Microsoft Brings More Windows 11 Dev Channel Features to Canary Insiders

After kicking off the Windows Insider August 2023 bug bash yesterday, Microsoft is wrapping up this week with the Windows 11 preview build 25921 for Insiders on the Canary channel. This new build once again includes features that recently rolled out to the Dev Channel, such as HDR background support and richer thumbnail previews for cloud files in the Start Menu.

You may think that the Canary Channel gets new Windows 11 features before the Dev does, but this hasn’t been the case in recent months. Big new features such as the Windows Copilot Preview came first to the Dev Channel, for reasons only Microsoft knows.

Anyway, here are the new features included in today’s build 26921 for Canary Channel testers:

HDR background support: Windows Insiders with HDR displays can now set up .jxr images as their desktop background and have them be rendered in HDR.

Rich thumbnail previews (tooltips) for cloud files on Start: The Recommended section of the Start Menu now displays richer thumbnail previews when hovering over files. These richer previews currently only appear when logged in to Windows 11 with an Azure AD account. However, users logged in with local or MSA accounts will see updated tooltips when hovering over files without a rich thumbnail preview

Microsoft Teams Free replaces Chat: The Chat app that is pinned by default in the taskbar is being replaced with the free consumer version of Microsoft Teams. Clicking the app still opens a mini pop up window showing recent chats and more.

Desktop labels in Task View: Labels will now appear when switching between desktops in Task View.

This isn’t exactly a new feature, but the Cortana app can now be uninstalled in this build. This week, Microsoft released an update for that app that made it no longer functional. The company previously announced that it would be deprecated later this year.

That’s it for this week’s Windows Insider flights. If you want to participate in the Bug Bash, you can check out the different quests in the Feedback Hub. In case you missed it, Microsoft mistakenly leaked its internal “StagingTool” app for enabling hidden Windows 11 features in some of these quests, and this tool is now being shared among Windows enthusiasts.