Hi all, last Friday Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7523 (KB5072043) to the Dev & Beta Channels.

The last Insider build for 2025, enjoy this one and Happy Holidays!

New features gradually being rolled out with toggle on*

Introducing Ask Copilot on the taskbar with Microsoft 365 Copilot

In October, we introduced Ask Copilot on the taskbar in build 26220.7051 for consumer customers. Now, we’re starting to roll out a version tailored for commercial customers—first announced at Microsoft Ignite. This opt‑in experience will roll out gradually in the coming weeks to commercial Windows Insider Program customers in the United States who have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

Ask Copilot on the taskbar provides a unified entry point that fluidly connects Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents, and search. This makes Copilot and agents feel like a natural part of how you use your PC, turning everyday interactions into moments of productivity and impact.

• One-click access to Copilot from your taskbar: This opt-in experience is the most integrated and natural way to engage with Copilot through voice or text in the way that works best for you. Commercial users will have all the power of their Work IQ as contextual information that they can reference in their Copilot chats and with Microsoft 365 AI Agents.
• Invoke agents: You’ll be able to invoke agents directly from Ask Copilot on the taskbar using the tools button or by typing “@.”
• Streamlined search experience: Lightning-fast results in a refreshed design makes finding apps, files and settings easier.

To get started go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Ask Copilot to enable the experience.

Ask Copilot in taskbar complements the familiar Windows Search experience, so you can continue using Search as you always have from Start while trying out this new experience.

Ask Copilot uses existing Windows APIs to return apps, files, and settings—just like Windows Search—and does not grant Copilot access to your personal content. For more details, you can learn about privacy and control options for Microsoft 365 Copilot here.

Feedback: Share your thoughts in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Ask Copilot in taskbar.

Introducing Agents on the taskbar

Windows is adding a new way to keep an eye on your Agents right from the taskbar.
Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot can dig into a topic and build a detailed report, and now you’ll be able to track its progress without breaking your flow. Give it a try by asking Researcher a question from within the Microsoft 365 Copilot App.

We’re also testing a hover experience—when you move your cursor over the Copilot or Researcher icon, you’ll see real‑time reasoning updates, so you always know how the task is progressing. Researcher will also let you know when it’s done. This opt‑in experience will roll out gradually in the coming weeks to commercial Windows Insider Program customers in the United States who have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

When the report is complete, you will receive a notification as well as seeing a ‘completed’ state on the taskbar. Click either to go back to Microsoft 365 or review the report and turn your learnings into action.

We are experimenting with different ways that Agent tasks will appear in the taskbar to determine how to best meet the needs of customers. (Group the agent task with the Copilot icon on the taskbar or have it as a separate Researcher icon.)

Agent Launchers on Windows

We are introducing Agent Launchers, a new framework that enables Windows apps to register AI agents and make them discoverable across the system. Agent Launchers provides a standardized way for apps to expose their interactive AI agents so they can be found and invoked by Windows and Applications. When launched, these agents open their chat experience so you can start working with them. Agents provide active, collaborative experiences, asking clarifying questions, maintaining context, and taking actions to get things done.

With Agent Launchers, developers can register their agents once, and those agents become available to all supporting experiences—including Ask Copilot on the taskbar with Microsoft 365 Copilot and other installed apps. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already using this framework to register agents like Analyst (for gaining insights from data) and Researcher (for creating detailed reports). Developers can register agents statically at install time or dynamically at runtime, giving flexibility to control availability based on authentication, subscriptions, or other conditions. Documentation is available at https://learn.microsoft.com/windows/ai/agent-launchers/.

FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Developer Platform > App Actions on Windows.

Personalize what Narrator announces 

Narrator now gives you more control over how information is spoken when you navigate UI elements in an app. Every app is made up of different control types—such as buttons, checkboxes, links, sliders, and text fields. Each control includes properties (like its name, role, or state) and values (for example, a slider set to “75%”). Narrator usually announces these in a fixed order, but you can now choose which properties are spoken and rearrange their order to match your preferences.

For example, when you land on a “Submit” button, Narrator may announce: “Submit, button.” With personalization, you can choose to hear the label first, the role first, or omit something you don’t need. On a checkbox, you might decide whether the state (“checked” or “not checked”) should come before or after the label—or whether you prefer not to hear the state at all.

