Microsoft's Windows 11 has been available for over a year and since its October 2021 launch, Microsoft has issued plenty of updates. Those updates bring new features to the platform but are often only available on newer builds. However, Microsoft continues to backport new features to older – still supported – versions of Windows 11.
Essentially, this means users who stayed on the original releases of Windows 11 can miss out on new features that arrive in later builds. Backporting is Microsoft bringing some of those newer (although not all) features to older versions of the operating system.
Because Windows 11 21H2 – the first release for Windows 11 – is still supported, it gains new features sometimes. The latest release is build 11 22000.1515 and it is available on the Release Preview channel.
In this release, Microsoft has rolled out new features alongside changes to Windows Settings:
Changelog
- “New! We combined Windows Spotlight with Themes on the Personalization page. This made it easier for you to discover and turn on the Windows Spotlight feature.
- New! We improved the Microsoft Account experience in Settings. For example, you could manage OneDrive subscriptions and storage alerts.
- New! We provide the full amount of storage capacity of all your OneDrive subscriptions. It also displayed the total storage on the Accounts page in the Settings app.
- New! We displayed storage alerts for Microsoft OneDrive subscribers on the Systems page in the Settings app. The alerts appeared when you were close to your storage limit. You could also manage your storage and purchase additional storage, if needed.
- New! We displayed Xbox subscription details on the Accounts page in the Settings app. Xbox subscribers could also manage their subscription on that page. Users who are not subscribers could explore Xbox subscription options on the Accounts page
- We fixed an issue that affected searchindexer.exe. It randomly stopped you from signing in or signing out.
- We fixed an issue that stopped you from searching for a file based on the file's contents.
- We fixed a resource conflict issue between two or more threads (known as a deadlock). This deadlock affected COM+ applications.
- We fixed an issue that affected conhost.exe. It stopped responding.
- We fixed an issue that affected some modern applications. This issue stopped them from opening.
- We fixed an issue that affected the Domain Name System (DNS) suffix search list. When you configured it, the parent domain might have been missing.
- We added support for long URL lengths of up to 8196 characters.
- We fixed an issue that might have occurred when the Input Method Editor (IME) was active. Applications might have stopped responding when you used the mouse and keyboard at the same time.
- We fixed an issue that might have affected FindWindow() or FindWindowEx(). They might have returned the wrong window handle.
- We fixed an issue that damaged memory. The issue occurred when you used certain HD audio controller hardware.
- We fixed an issue that affected certain systems that had firmware Trusted Platform Modules. (TPM). This issue stopped you from using AutoPilot to set up those systems.
- We fixed an issue that affected printing in landscape mode in Microsoft Edge. The print output was incorrect. This issue occurred when you used Microsoft Defender Application Guard.
- We fixed an issue the stopped the touch keyboard from opening.
- We fixed an issue that stopped explorer.exe from responding. This issue occurred when you used the play and pause buttons on your keyboard on certain devices.
- We fixed an issue that affected Windows Server 2022 domain controllers. They stopped responding when they managed Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) requests.
- We fixed an issue that affected the Resilient File System (ReFS) MSba tag. The issue caused a nonpaged pool leak.
- We fixed an issue that affected ReFS. The issue caused high nonpaged pool usage, which depleted system memory.”
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