After the last Windows 11 build of the year made its way to Dev channel Insiders earlier this week, today is the Beta channel's turn. Microsoft is rolling out the last update of 2022 for the Beta channel, which brings us builds 22623.1037 and 22621.1037, depending on whether you're receiving new features or not.
As per usual, the big news is only for users who are getting build 22623.1027, and it's all about improvements to the voice access feature. This is a recent capability in Windows 11 version 22H2 that allows you to control your computer using your voice. With this build, Microsoft has made it easier to interact with UI elements whose name includes numbers, such as in the Calculator app, where you can now say "Click 2" to enter the number 2. Voice access also works better with field names that don't have a whitespace, like PivotTable or PivotChart in Excel, so you can say the name as if there was a whitespace and have it still be recognized.
Additionally, there are a lot of new commands available that make it easier to do certain tasks. Some of these actions were already available, they just support new voice commands now so they're not as restrictive.
For users on either build, Microsoft is also still testing a new search design, which we also saw in yesterday's Dev channel build.
Aside from that, there are a few fixes in these builds, but the list is relatively short. Some fixes are exclusive to build 22623.1037, while others are for both builds. Here's the full list:
Build 22623.1037
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Updated the Quick Settings icons in the taskbar when using a screen reader so if you set focus to each of the icons it no longer includes the words system state and instead just says what the icon is (for example instead of “system volume state” it just says “volume”).
- Fixed a few more explorer.exe crashes relating to recent taskbar changes.
[Task Manager]
- We fixed the issue causing Task Manager to become unresponsive when using the search box at the top of Task Manager.
Both build 22621.1037 and 22623.1037
- We fixed a known issue that might have affected Task Manager. It might have displayed certain elements in the user interface (UI) in unexpected colors. Some parts of the UI might not have been readable. This issue might have occurred if you had “Choose your mode” set to “Custom” in the Personalization > Colors section of Settings.
- We fixed an issue that might have affected Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) decryption. The decryption of a certificate private key might have failed. Because of that, virtual private network (VPN) and other 802.1 certificate-based authentication might have failed. This issue might have occurred when you encrypted the DPAPI master key with a wrong value.
And of course, it wouldn't be an Insider build without a list of known issues, so here are some of the problems you need to be aware of if you're installing this update:
[Search on the Taskbar]
The following known issues only apply for Windows Insiders who received one of the different treatments for how search looks on the taskbar as mentioned above in this blog post:
- You may see issues with the search box on taskbar not rendering correctly and displaying visual artifacts.
[Task Manager]
- Filtering by publisher name does not match correctly on the Processes page.
- Some services may not show in the Services page after filtering is applied.
- If a new process is starting while a filter is set, then that process may appear for a split second in the filtered list.
- Some dialogs may not render in the correct theme when applied from Task Manager Settings page.
- The data content area of the Processes page may flash once when theme changes are applied in the Task Manager Settings page.
- The Startup apps page in Task manager does not list any apps for some Insiders. If you are impacted, please use Settings > Apps > Startup for the time being.
Since this is the last build of the year, you'll have to live with these problems for at least a couple of weeks until the next update is released. Thankfully, none of these are major problems, which is what you typically expect of the Beta channel. You can download this update right now through Windows Update if you're enrolled in this channel, but it will also install automatically sooner or later.
Source: Microsoft