passphrases.
- Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) has been improved with a new image rollback detection feature. Using this feature, Windows LAPS will now detect when an image rollback has occurred.
- As we mentioned with Build 26020, WordPad is removed when doing a clean install and now is also removed on upgrade starting with this build.
- When you hover over the date and time in the system tray, the tooltip will now always show a clock even when you only have a single clock added.
- In addition to the new “Compress To” formats for 7Z and tar, we are adding a new compression wizard that lets you choose even more formats and specify even more details.
- For Microsoft Edge and other browsers that invoke the Windows share window, the Windows share window now supports the ability to share website links directly to WhatsApp, Gmail, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and LinkedIn.
- If you’re signed in with a Microsoft Entra ID, in addition to being able to share to your Microsoft Teams (work or school) contacts, you can also now share directly to specific Microsoft Teams Channels and groups chats
- We have significantly improved nearby share transfer speed for users on same network. Before these changes, users had to be on the same private network
- Fixed an issue causing Settings to not launch for a small number of Insiders on Build 26010+. If you are impacted and aren’t yet on this build, please see this forum post for a workaround.
- Fixed a high hitting print spooler crash in the last 2 builds.
- Fixed an issue where hovering over the system tray area wasn’t bringing up the taskbar when set to autohide.
- Fixed an issue causing some users to see an increase in SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED bugchecks recently.
- Fixed an issue causing some insiders to see a bugcheck with BAD_POOL_CALLER in Build 26016+.
- Fixed an underlying issue related to scrollbars which was causing some app crashes in the last 2 builds.
- Made a change to help fix an issue which could cause the spacing between your desktop icons to become extremely wide.
- Fixed the issue in Widgets where announcements from the Microsoft Start feed are still shown on the taskbar after the feed is hidden.
- Fixed the issue in Widgets where spacing and fonts used in some settings pages were incorrect.
If you install this build, there will be some known issues. Some popular games may not work correctly and cause a bugcheck (green screen) when launched. In some multi-monitor configurations on Build 26040, a display may appear as frozen. If you hit this, you can try CTRL + WIN + Shift + B to restart DWM. Content in some video streaming apps from the Microsoft Store may not play. As a workaround, try streaming from a browser. Microsoft is also looking into an issue where the print queue is showing a messaging saying it can’t find the app when opened. As a workaround, you can launch the print queue from the Run dialog (WIN + R) and entering: explorer.exe shell:appsFolder\Microsoft.Windows.PrintQueueActionCenter_cw5n1h2txyewy!App.
This wasn’t the only action in the Windows Insider program this week. Microsoft also released a Dev Channel build yesterday. It’s fairly small but brings some bug fixes. The Beta Channel, meanwhile, got some improvements to Snap Layouts, where the feature will show suggestions on how to snap multiple windows by showing you app icons.
