Microsoft Issues New Canary, Dev, and Beta Builds to the Windows Insider Program

Microsoft today issued two Canary builds and new Dev and Beta builds for PC enrolled in the Windows Insider Program.

Here’s what’s new.

Canary on the optional 29500 build series

If you have a PC enrolled in the Canary channel and opted into the optional 29500 series of builds, you can install Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29558.1000, you will eventually receive (as it’s a Controlled Feature Release, or CFR) a major update to the Windows Console that adds a slew of new features like regular expression search, bold fonts, enhancements to paste, Clipboard, and other capabilities, inline image support, and a lot more.

Canary

If you have a PC enrolled in the Canary channel, you can install Preview Update KB5079490 to upgrade the system to Windows 11 version 26H1 build 28020.1797. There’s nothing go on here, as usual: “This update includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs,” Microsoft says.

Dev and Beta

If you have a PC enrolled in the Dev or Beta channel, you can install Preview Update KB5079492 (Dev) or KB5079491 (Beta) to upgrade to Windows 11 version 25H2 build 26300.8142 (Dev) or 26220.8138 (Beta), each of which adds the following new features and changes.

Administrator protection. You can finally re-enable Administrator Protection in Settings by navigating to Privacy & security > Windows Security > Account protection and then rebooting.

Touchpad improvements. You can now configure how large the right-click zone size is between default, small, medium, and large in Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touchpad.

Task Manager improvements. Task Manager now offers optional NPU and NPU Engine columns on the Processes, Users, and Details pages, new NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns on the Details page, and a new optional Isolation column to the Processes and Details page.

Windows Protected Print Mode improvements. There’s a new in print settings that appears when your printer supports Windows Protected Print Mode.