Microsoft Releases the Last Windows 11 Insider Builds of 2023

As 2023 is coming to a close, Microsoft released today the last two Windows 11 Insider builds of the year. Testers on the Canary Channel are getting the build 26016, which introduces a new Windows Protected Print Mode.

When enabled, Windows Protected Print Mode will exclusively allow the use of Mopria-certified printers, which use the Windows modern print stack. “With Mopria certified printers, users no longer must depend on third-party software installers as well as get additional security benefits,” the Windows Insider team explained. “Print devices will “just work” resulting in a safe and streamlined installation and printing process.”

Enabling Windows Protected Print can be done in the Local Group Policy Editor, and you can find detailed instructions on the blog post or the associated Feedback Hub quest. The other notable change in this new Canary build is the addition of an icon to the “Diagnose network problems” entry when right-clicking the Wi-Fi icon in the taskbar.

For Insiders on the Dev Channel, today’s build 23606 marks the deprecation of Windows speech recognition, a feature from the Windows Vista era that’s being replaced with Voice Access. The latter uses on-device speech recognition and can work without an Internet connection.

In this build, Microsoft also fixed a File Explorer issue causing the app to crash when accessing or scrolling the gallery. Another bug causing the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel (tabtip.exe) process to crash when trying to use pen input has also been addressed.

Windows 11 saw a lot of changes this year with multiple “Moment” updates, the comeback of various Windows 10 taskbar features, and a new Copilot Assistant based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to a recent report, the next Windows release coming in 2024 could double down on AI, with a more integrated Copilot assistant that can run in the background.