Microsoft has issued its second public build of Windows 11, one that interestingly doesn’t advance the build number very much and only adds a few minor changes.
Here are the few notable changes:
And that’s about it.
But here’s the good news: Instead of requiring a full build download and install, a process that can take close to an hour, today’s update was delivered via a normal cumulative update that can be installed in just several minutes (including a reboot).
jjdiebolt
<p>Perhaps they are exploring using cumulative updates to advance new features & fix issues when they can vs. a full build? It also could be they wanted to get a few stability issues repaired before going forward with a full build installation. The last thing they need, I expect, after the hardware debacle is another fantastic PR disaster with a really buggy build. I suspect they are playing it extra safe for now. – With them, who knows? Logic and reason can be elusive with respect to them. The old cliché about "herding cats" comes to mind. </p>
Maverick010
<p>I was thinking the same thing and the fact Microsoft said Windows 11 would do updates in the background and they would be much smaller and quicker. This must of been a test of that update process as I did it and the OS was updated fairly quick. Much faster then I have seen with build updates in Windows 10.</p>
wunderbar
Premium Member<p>I don’t think the search box in start is superfluous. Yes, many power users know you can search inside the start menu but the entire reason there was a search bar in the taskbar by default in Windows 10 is because there are a billion people who use windows and not all of them know those things.</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>Start search has been in Windows for decades and both Windows 10 and 11 feature a search button right on the taskbar too. Extra unnecessary UI is the definition of superfluous. </p>
sledge
<p>Except for in that screenshot there is no search icon on the taskbar.</p><p><br></p><p>This can be a\b testing for placement. Who knows?</p>
Scsekaran
Premium Member<p>You can enable/disable Search on Taskbar in Settings /<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Personalization/</span> Taskbar</p>
rbwatson0
Premium Member<p>That screenshot came from Paul, it also doesn’t have the widgets icon or the task switcher icon on. I would assume Paul turned them off.</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>Right because I remove it. The taskbar button is also superfluous. </p>
red.radar
Premium Member<p>What about tablet form factors? Is the idea to give someone to land a cursor and bring up a on screen keyboard?</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p><em>Superfluous</em> needs a more nuanced definition. One could have an Edge icon pinned to the taskbar, pinned to the Start menu, and appearing in the All Apps list. Wouldn’t that be <em>superfluous</em>? Fair point that all apps should appear in the All Apps list because it’s the <strong>All Apps</strong> list. However, should it be possible to pin an app icon to either the taskbar or the Start menu but not both? IOW, if one right-clicks an icon pinned to the Start menu and clicks on <strong>Pin to taskbar</strong>, the icon <strong><em>moves</em></strong> from Start menu to taskbar, and vice versa for <strong>Pin to start menu</strong> for icons pinned to the taskbar?</p>
theotherguy
<p>I had this same reaction when i first read about this. My only reasoning is that it seems they’re making search from the start menu more discoverable. My hope is that they’ll also remove the search button… because really there’s no difference in clicking start or the search icon and then typing a search term. They’re just consolidating the same action into the one UI, now with the search box, to make it more evident to those that didn’t know.</p><p><br></p><p>Good idea, so long as they see it through and not half-arse it. While i’d prefer the search bar on the bottom as well, i think it’s on the top to be closer to the browser style look. And an option to remove it completely would be nice too.</p>
jdawgnoonan
<p>The first thing I did on any new Windows 10 machine was to remove the search box on the Taskbar. Text boxes just don’t belong there in my opinion. I really wish that hiding the Search box in Start was an option. Obviously you can search from there with or without the box. The feature I wish that the pinned apps area of Start had was a way to categorize apps so that we did not lose the only thing that I actually liked about the Windows 8 – 10 Start experience. </p>
behindmyscreen
<p>I like the alt+space searching you can do in power tools.</p>
behindmyscreen
<p>*power toys</p>
peterh_oz
Premium Member<p>For us, it’s superfluous. But isn’t having it the opposite of non discoverable (eg Charms in Win8). Yes you can search from the taskbar, but some people turn that off. And that searches everywhere whereas won’t the Start search only search the start menu? Just like Search in settings only searches settings? For normal users, this is a good thing.</p>
nim81
<p>I agree. Whenever I give instructions/show users (particularly older ones) how to click on the Start button then just start typing, they can never get their heads round it. It’s not doing any harm there so nothing to complain about imo.</p>
navarac
<p>Has anyone else had all the icons spread right along the taskbar as though they are on a tablet? i.e. icon/space/icon/space etc etc.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>Are you using TaskbarSi set to 0?</p><p><br></p><p>I’ve just looked at zoomed bitmaps. TaskbarSi == 0 shows icons separated by 28 horizontal pixels. TaskbarSi == 1 shows icons separated by 20 vertical pixels. Since the former shows 16×16 icons while the latter shows 24×24 icons, the left side of icons are spaced 44 pixels apart whatever icon size is used.</p><p><br></p><p>Will MSFT refine this so that for TaskbarSi == 0 the left side of icons are spaced 30 pixels apart, so 14 pixels between them, so half what appears now? I’m not holding my breath.</p><p><br></p><p>Gotta say, I’m quickly getting used to NO TASKBAR. I just have to track down a utility to display only the system tray overflow in a popup. Someone on reddit had a very good idea: the overflow area should appear at the bottom of the Action Center. With taskbar hidden, [Win]+A still displays the Action Center, so that would give access to those overflow notification icons.</p>
navarac
<p>Thanks, I am. I cannot abide a massive taskbar. I stared at the registry settings for ages to no avail. I’ll play around a bit more and then hide the (useless emasculated) taskbar. I have put my old Quick Launch toolbar folder on the desktop for now, while in transition !!</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>s/vertical/horizontal/</p><p><br></p><p>Damn I wish we could edit comments again.</p>
