Microsoft releases experimental Windows 11 Build 25977

Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev Channel today get a new build with multi-monitor support for Copilot AI. For those testers who prefer to live on the bleeding edge, there’s also a new Canary Channel build with numerous new features.

Additions in Windows 11 Canary Build 25977 include improved support for hearing aids equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)  Audio, new controls to manage which apps have access to the list of local Wi-Fi networks, and additional access control options for clients in SMB over QUIC.

Other changes and improvements include:

[General]

• Starting with this build, Mail and Calendar will no longer be installed after doing a clean install using the provided ISOs here. This ONLY applies for clean installs of Build 25977 and higher in the Canary Channel today. Mail and Calendar will not be removed on upgrade for Insiders in the Canary Channel.

[Start menu]

• The Xbox Game Bar will now show as just Game Bar under the Start menu and also under Settings > System > System Components. This change will come through a Game Bar update via the Microsoft Store.

[Input]

• Microsoft is including two new keyboard layouts in this flight. These keyboards implement the two new German extended layout standards (E1 and E2). The extended layouts allow users to type all characters needed for German (including German quotations marks, which were not previously available), all Latin-based languages of the EU, Greek, IPA phonetic transcription, Egyptian hieroglyph transcription, most Latin-based languages of the entire world (including Vietnamese with its multiple accents per character), and more. To enable one of these layouts, go to Settings > Time & language > Language & region and select Language options under the ellipsis for the language you would like to use this keyboard with. On the Options page, select "Add a keyboard" and look for the new keyboard layouts "German Extended (E1)" or "German Extended (E2)".

[Settings]

• In Settings, when looking at your Wi-Fi password under the Wi-Fi properties, Microsoft now shows a QR code so you can more easily share it with others. It also shows a QR code when you set up a mobile hotspot to share your network connection.

Fixes for known issues are:

• Fixed an underlying issue believed to be the root cause of various games having issues launching (citing graphics issues) or changing resolution in Build 25967.
• Did some work to help improve performance when expanding the navigation pane in Task Manager.
• Fixed an issue where certain .rar files would open blank or with an unexpected message saying there was insufficient memory to open the file.

Known issues include:

• [NEW] Using dictation in voice access makes voice access crash.
• Microsoft is working on the fix for an issue causing the print queue to no longer be accessible and showing an error when you try to open it.
• Some popular games may not work correctly on the most recent Insider Preview builds in the Canary Channel. Please be sure to submit feedback in Feedback Hub on any issues you see with playing games on these builds.