Starting today, Windows Insiders will move to the newly formed Experimental Channel and the renewed Beta Channel. Most Insiders in the Dev channel will be placed in the experimental channel, while those in the Beta channel will be in the updated Beta channel.
Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel will move to the Experimental (26H1) or Experimental (Future Platforms) Channel depending on which Canary version their PC is on, but that transition will happen in the coming weeks.
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View the full changelog ↴
Windows 11 Insider Experimental Preview, Build 26300.8289
Windows Insider Program Channel Movement
As announced in the Windows Insider BlogWe will begin moving users from the development channel to the new experimental channel. This will be a gradual rollout and Insiders who don’t see the new experience on their device but want to see it can enable the experience on Settings > Windows Update > Windows internal program > Feature flags.
Windows Update
We are introducing new capabilities to improve security and improve user control over the Windows Update experience. This includes:
- Ability to skip updates immediately during out-of-box experience (OOBE)
- Extend update pauses as many times as you need
- Always available options to shutdown and reboot with update
- Learn about available updates to make more informed installation decisions
Print drivers
The Internet Protocol print driver (prnms012) has new hardware IDs (HWIDs) in preparation for upcoming printer driver sort order changes. Check out our third-party driver deprecation schedule: End of service plan for third-party printer drivers in Windows – Windows Drivers | Microsoft learns..
Improved detection of clicks on the leftmost edge of the taskbar to invoke start menu when taskbar icons are left aligned.
Other
- Fixed the unexpected error that appeared when opening the Group Policy Editor in the last two Insider flights.
- We updated Times New Roman to improve support for combining diacritics in the Greek and Cyrillic Unicode ranges. If you notice any positioning issues with these diacritics, please let us know by submitting feedback under Desktop Environment > Font Installation and Preview in the Feedback Center, preferably with details about the specific Unicode character and a screenshot highlighting the expected position.
The biggest change is the ability to skip updates during the immediate experience. We knew this was on the way and it’s good to see it move into the next phase of testing.
Before this change, users setting up a PC for the first time had to go through a full update process, which could take up to half an hour. While it’s important to keep systems up to date, having the option to skip those updates while setting up a PC is fantastic.
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