Windows 11 Beta build 22621 with Taskbar, File Explorer improvements out, ISOs available

Microsoft has released today a new build 22621 to Windows 11 Insiders on the Beta Channel. The build brings changes to the Taskbar and File Explorer, among others. You can find the full changelog below:

Changes and Improvements

[General]

• [REMINDER] The build watermark at the lower right-hand corner of the desktop is no longer present in this build. This doesn’t mean we’re done, and the watermark will return to Insiders in a future build.

Fixes

[General]

• Updated the underlying speech platform to improve voice activity detection for voice access, live captions, and voice typing, as well as address some issues with how punctuation is recognized.

[File Explorer]

• Fixed an issue leading to Insiders seeing error 0x800703E6 when copying files from Google Drive.
• Fixed an issue where if you had ever opened the context menu, doing CTRL + ALT + DEL and cancelling would lead to explorer.exe crashing.

[Taskbar]

• Fixed an issue related to loading the system tray icons in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar which could cause Settings to crash when opening that page recently. This issue may have also led to some explorer.exe crashes for impacted Insiders.

[Windows Security]

• Fixed an issue which could result in Smart App Control unexpectedly blocking correctly signed applications.

Here are the known issues in Build 22621:

[Live captions]

• Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) prevent live captions from being visible.
• Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run will re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top. Use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) while the app has focus to move the app’s window further down.

ISOs for the new build 22621 have also been released and can downloaded here. You can find the official blog post here.

Windows 11 Beta build 22621 with Taskbar, File Explorer improvements out, ISOs available