Microsoft Issues Another Pre-Release Windows 11 Update

Microsoft has issued the fourth pre-release build, 22000.100, of Windows 11 to testers, adding Chat with Microsoft Teams and other changes.

Of course, this is the Windows Insider Program, so “not everyone will see [Chat with Microsoft Teams] right away,” for some reason.

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Other minor new additions and changes include:

Hidden icons flyout improvements. The hidden icons flyout at the right side of the taskbar has been updated with the Windows 11 look and feel.

Focus assist improvements. Focus assist settings is now accessible from the Notification Center panel.

Improvements to background activities that need your attention. In Windows 10, background activities that need your attention will flash on the taskbar, but that’s not calm enough for Windows 11. So in Build 22000.100, these apps will get your attention more calmly, with a subtler flashing that eventually stops. When it does, you will see a red backplate and a red pill under the app icon.

Touch keyboard improvements. The Touch keyboard icon in the taskbar has been updated to be more consistent with the size of the other icons in the newly-renamed “far corner of the taskbar.”

Calendar flyout improvements. The Calendar flyout on the taskbar now collapses fully when you select the chevron in the top corner, giving you more room for notifications.

Microsoft Store improvements. Now, when you select an app or movie in the Store app, you will see some animations that Microsoft says will “help you keep track of what you’re browsing.”

There are a bunch of fixes, too, including the big Explorer crash introduced in the previous build that happened when you had the temerity to click the date and time in the taskbar. In the bad news department, Microsoft currently has no plans to fix Windows 11’s inability to let users drag documents to app icons in the taskbar to open them, a feature that’s been in Windows for decades. Hopefully, that will change over time.

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Conversation 34 comments

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    22 July, 2021 - 6:15 pm

    <p>Windows 11 has finally reached the level of inspiring country music song titles: for the image above, <em>Round the Corners of my Heart</em>.</p>

  • ecumenical

    22 July, 2021 - 7:06 pm

    <p>I’m enjoying the weekly updates. The OS already felt pretty usable and it’s good to see continuous incremental fixes and polish. This is what prerelease testing should look like, IMO.</p><p><br></p><p>They do need to fix the taskbar though. If you’re not gonna allow people to have separate taskbar buttons for separate windows of the same app, then the behavior or available controls need to be modified so that I can get to those windows more easily. Maybe ever click on an app in taskbar brings up the next window of that app, or maybe they can copy the Ctrl-~ behavior Apple used to have that let you page through the open windows of a single app (like alt tab but within an app).</p>

    • fishnet37222

      Premium Member
      22 July, 2021 - 8:53 pm

      <p>Why would you need that behavior when clicking the button already brings up thumbnails of all open windows so you can then pick one to work with?</p>

      • ecumenical

        23 July, 2021 - 2:49 am

        <p>Because that requires me to wait for the thumbnails to slowly appear and then move my mouse a second time. It’s much slower than the old behavior, where I moved my mouse directly to the window I wanted and clicked once.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      23 July, 2021 - 12:30 am

      <p>Disclaimer: I don’t used pinned ICONS, just toolbars jammed up against the system tray so that they function as popup menus from the taskbar.</p><p><br></p><p>Is it possible in Windows 10 or previous to have, say, multiple pinned icons for the same program BUT with different command line arguments? Best example would be different pinned icons for a web browser with each using a different profile. FWIW, I also have an Excel .LNK shortcut with command line options to prevent loading any add-ins and using an empty alternative XLSTART directory. More general way to put it, one program, many configurations.</p>

      • tonchek

        23 July, 2021 - 1:40 am

        <p>Create a shortcut with arguments somewhere and pin it to taskbar</p>

        • hrlngrv

          Premium Member
          23 July, 2021 - 5:45 am

          <p>Test your advice.</p><p><br></p><p>I have.</p><p><br></p><p>I have an Edge icon with no command line arguments pinned to the taskbar. I create another Edge shortcut on my desktop with a url on the command line. When I right-click on the desktop shortcut, the popup menu shows <strong>UN</strong>pin from taskbar.</p>

  • mclark2112

    Premium Member
    22 July, 2021 - 7:13 pm

    <p>Been using windows since 2.0, and never knew you could do this. Guess I won’t miss this.</p><p><br></p><p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In the bad news department, Microsoft currently has no plans to fix Windows 11’s inability to let users drag documents to app icons in the taskbar to open them, a feature that’s been in Windows for decades."</span></p>

    • rbrynteson

      22 July, 2021 - 8:20 pm

      <p>Hold on. So instead of double clicking on the file, you click, drag it across the desktop to an app – which hopefully you have pinned, to launch. So you can save another click? Guess not sure why you would do this. Must be missing something. </p>

      • VMax

        Premium Member
        22 July, 2021 - 8:37 pm

        <p>Opening a file in a non-default app springs immediately to mind.</p>

        • fishnet37222

          Premium Member
          22 July, 2021 - 8:52 pm

          <p>You can already do that by right-clicking and selecting "Open with…".</p>

          • JH_Radio

            Premium Member
            22 July, 2021 - 10:25 pm

            <p>Or Shift+F10 (which for some reason unknown to me gives you more options then hitting the context menu key on your keyboard.) </p>

            • thewarragulman

              Premium Member
              22 July, 2021 - 10:38 pm

              <p>If you press Shift and the right click key, or right click with your mouse it will give the same options as Shift+F10, which is a hidden advanced context menu.</p>

