Windows 11 Beta build 22624.1470 restores seconds in systray clock, and more

Today, Microsoft released builds 22624.1470 and 22621.1470 (KB5023780) to the Beta Channel for Windows 11 Insiders. The company writes in its blog post:

Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22621.1470 and Build 22624.1470 (KB5023780) to the Beta Channel.

• Build 22624.1470 = New features rolling out.
• Build 22621.1470 = New features off by default

The new version adds a few new features, including a new USB4 Settings Page, and more changes, improvements and fixes. You can check out the changelog below:

What’s new in Build 22624.1470

USB4 Settings Page

We are adding a USB4 hubs and devices Settings page for users under Settings > Bluetooth & devices > USB > USB4 Hubs and Devices. USB4 enables new productivity scenarios for docking, high performance peripherals, displays and charging. The USB4 settings page provides information about the system’s USB4 capabilities and attached peripherals on a USB4 capable system. These insights are meant to assist with troubleshooting in case users need support from their device manufacturer (OEM) or system administrator. The features provided by this page are:

• View the tree of connected USB4 hubs and devices.
• View attributes and capabilities associated with the USB4 domain.
• Copy the details into the clipboard so it can be shared with customer support or system administrators for troubleshooting.

If the system does not support USB4 with the Microsoft USB4 Connection Manager, this page will not be displayed.

To confirm whether your system is USB4 capable or not, check for “USB4 Host Router” populating in the Device Manager.

FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Devices and Drivers > Buses.

Changes and Improvements in Build 22624.1470

[General]

• Users will now see a copy button for quickly copying two-factor authentication (2FA) codes in notification toasts from apps installed on the PC or from phones linked to the PC. We make a best effort to determine if a notification toast has an authentication code but please send us feedback if we got it wrong or if we failed to detect the code in a notification toast.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• We have added a glanceable VPN status into the system tray when connected to a recognized VPN profile. The VPN icon, a small shield, will be overlayed in your system accent color over the active network connection.

• In response to user feedback, we are introducing the capability to show seconds in the clock on the system tray. This feature can be enabled by toggling the option listed under Settings > Personalization > Taskbarin the Taskbar behavior section. You can also right-click on taskbar to quickly get to taskbar settings. We are beginning to roll this change out so not all Windows Insiders will see this change right away, but we hope to make it available to everyone soon.

Changes and Improvements for BOTH Build 22621.1470 & Build 22624.1470

[Search on the Taskbar]

• The search box on taskbar will be lighter when Windows is set to a custom color mode. Specifically, when the Windows 11 mode is set to dark, and the app mode is set to light under Settings > Personalization > Colors you will see a lighter search box on taskbar.

Fixes in Build 22624.1470

[Live captions]

• We fixed the issue causing live captions to not work for Chinese Traditional on Arm64 devices.

Fixes for BOTH Build 22621.1470 & Build 22624.1470

• Fixed rendering issues when using the touch keyboard with the search box on taskbar.
• Fixed an issue when double clicking the search highlight glyph in the search box makes it disappear.
• Fixed an issue where the search box would randomly disappear.
• Fixed an issue where the search icon flips incorrectly for right-to-left (RTL) languages.
• Fixed on issue where you might have seen some text flicker in the search box when you click into it.
• Fixed an issue where the search box might disappear on one monitor if you are using multiple monitors.
• Made some accessibility fixes to the settings for search under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.

Known issues

[Live captions]

• On ARM64 devices, enhanced speech recognition support installed through the Language & Region settings page will require restarting live captions if you switch languages in the live captions Caption language menu.
• Certain languages shown on the Language & Region settings page will indicate speech recognition support (e.g., Korean) but don’t yet have support for live captions.
• When adding a language through the Language & Region settings page, language feature installation progress may become hidden, and you may not see install completion of “Enhanced speech recognition” (required by Live Captions). (You can use the language’s “Language options” to monitor progress.) If this happens, there may be an unexpected delay before the live caption setup experience detects this and lets you continue.
• Captioning performance may be degraded in non-English languages and missing out-of-language filtering in non-English (United States) languages which means that incorrect captions will be shown for speech not in the caption language.

You can check out the official blog post here:

Update March 24: Microsoft has confirmed to Neowin that seconds on the taskbar clock is not working in the Beta Channel build. Although the changes were implemented in build 22624.1470, a bug was identified that prevents the "setting from kicking off". Brandon Le Blanc, Senior Program Manager on the Windows Insider Program Team, confirmed in a tweet that the issue would be fixed in the next flight.

Enabling seconds on the taskbar clock setting does work in the Canary build.