New Windows 11 Insider Builds Are Out With Cloud Rebuild Improvements and More

Microsoft just released new Windows 11 preview builds for Insiders across all Experimental and Beta channels. The company is continuing to improve Cloud Rebuild, the new feature in the Windows Recovery Environment that lets users restore a Windows 11 PC to a clean state by performing a full OS reinstall.

Cloud Rebuild was first made available on the Experimental Channel in July, and last week, Microsoft made it available on the Experimental (26H1) channel. The feature is now available on today’s Beta (26H1) Preview Build 28020.3142 as well.

With today’s Experimental (26H1) build 28120.3151, Insiders on that Channel will get access to two new options in Cloud Rebuild to remove their files: “Remove” and “Remove and Sanitize” (the latter makes data much harder to recover). These two file removal options were first made available in last week’s Experimental build 26340.9502.

Today, the Experimental Channel is getting the build 26340.9596 with a new entry point for Cloud Rebuild under Settings > System > Recovery. This new shortcut is also available in the just-released Beta build 26220.9587.

Besides these various Cloud Rebuild improvements, Microsoft is updating Windows text shaping support for Unicode 17.0 on the Experimental and Beta Channels. The Windows Magnifier feature is also adding new preset step increments and the ability to type an exact zoom percentage on the Experimental (26H1) and Beta (26H1) Channels.

Yes, with five different Experimental and Beta Channels (not counting the two separate Release Preview Channels), it’s still quite hard to keep track of what’s changing week after week. However, what’s not changing is that 26H1 builds are lagging in terms of new features.

As a reminder, Windows 11 version 26H1, which only shipped on PCs with new Qualcomm silicon, is based on a different codebase. These devices won’t receive the brand new Windows 11 version 26H2, but Windows Central’s Zac Bowden reported earlier this week that Windows 11 version 27H2 should “bring everyone back onto the same platform release” in late 2027.