Windows 11 Build 23435 (Dev) officially reveals File Explorer Gallery

A new build is now coming to insiders running Windows 11 in the Dev channel. Windows 11 Build 23435 officially introduces the Gallery feature, that was hidden in Insider builds for long. Besides, there are new Start menu badge notification designs, File Explorer improvements, and presence sensing privacy options.

What's new in Windows 11 Build 23435 (Dev)

File Explorer Gallery

The Gallery is a new feature in File Explorer that simplifies the process of accessing your photo collection. The content displayed in the Gallery corresponds to the All Photos view in the Photos app.

Gallery will provide you with convenient access to your recently captured photos. If you have OneDrive Camera Roll Backup configured on your mobile device, the pictures you take will immediately appear at the top of the view.

You can select the folders visible in the Gallery using the Collection dropdown. Additionally, by adding subfolders of existing sources, you can filter to a specific subset of your content, such as desktop backgrounds or SD card/camera imports.

Moreover, Gallery is also compatible with the file picking dialog, providing the same level of convenience in scenarios like inserting attachments, creating a PowerPoint presentation, or drafting social media posts.

Microsoft is gradually rolling out this feature, so it may be not available to you right after you install the newest build. Microsoft is collecting feedback from a small select group of Insiders.

Changes and Improvements

Start menu

Microsoft is still testing designs for badging on the Start menu. There are a number of them that suggest the user to switch to a Microsoft account (MSA). They will appear for users who sign in with local user accounts.

File Explorer

Some Windows Insiders will see a “pizza” icon on the command bar in File Explorer. This icon denotes that an Insider is previewing the Windows App SDK version of File Explorer. Functionality in File Explorer remains unchanged, it just switches from using WinUI 2 to using WinUI 3.

Narrator

Narrator users who interact with Traditional Chinese characters are now able to do this with confidence while using Narrator and the IME candidate window in Windows. This was accomplished by creating a Traditional Chinese dictionary for detail reading. Narrator now consumes the dictionary to disambiguate each Traditional Chinese word. Users should be aware that Narrator detailed reading is only supported for the Taiwan language pack. The Hong-Kong language pack is not supported with Narrator.

Presence sensing

With this build, Microsoft has added new presence sensor privacy settings and APIs. If you have a device with compatible presence sensors, you can now manage your privacy and prevent certain apps from accessing those sensors. Microsoft does not collect images or metadata, and all processing is done locally on the device's hardware to ensure maximum privacy.

You can find the new setting under Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Presence Detection if your device supports it . Application developers will be able to send a request to users to receive data about the presence of a person. You can learn more about this API on the official website.

Finally, there is a list of fixes in this build.

Fixes

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• Fixed a few explorer.exe crashes that were impacting taskbar reliability.

[Input]

• Updated the TextInput/EnableTouchKeyboardAutoInvokeInDesktopMode MDM policy to allow “2” as a valid value to enforce showing the touch keyboard on tapping an edit control even when the hardware keyboard is attached.

[Settings]

• Fixed an issue which was causing Settings crashes when navigating to various Windows Update related pages in the last couple flights.

[Live captions]

• Fixed the issue that caused enhanced speech recognition support installed through the Language & Region settings page to require restarting live captions if you switch languages in the live captions Caption language menu on Arm64 devices.
• Fixed the issue where you may not see install completion of “Enhanced speech recognition” (required by Live Captions) when adding a language through the Language & Region settings page, and language feature installation progress may become hidden.

[Task Manager]

• Improved the performance of the expand all / collapse all View options on the Processes page.

[Accessibility]

• Updated Narrator’s default for “Context level for buttons and controls” to “3 – Immediate content name and type.”

Known Issues

• Search on the taskbar:
  • After updating to  Build 23403, some users may be missing the taskbar search box and/or taskbar search settings Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.
• File Explorer:
  • If the "Gallery" section is available in the "Explorer":
    • [New] For the first loading of the Gallery section, you may need to double-click on the corresponding item in the navigation bar on the left side of the window.
    • [New] Real-time update (including for applying filter) is now disabled. Use the Refresh button as a workaround.
    • [New] Thumbnail loading performance for cloud files and excessive RAM usage in large collections are known issues that Microsoft is working on. For performance related issues, be sure to record a trace before submitting feedback to the Feedback Hub.
      Rebuilding indexing can help if cloud file thumbnails are missing. To do this, open "Indexing Options" and go to "Advanced Settings" to find the rebuild tool.
    • [New] Showing photos from OneDrive for Business may not work correctly.
    • [New] Some file types (eg HEIC) may not display correctly or have poor quality.
  • If access keys/keyboard shortcut hints are available in the context menu:
    • Keyboard shortcut hints may not appear if no keys are pressed. Pressing the key will make them appear.
    • Shift + right-clicking on a file or folder does not open the "Show advanced options" menu.
  • Problems with commands for recommended files:
    • When you click on the "Share" button, a system window will open, not a window from OneDrive.
• "Live captions":
  • [New] Live Captions crashes on first launch due to a problem getting data from the registry. Engineers are working on a fix.
  • Some languages ​​displayed on the Language and Region page support speech recognition (such as Korean), but do not yet support live captioning.
  • Subtitle display speed may be slower when using languages ​​other than English. There is also no detection of languages ​​other than English (United States), which means that incorrect subtitles may be displayed for speech other than the subtitle language.

The official announcement is available here.