To customize these announcements, press Narrator key + Ctrl + P. From there, you can select, unselect, & reorder the properties Narrator speaks for each control type.

You can make changes faster using a natural language input box exclusively on Copilot+ PCs. Simply type what you want—for example: “Don’t announce the selection info or position info,”

These changes apply to that control type throughout the app you’re currently using.

You can also preview how your personalized announcement will sound before saving your changes. If you ever want to go back, simply choose Reset to default to restore Narrator’s original announcement pattern.

Shape Narrator’s detail level the way you prefer—clearer, more predictable, and aligned with how you want to navigate.

FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Accessibility > Narrator

Enhancing the Touch Keyboard Experience for Voice Typing

We’re updating the experience when you use voice typing with the touch keyboard to make it feel more streamlined and intuitive. The new design removes the previous full‑screen overlay and instead shows voice typing animations directly on the dictation key, helping you stay focused on what you’re doing without extra visual distractions.

Before the update:

After the update:

FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Input and Language > Voice Typing (Windows key plus H).

Discover Windows Widget

We’re introducing a new Discover Windows widget on Windows 11. This widget helps you learn about Windows features with short, helpful tips that appear right when you need them.

What it shows:

• Quick, actionable tips from the Windows Tips website—covering things like shortcuts, productivity tricks, and security reminders.
• Tips update automatically throughout the day to match common usage moments.

How to add it:

• To Widgets Board: Open the Widgets Board, select Add widgets, then choose Discover.
• To Lock Screen: Go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen, then add the Discover widget to your lock screen widgets.

You can add it, remove it, or ignore it at any time—it’s designed to be helpful without getting in the way. We’ll be trying out this experience with Insiders first to gather feedback before a wider rollout.

FEEDBACK: Please share your feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Widgets.

Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out with toggle on*

[Settings Agent Language Expansion]

• Last September, we announced that Agent in Settings experience was expanded to include French in Dev and Beta Now, the languages supported by the Settings Agent continue to be expanded. The following locales and languages are supported with this release:

Current:

• English: en-gb, en-us
• French: fr-fr, fr-ca

New:

• German: de-de
• Portuguese: pt-br, pt-pt
• Spanish: es-es, es-mx
• Korean: ko-kr
• Japanese: ja-jp
• Hindi: hi-in
• Italian: it-it
• Chinese (Simplified): zh-cn

[Click to Do]

• The Copilot prompt box in Click to Do now supports Microsoft 365 Copilot. Ask Microsoft 365 Copilot about what’s on your screen. Quickly type a custom prompt directly into a text box, which is then sent to Microsoft 365 Copilot along with your selected screen content. This change is not yet rolling out to Windows Insiders in the EEA (European Economic Area) or China. This feature previously rolled out last September to Dev and Beta channel outside of EEA.

[Input]

• The AltGr layer is now enabled for the Arabic 101 keyboard layout.  The left Alt key continues to function as before, while the right Alt key acts as a modifier to access additional symbols. The first new symbol mapped to AltGr on the Arabic 101 layout is the Saudi Riyal currency symbol (AltGr + S). Users who switch languages with Alt + Shift can continue to use the left Alt + Shift or the general shortcut Windows logo key + Space. Arabic 102 and Arabic 102 AZERTY layouts are updated similarly.

[Voice Access]

• We’re introducing a more streamlined setup flow to make it even easier to get started with Voice Access. The redesigned flow helps download the right speech model for your language of choice; select your preferred input microphone & highlights what Voice Access can help you do on your PC.

[Taskbar]

• We’re temporarily stopping the rollout of the new animations when sliding between open apps on the taskbar to investigate some issues – appreciate your patience.

[File Explorer]

• For Windows Insiders signed in with a Microsoft account (consumer cloud), File Explorer will now begin showing people icons under the “Activity” column on File Explorer Home and in areas like Recommended, Favorites, and Recent. When you hover or click on a people icon, File Explorer will display the new Windows People Card (WPC), giving you lightweight context about who recently interacted with the file and providing quick actions like starting a chat or a call through your preferred communication apps.

This brings the people context experience—previously available only for work and school (Entra ID) files via the Live Persona Card (LPC)—to consumer cloud files as well, enabling a more consistent and intuitive collaboration experience across File Explorer. This is an update to the originally released feature which was previously documented in the Dev and Beta channels August 2025.

