Microsoft finishes this week with a major release for Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev Channel. Build 26120.2510 has landed (KB5048780), delivering the promise to bring Recall to Intel and AMD-powered devices that qualify as Copilot+ PCs. In other words, if you have a laptop with Intel"s latest Core Ultra or AMD"s Ryzen AI processors, you can enroll in the Windows 11 Insider Program to try Recall and other AI-powered features, such as Click to Do.
Here are the new features you will get with this update:
- Recall: A feature that snapshots what you do, giving your computer a "photographic memory" and the ability to go back in time and search for any file or app using natural language.
- Paint Cocreator: This feature generates AI images based on what you draw on the canvas.
- Restyle Image and Image Creator in the Photos app: With these capabilities, the Photos app can generate images based on your text prompts and restyle existing pictures.
- Click to Do: Click to Do analyzes what is on the screen and provides quick actions for text, images, and other content.
Note that getting new AI features to work requires installing the latest chipset drivers. To do so, toggle the "Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available" option in Windows Update settings. You can learn more about those capabilities in the announcement post.
Other changes are included in build 26120.2510 include the following:
New features gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on
Modernized Windows Hello
At Microsoft, we are committed to security and enhancing user experiences. As part of this commitment, we launched enhanced passkey features in September 2023 and are now revamping the Windows Hello user experience. This represents a significant update to Windows Hello, aligning it with contemporary Windows visual design standards. The primary focus is on making authentication intuitive and seamless.
Modernized Windows Hello Visual Communication: The updated Windows Hello visuals are designed to facilitate fast and clear communication and appear on the Windows Sign-in screen as well as other authentication flows such as passkey, Recall, Microsoft Store and many more.
Revamped Windows Hello credential user experience for passkeys and the new administrator protection experience: We redesigned Windows security credential user experience for passkey by creating a cleaner experience that supports secured and quick authentication. Users will now be able to switch between authentication options and select passkey/devices more intuitively.
This experience will also apply for the new administrator protection feature coming to Windows 11, version 24H2 and higher and currently in preview with Windows Insiders in the most recent Canary Channel builds. For more information on administrator protection – you can check out this blog post that highlights our investments in adminless experiences in Windows from Microsoft Ignite.
Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- The more simplified system tray with shortened form date/time we began rolling out with Build 26120.1843 is being temporarily disabled to address a few issues. Thanks to all the Insiders who gave us feedback on this experience.
- Fixes gradually being rolled out to the Dev Channel with toggle on*
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Fixed a few issues impacting taskbar and explorer.exe reliability.
[Audio]
- Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to USB audio devices going to sleep after 1 minute of idle time, and not waking up until the PC was rebooted.
- Fixed an underlying issue which could lead you to unexpectedly hear a mute or unmute noise in certain headsets.
- Fixed an underlying issue that could lead to the audio on certain audio devices unexpectedly going to 100% on boot or after sleep.
[Other]
- Fixed an underlying issue which could lead to Excel sometimes hanging on launch when opening certain files.
- Fixes for everyone in the Dev Channel
[Recall]
- Fixed an issue where Recall didn’t warn that you must have Secure Boot enabled for Recall to save snapshots.
- Improved the experience for submitting feedback for Recall by adding a loading dialog.
- Fixed an issue where some users experience a delay before snapshots first appear in the timeline while using their device.
- Fixed an issue where Recall won’t save any snapshots if you join the Dev Channel and install Build 26120.2415 after installing KB5046740.
[Other]
- [Exporting chart objects] Fixed: An app stops responding when it exports chart objects in PDF and XLSX formats.
- [Internet connection] Fixed: A small number of devices cannot connect to the internet. This occurs when a DHCP server response has duplicate DHCP options. This stops IPv4 connections on certain networks.
- [Display] Fixed: Some secondary displays might experience lag and screen tearing when a window is in full screen.
- [HTML Applications (HTA)] Fixed: HTA optional components (OC) are now in ARM64 Windows PE.
Finally, the update contains the recent Microsoft Store update with improvements for Win32 app updates.
Here is the list of known bugs:
[Rollback]
There is an issue where if you roll back from Build 26120.2510 to Build 26120.2415, you will see an “Your organization used App Control for Business to block this app” dialog when attempting to use or install certain third-party apps on your PC due to an incorrect policy being enforced. To avoid this, please take the following steps FIRST before rolling back:
Open Command Prompt with administrator privileges.
- Type and hit enter: mountvol s: /s
- Type and hit enter: del S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\cipolicies\active\{8E8A94F0-6EB9-42C7-A189-E018C8CF3D10}.cip
- Type and hit enter: del S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\cipolicies\active\{36D62F7C-AB85-4F61-8724-744294F24023}.cip
- Type and hit enter: del S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\cipolicies\active\{66D7D265-7EDD-47DD-86E4-F7C42CD55A8F}.cip
- Then proceed with rolling back.
Note if you update back to Build 26120.2510 after rolling back, you will still need to do this workaround.
If you do not do these steps FIRST before rolling back, your PC could get into a bad state. If you run into issues with Build 26120.2510, we recommend trying the option “Fix problems using Windows Update” via Settings > Recovery which delivers an in-place upgrade (IPU) of Build 26120.2510 instead of rolling back. We expect to have this issue fixed with the next Dev Channel flight.
[Recall]
The following known issues will be fixed in future updates to Windows Insiders:
- Recall can be enabled or disabled from “Turn Windows features on or off”. We are caching the Recall binaries on disk while we test add/remove. In a future update we will completely remove the binaries.
- Some users may see a message to “Make sure Recall is saving snapshots”, while the Settings page for Recall shows saving snapshots is enabled. Reboot your device to resolve this issue.
- Make sure you update Microsoft 365 apps to the latest version so you can jump back into specific documents.
[Click to Do]
The following known issues will be fixed in future updates to Windows Insiders:
- Sometimes additional context is given when using more intelligent text actions powered by Phi Silica.
- The intelligent text actions leverage the power of Microsoft’s secure cloud to improve your text results by ensuring prompts and responses are safe and appropriate. This data is automatically deleted. Local moderation to ensure the safety of prompts and responses will be added in the future, replacing this cloud endpoint.
- Sometimes Click to Do doesn’t highlight any info on screen if there is no content on a connected external monitor in extended mode.
The complete changelog is available here.