Windows 11 Build 25300 improves window snapping, brings Live Captions to more users

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview 25300 to the Dev channel. With this update, Live Captions are available in more languages. It also includes different treatments for snap layouts, and several more improvements and changes.

Microsoft has also released ISO images for this build that you can download here.

What's new in Windows 11 Build 25300

Live Captions feature available in more languages

Live captions helps everyone and people who are deaf or hard of hearing read live captions in their native language. The initial release with Windows 11 2022 Update only supported English (US) subtitles.

Starting with this build, the feature will also support Chinese (simplified and traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, and other dialects of English. Microsoft will expand the list of languages in the future.

You can enable Live captioning with the Win + Ctrl + L keyboard shortcut or from the Quick Actions menu. At the first start, it will prompt you to download the necessary components for speech recognition on the device. If speech recognition support is not available in your Windows language of choice, or if you need another language, you can download the speech recognition components for Live captions in Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region.

Changes and Improvements

Snap layouts

Microsoft is testing different treatments for snap layouts among Insiders in the Dev channel. In particular, they look for ways to improve the accessibility and use of snap. For example, by reducing the timeout to invoke the Snap flyout when hovering the mouse cursor over the Maximize button. In addition, some variants of the flyout will have the app icon of the window you are working in, as well as a heading describing the Snap feature.

Voice Access

All Insiders in the Dev channel can now sync their voice input, automatic punctuation, and Voice Access settings across all devices signed in with the same Microsoft account. This feature first became available in build 25277.

You can enable this feature in Settings > Accounts > Windows backup > Remember my preferences > Accessibility. It currently only works with Microsoft accounts. AAD support will come later.

Settings

• Updated the Settings > Apps > Startup page to make it easier to access additional info about apps.
• If you right-click on a Win32 application in Start or Search, and select Uninstall, the Settings app will now open Settings to uninstall the application.

WSL

Improved the upgrade experience to the new Windows Subsystem for Linux Store app (mentioned in Build 25272), so it now prompts for installation if wsl.exe is invoked.

Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue with combase.dll that was causing some applications that use the GetKnownFolder API to crash, including Notepad and Windows Terminal for IME users. The issue occurred after upgrading to Build 25290. This issue is also believed to be the root cause of some Insiders finding that certain actions in File Explorer were taking minutes to complete in these builds.
• Fixed a rendering issue when using the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) or a clean installation of the system.
• Fixed an issue resulting in some users experiencing authentication issues on corporate websites that require the use of Windows Integrated Authentication.

Taskbar and system tray

• The ability to display seconds in the clock on the taskbar, first introduced in build 25247, will return after updating to build 25300 if it disappeared after updating to build 25295.
• Fixed an issue that caused the taskbar to be cut off after changing the resolution.
• Fixed an issue where hovering over app icons in the taskbar could cause an unexpected window focus switch.

Widgets

• Fixed an issue that causes third party widgets to ask to be unpinned from the widget pane if the same Microsoft account is used on multiple Windows 11 devices. You will have to open the Widgets and re-pin your widgets - all of them were unpinned in order to fix the bug.
• The "Find more widgets" link in the Widget Picker now works flawlessly and will point to the collection in the Microsoft Store:
  ms-windows-store://collection/?collectionid=MerchandiserContent/Apps/WidgetCollection/Widgetsforeverything

Input

• Microsoft is now rolling out a fix for an issue where the IME suggestion window and the IME toolbar toolbar weren’t shown or cropped.

File Explorer

• Dragging and dropping files and folders between tabs should work again.

Task Manager

• Process names entered in the search box should no longer be spell-checked.
• Fixed several issues with Narrator reading content in Task Manager.
• Fixed an issue where drop-downs in app settings might not match the currently selected theme.
• Now, when using search on the Application History page, the results will not suddenly disappear.
• If you open the "Default start page" drop-down list in the "Parameters", then when you click on the "Task Manager" window, the drop-down list should automatically close.
• Dragging the window using the search box area should work now (like other areas of the title bar).
• Fixed an issue where ending processes in the Details tab wasn’t showing a confirmation dialog.
• Increasing the text scaling should no longer result in a “see more” button appearing with no contents.
• If you search and then press the down arrow, the keyboard focus will now move to the search results.
• If you have a high contrast theme enabled and you have selected one of the rows on the Processes page, that row should now appear highlighted.
• Fixed an issue where the keyboard focus could not be correctly set to the search box, causing Narrator to not announce that the focus was on the search box.

Other

Fixed an issue resulting in Narrator focus not returning to the Quick Actions window when using the back button on the Cast page.

There's also a list of known issues that you'll find in the official announcement.

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