          • hrlngrv

            Premium Member
            23 July, 2021 - 12:48 am

            <p>Unless you want to open a give web page with one of several different browser profiles. Open with does squat all for that, though you could use Send To.</p>

            • hrlngrv

              Premium Member
              23 July, 2021 - 12:51 am

              <p>By <em>web page</em> I mean a url shortcut saved as a disk file.</p>

          • VMax

            Premium Member
            23 July, 2021 - 2:35 am

            <p>Sure, and that’s what I do. But if that’s not what others do, then why stop them? I can see how dragging might be quicker in some circumstances.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      23 July, 2021 - 12:44 am

      <p>Tongue-in-cheek: drag-and-drop still works with program icons on the desktop.</p><p><br></p><p>Somewhat more serious: Windows 11 gave me incentive to try out various docks again. Nexus provides a system tray fly-out and supports drag-and-drop onto items pinned on it. FWIW, one may also pin folders to it, and drag-and-drop files into such folders, similar to taskbar toolbars in Windows 10. Point: if you don’t like Windows 11’s desktop UI, there ARE 3rd party alternatives.</p>

    • theotherguy

      23 July, 2021 - 1:28 am

      <p>I think there’s some confusion here. It’s not about dragging a file to a taskbar icon to have it open; it’s dragging and hovering the file over the taskbar icon so the program can maximise, then drag the file onto the program window.</p><p><br></p><p>Will definitely cause some grief for a lot of users having to change their workflow if it doesn’t come back. I’ve been using it forever, and i’m sure it’s going to annoy me anytime i go to use it and find out i have to shuffle windows around instead. There’s workarounds like Win+D, but not great if you’re a mouse user.</p>

      • navarac

        23 July, 2021 - 3:13 am

        <p>Windows 11 will cause a lot of grief anyway…….</p>

      • mattbg

        Premium Member
        23 July, 2021 - 6:28 am

        <p>You can also ALT+TAB while you are dragging the icon to bring the app you need to the front. That is what I usually do, anyway…</p>

  • ianbetteridge

    23 July, 2021 - 6:08 am

    <p>Updated this morning, Chat is there – yay! Unfortunately, once you have opened it, there appears to be no way to actually make it go away — it just sticks there, open, over the top of whatever window are working in. </p>

    • dfeifer

      Premium Member
      27 July, 2021 - 3:31 pm

      <p>Also, it seems that this version does not work with work accounts. Not that it really matters since I am already using the full client anyways.</p>

  • navarac

    23 July, 2021 - 7:45 am

    <p><em>…."red backplate and a red pill under the app icon…."</em></p><p><br></p><p>To clarify Microsoft’s lack of language skills, their Blog Post calls it "slightly red". They mean a red pill and a pink background. </p>

  • timothyhuber

    Premium Member
    23 July, 2021 - 8:29 am

    <p>Update applied this morning and now the shell is in a restart loop of some kind. Was able to open task manager (Ctrl-Shift-sec) and cpu is running 90-100%. Watching the Windows Problem Reporting process open just before the crash. Over and over. </p>

    • timothyhuber

      Premium Member
      23 July, 2021 - 8:42 am

      <p>Well, starting in safe mode didn’t help… </p>

    • timothyhuber

      Premium Member
      23 July, 2021 - 9:37 am

      <p>So booted into WRE and uninstalled the latest quality update, which seems to have addressed the issue. Interestingly, Windows Update history still shows that 22000.100 is still installed. </p>

  • Ankit Nayyar

    23 July, 2021 - 11:49 am

    <p>This update disabled windows hello, and Wi-Fi functionality stopped working on my surface go 2. I tried to roll back the update with no luck, and the surface was only able to see my lte connection with no Wi-Fi option available. I had to restore the whole system. </p><p><br></p><p>i know this is beta, but this release seems to be a poor in reliability. I had no major issues w prior windows 11 installs or updates.</p>

    • Ankit Nayyar

      23 July, 2021 - 5:22 pm

      <p>Update:</p><p><br></p><p>I reset my pc and I reinstalled windows 11 and while it installed the newest build, there’s no teams or chat installed…which is fine w me. Windows hello and Wi-Fi are working again, I did notice that today there was an update to windows hello separately installed which may have helped fixed that issue. Hopefully that sort of update experience doesn’t happen again (although I realize this is dev channel).</p>

    • jim_vernon

      Premium Member
      25 July, 2021 - 1:12 pm

      <p>I’m also using a Go 2 and Windows Hello broke. However, the was another Windows Update specifically for Windows Hello available that fixed it after a reboot.</p>

  • blue77star

    24 July, 2021 - 12:38 am

    <p>They are trying hard to replace all UI elements but some just can’t be done unless completely removed. I am really surprised that they weren’t able to get rid of event viewer and create new app under settings called system logs.</p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      24 July, 2021 - 9:04 am

      <p>Wh… why would you replace Event Viewer?</p><p><br></p><p>I mean aside from being shed of its absurdly unapproachable design. :)</p>

  • skinnyjm

    24 July, 2021 - 12:38 pm

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">temerity", I had to look that one up.</span></p>

    • i_khan

      Premium Member
      27 July, 2021 - 10:03 pm

      <p>Paul is always expanding our vocabulary base! Much appreciated ?</p>

  • cnc123

    24 July, 2021 - 3:49 pm

    <p>Is Windows 11 Teams chat end-to-end encrypted? How does it work with the Teams mobile app, or does it work at all? Trying to figure out if there’s any reason to use this over Telegram.</p>

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