Lauren Glenn
<p>OK. As long as it doesn’t break my VPN or anything else… So far, I’ve gotten used to any little stability issue I’ve had. Pretty much the solution has been "taskkill /im explorer* /f" That solves most of the freezing for me so far.</p><p><br></p><p>But I haven’t had one program not work so far (at least nothing I absolutely needed and noticed)… which I hope continues.</p>
zakand
<p>Users: We want reasonable hardware requirements and a UI that’s not insultingly dumbed down.</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft: Now there are five different search bars! </p>
slbailey1
<p>Is there a setting option to hide the search bar in the Start Menu?</p>
bart
Premium Member<p>Nope</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>MSFT is <strong><em>intentionally</em></strong> designing Windows 11 for those users who’d never dream of displaying the Start menu and just typing. MSFT realizes that a majority of Windows users needs to see a search field and click in it if there isn’t a blinking cursor in it in order to be comfortable to begin typing.</p><p><br></p><p>Given the likely demographics for those leaving comments on this site, Windows 11 is NOT being designed for us. As long as MSFT allows Windows to accept 3rd party replacements for Windows UI components, this doesn’t affect me or anyone else willing to use such 3rd party components.</p><p><br></p><p>I’d note that the Chrome OS app launcher shows a search field above the app icons. Congrats, all you who called on MSFT to produce an EdgeOS and EdgeBooks. You may be getting what you asked for with Windows 11. Next time be more careful what you ask for.</p>
Maverick010
<p>If I read correct somewhere, I believe Microsoft is locking down the taskbar and not allowing changes. That may affect 3rd party software such as stardock from making changes to the taskbar/start….Will just have to wait and see. For me I am getting use to the new UI elements and Start in center. As time goes on I am loving Windows 11 more.</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>FWIW, Taskbar Eliminator still works, hiding the taskbar completely rather than the 1-pixel Windows draws for autohidden taskbars. I’ve never used icons on the taskbar, so that’s no loss for me. I have used toolbars jammed against the system tray so that they appear as thin buttons, probably 8 pixels wide, showing only <strong>»</strong>. Like a Gnome 2/MATE panel drawer. I store links to documentation files in them. I’ve had to move them to my Open Shell start menu. That I’ll get used to.</p><p><br></p><p>Since I change the Recycle bin icons, I have nothing MSFT visible on my desktop in Windows 11. Refreshing!</p>
mefree
<p>Didn’t MS claim that you wouldn’t have to reboot for updates with 11 forward????</p>
ghostrider
<p>I’m sure they said that about 10 at some point too – or at least far fewer reboots. That never happened did it!</p>
ebraiter
<p>Never reboot? Don’t make me laugh!</p><p>Even a specialized Azure for Windows version promises rebooting only for critical updates. When is there not a critical update? :-)</p>
hrlngrv
Premium Member<p>All updates are critical for someone.</p>
lvthunder
Premium Member<p>Not that I remember.</p>
dxtremebob
Premium Member<p>Funny thing: the Search button in the taskbar doesn’t work with the Windows Update window displayed!</p><p><br></p><p>The Search box at the top of the Start menu looks odd to me. Perhaps it would be better at the bottom, closer to the keyboard one would use to type the criteria. </p>
bart
Premium Member<p>*** For those affected ***</p><p><br></p><p>I had a language pack installed on my device (Dutch) and the update would not complete. Setting English (US) as your system language solves the problem. No need to uninstall the language pack of choice.*</p><p><br></p><p>*Yes, I provided feedback via the Feedback Hub ;)</p>
ecumenical
<p>Very pleased they fixed the multimonitor taskbar quickly. Now this is starting to feel usable :)</p>
Scsekaran
Premium Member<p>Even in the previous build, there was an option in Personalization-Taskbar-Taskbar Behaviours-‘Show my task bar on all displays’ option. I think in the current update, it became default</p><p><br></p><p>I actually liked no task bar on the secondary displays option</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
Maverick010
<p>There was a bug that did affect some users. Glad Microsoft is moving quick to squash bugs and they even added the Print Nightmare bug fix to this latest build.</p>
ianhead
<p>Jump lists appear changed as well. The delay in them popping up appears reduced and the font is larger.</p>
Maverick010
<p>Paul have you noticed how quick and seamless that update went? I wonder if this was also testing what Microsoft said about Windows 11 with regards to updates being smaller and quicker. I think that was part of what this small update was about, as it also came in as cumulative update too. Interesting….</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>Yes, I did mention this in the post. It only took 7-8 minutes.</p>
madthinus
Premium Member<p>I find the versioning and rollout of "builds" with cumulative updates fascinating. Does this mean that there will be just one base build for the life of the product or will we see yearly refreshes of the base number? </p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>I am wondering that too. This may indicate that the base of Windows 11 is "done" and now they’re just adding a few new features and fixing bugs.</p>
the escalation
<p>Has no one noticed yet that you can align the Taskbar icons back to the left side? Surprised no one has mentioned this as it was a huge gripe with the first build.</p>
jdawgnoonan
<p>You could actually do that in the first build too. </p>
fishnet37222
Premium Member<p>You could even do that in the leaked build that came out before the first official beta.</p>
ebraiter
<p>Does the update fix the PrintNightmare vulnerability? I would assume Win 11 also has the issue.</p>
danbear2929
<p>The search box never personally bothered me it was quite handy to do a search quickly.</p><p>I don’t use windows 11 on my main uni/work machine but having it on my old surface pro 3 to mess with has been an interesting experience. No complaints so far although I’m used to the start being in the centre of the screen (I know I can move it to left if I wanted too) but sometimes it’s good to just see how it messes with my flow and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.</p><p>but if I need to remove it Ill just use start killer ?</p>