Microsoft has released monthly cumulative updates for all supported operating systems. Traditionally, the updates are intended to fix bugs, and ship general improvements to the end user.
Author: Sergey Tkachenko
Microsoft Edge 111 Stable Released
Microsoft is now rolling out a new stable version of Microsoft Edge 111.0.1661.41. Edge 111 comes with a new sidebar with the Discover feature, Microsoft Feed integration on the new tab page, security improvements, and a browsing data deletion policy for IE mode.
Firefox 111 is out with email input mask support in Firefox Relay
Firefox 111 stable is out with several improvements. It is a minor release so it doesn’t bring with it drastic changes. On Desktop, you will find input mask support for temporary email addresses in Firefox Relay. On Android, Firefox 111 includes a built-in PDF viewer. There are also plenty of changes for developers. Besides, it includes fixes for 20 vulnerabilities, with 14 of them having high impact.
The new ChatGPT-4 model will be introduced this week
Microsoft Germany CTO Andreas Braun announced during the AI in Focus - Digital Kickoff event that the latest GPT-4 language model will be unveiled this week. It will not only be more powerful than the current version of GPT-3.5 used in ChatGPT, but will also receive a number of new features, including the ability to generate video. It will have "multimodal models" that allow for more types of content generation.
The ability to install Windows on ReFS may become exclusive to Windows 12
As you may remember, Microsoft has added a hidden option to install Windows 11 on ReFS. The OS installer could support formatting new partitions to ReFS and use such a partition to boot from. It was a feature of the Dev channel builds. However, after rebooting the Insider program, everything has been scrapped from the Dev channel and moved to Canary builds.
Windows 11 to receive a dedicated USB4 page in the Settings app
One more hidden feature is in the first Canary release of Windows 11. Build 25314 seems to include a new USB 4 device viewer on the USB Settings page. While it is hidden, you can make it appear with ViVeTool.
Windows 11 is finally getting the ability ungroup taskbar buttons and show text labels
Microsoft is finally restoring the ability to ungroup taskbar buttons and show text labels for the running apps. As you may remember, the company has started working on it at least in November 2022. Now, the latest Canary build shows some progress in this direction.
Windows 11 will soon allow seamlessly switching to Cloud PC from TaskView
Recent builds of Windows 11 include early implementation of integration Cloud PC to the TaskView. With this feature enabled, the Cloud PC session and apps can be accessed via the Win + Tab interface, the one that used to host Timeline, and now shows virtual desktops.
How to Enable Access Key Hints for Context Menu in File Explorer
Two recent Insider releases, Windows 11 Build 25314 (Canary) and Build 23403 (Dev), bring access key hits to the context menu in File Explorer. When opened from the keyboard, the menu will display the key shrotcuts that you can press to trigger this or that action. This feature is rolling out gradually, so it may take some time before you see it on your PC. But you can speed up this process and enable it right now.
Chrome 111 is out, makes possible to open any website in PiP mode
Google has released the Chrome 111 web browser. The key changes in this release are an updated UI of Privacy Sandbox, a new data sync welcome page, and improvements to the updater. It also adds experimental Document Picture in Picture APIs to open traditional HTML content in picture-in-picture mode, not just video.