Fixes gradually being rolled out with toggle on*

[Taskbar and System Tray]

• When your taskbar is set to uncombined, if you have an app open with many windows, they will no longer all move as a set to the overflow area when there is not enough space on the taskbar, and instead only the ones specifically within the set that don’t have space. With this change, the overflow area should no longer appear to display with lots of available space.
• Fixed an issue where the label in the taskbar might not be displayed correctly if you had an app with multiple windows open.

[File Explorer]

• Fixed an issue causing File Explorer recently to show a white flash when navigating between pages after the latest flights.
• Made some improvements to File Explorer search performance by eliminating duplicate file indexing operations, which should result in faster searches and reduced system resource usage during file operations.
• Enhanced search reliability with improved handling of system and secondary drive locations, to help ensure more accurate search results across all your storage devices.
• Fixed an issue which could prevent OneDrive files from opening in RemoteApp sessions (showing error 0x80070057).
• Improved Voice Access support in File Explorer’s Gallery view, so you can now open photos by saying ‘click [number]’ instead of requiring ‘double click,’ streamlining voice-controlled navigation.

[Login and lock screens]

• Fixed a few more issues which could lead to the login screen becoming unresponsive and not rendering.

[Display and Graphics]

• Fixed an issue which could lead to Adaptive Brightness not working immediately after rebooting your PC.

[Windows Update]

• Fixed an issue resulting in an increase in Insiders seeing error 0x800F0922 when trying to install the latest updates recently.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue where text might not display correctly in Windows Recovery when using the Japanese display language.
• Fixed an issue where in some cases valid Windows license migration might fail when upgrading because the device couldn’t register with the Windows Activation server for its CLIP / online entitlement, requiring using the troubleshooter to fix.
• Fixed an issue where external virtual switches might lose their physical network adapter (NIC) bindings after a host restart. When this happened, the switches would revert to internal mode, resulting in loss of network connectivity for virtual machines and blocking normal server operations. ​​​​​​​
• Fixed an issue where the Share dialog might unexpectedly show an option to share to Shell Experience Host.
• Updated the “Change Account Type” dialog in Settings > Accounts > Other accounts to better align with other modern dialogs in Settings.
• If you were seeing a message saying “There’s a newer build available” in Windows Insider Program Settings, but there wasn’t actually, that should be resolved now.

Known issues

[Agents on the Taskbar]

• Researcher may appear unresponsive if you click on the taskbar icon or status card when task is in progress.  Switching to a different conversation then back to the researcher task within Microsoft 365 Copilot should fix the problem.

[Xbox full screen experience for PC]

• Some apps may behave unexpectedly when using FSE, particularly those that expect to be locked to a given size or launch additional windows.

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• We’re working on the fix for an issue which is causing the Start menu to not open for some Insiders on click, although it will open if you press the Windows key. This issue may also potentially impact the notification center (which you can open with WIN + N) and quick settings (WIN + A).
• We’re investigating an issue where for some Insiders apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.
• [NEW] We’re working on the fix for an issue in the latest builds where, when the taskbar is set to autohide, it might invoke before interacting with the bottom of the screen, blocking the use of apps in that area.

[File Explorer]

• Scrollbar and footer are missing and showing a white block instead when text is scaled in dark mode version of the copy dialog.
• We’re working on the fix for an issue where opening the context menu is causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders after the previous flight.

[Bluetooth]

• We’re working on the fix for an issue causing Bluetooth device battery level to not show for some Insiders.

[Click to Do]

• [NEW] We’re investigating an issue where the Microsoft 365 Copilot prompt box on selected images does not function if the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is not running.

Paint App update rolling out to Canary & Dev Channels

• With Paint version 11.2511.281.0, we’re introducing the collapse toolbar feature in Paint. To get started, open Paint and click the chevron icon at the bottom-right of the ribbon to enable Automatically hide toolbar. Once the toolbar collapses, use the Show toolbar button to bring it back and switch tools. To hide it again, click the Hide toolbar button or anywhere outside the toolbar. When you’re ready to return to the default view, click the chevron icon and select Always show toolbar.

Paint App GIF showing the collapsable toolbar.

• FEEDBACK: Please file feedback in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Apps > Paint.

source: Windows Blogs