Microsoft Brings Evolved Windows 11 Widgets Board to the Beta Channel

Microsoft has just released the Windows 11 Insider builds 22624.1680 and Build 22621.1680 for Beta Channel testers. For once, both groups of Insiders are getting new features, including a revamped Widgets Board that can display a third column.

This evolved Widgets Board was previously rolled out to select Insiders on the Canary and Dev Channels, and once again, not all testers on the Beta Channel will see it. If your screen is large enough to display the 3-columns layout, you’ll see that your widgets are now displayed on the left column while the two other columns are used to display your personalized news feed.

There are two other notable changes in the builds released today. First of all, Microsoft is rolling out new animated icons for Widgets on the taskbar that currently display weather and finance updates.

Lastly, Microsoft is enabling a new Settings deep link URI that will let apps directly take users to the Windows 11 Settings page where they can change their default apps. In a future flight, Microsoft will also introduce a new API that will allow apps to pin either primary or secondary shortcuts to the taskbar.

That’s it for the new features coming to the Beta channel today. These two builds also include various bug fixes and you can check out the full blog post for more details.