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Fresh Build Drops for Dev Channel – Introduces the New Game Pass Widget
Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25174 to Windows Insiders signed up with the Dev Channel. Today's build begins testing the new Game Pass Widget with Insiders, giving access to hundreds of games for PC. It also brings a number of fixes and improvements to the Dev Channel Insiders.
The Windows development team also released new builds for those in the Beta Channel last night. Check out our earlier coverage for fixes delivered through that update.
Introducing the new Game Pass Widget
PC Game Pass and Windows are a fantastic combination for gaming; with PC Game Pass, you have access to hundreds of high-quality games for your PC. For the past couple of months, we’ve been working with our friends on the Xbox team to make Windows and PC Game Pass an even better combination; today we’re announcing something new for gaming and our widgets experience: the Game Pass widget preview.
The Game Pass widget.
This widget is a window to the extensive PC Game Pass library – it will show the latest additions, games leaving soon, and others from highlighted categories and then take you to the Xbox app where you can install them, see reviews, and go all in.
We’re still hard at work on some exciting functionality coming soon that will let you sign-into your Xbox profile and easily jump back into recently played games as well as see personalized recommendations of games we believe you’ll love.
The Game Pass widget preview is available in the widgets board alongside other widgets that bring weather, sports, and other great content closer to you. The widgets board is shown by clicking the left corner of your taskbar or by pressing Win + W. To pin the Game Pass widget, select the ‘+’ button in the top right corner of the widgets board.
Here is how to get started:
Open the widgets board.
Click on the + icon next to your user profile.
Click on the + icon besides the Game Pass
Close the Widget settings window.
The Game Pass widget should now appear in your widgets board.
We are looking forward to getting feedback on the Game Pass widget from Windows Insiders who are PC gamers. Tell us what you’d love to see in the widget, or if you see anything that is strange or unexpected on the widget itself or on the widgets experience.
Build 25174: Changes and Improvements
[File Explorer]
Middle clicking a folder in the navigation pane of File Explorer will now open it in a new tab, like clicking a folder in the body of File Explorer already does. Please note that this requires tabbed File Explorer, which hasn’t rolled out to everyone in the Dev Channel yet.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25174: Fixes
[File Explorer]
Fixed an issue which could cause explorer.exe to crash when opening new File Explorer windows.
Fixed an issue where launching File Explorer in certain ways when using dark mode (for example, from the command line) was showing the body of File Explorer unexpectedly in light mode.
Fixed an issue where the left/right arrows in File Explorer were in light mode when you were using dark mode, causing them to not have enough contrast to show when they were enabled.
Fixed an issue where the dividers in the navigation pane were overlapping / drawing too close to text sometimes.
Fixed an issue where if you drag and drop a folder into the navigation pane was sometimes unexpectedly putting the folder at the bottom of the list rather than where you’d dropped it.
Fixed an issue causing UI issues in File Explorer when using F11 to put File Explorer in full screen mode.
[Taskbar]
Fixed an issue leading to various system tray elements being unexpectedly missing for some Insiders on the previous build.
[Settings]
Fixed a crash on some PCs were experiencing when going to System > Storage > Disks & Volumes.
[Other]
Fixed an issue which was leading to mouse and keyboard input not working correctly in certain games in the last 2 flights.
Fixed an issue believed to be leading to SQL Server Management Studio failing to launch for some Insiders.
Fixed an issue where Memory Integrity in Windows Security might show a warning saying it couldn’t be enabled due to incompatible drivers, but the incompatible drivers list would be blank.
Fixed an issue which was causing some apps to unexpectedly not launch in the last few flights when core isolation was enabled in Windows Security.
NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.
Build 25174: Known issues
[General]
Some games that use Easy Anti-Cheat may crash or cause your PC to bugcheck.
[NEW] We’re looking into reports that audio stopped working for some Insiders after upgrading to the last flight.
[NEW] We’re working on a fix for an issue leading to some Insiders experiencing a decrease in FPS when playing certain games in recent flights due to the wrong graphics card being used.
[NEW] We’re investigating reports of a few different apps having started crashing in recent builds.
[File Explorer]
The left-half of the File Explorer title bar may not be draggable via mouse or touch.
The up arrow is misaligned in File Explorer tabs. This will be fixed in a future update.
[NEW] We’re working on a fix for an issue causing Home, Documents, Pictures and potentially other folders to become unexpectedly duplicated in File Explorer’s navigation pane or appear on the desktop.
[NEW] We’re working on a fix for an issue where the search box background in File Explorer might be the opposite color of your current mode.
[NEW] We’re working on a fix for an issue causing the delete key to unexpectedly not work on files in File Explorer. If you encounter this, you should still be able to use the context menu to delete.
[Widgets]
Notification badge number may appear misaligned on the taskbar.
In some cases, the notification banner for some badging will not appear in the widgets board.
We’re working on the fix for an issue causing Widgets preferences (temperature units and pinned widgets) to unexpectedly get reset to default.
[Printing]
[NEW] We’re working on a fix for an issue causing hangs and crashes when trying to print from certain apps (like Excel) in the last flight.
[NEW] We’re investigating reports in recent Dev Channel flights lines aren’t included when printing tables from certain apps.
For more details, head over to the official blog post.
