Windows 11 build 22494 adds a mute button to the taskbar for Teams

Windows 11 build 22494 adds a mute button to the taskbar for Teams

As is often the case on Wednesdays, Microsoft is rolling out a new version of Windows 11 to Insiders enrolled in the dev channel today. The current version of Windows 11 is 22494 and it brings a new feature in the form of a mute button on the taskbar. It also includes the usual variety of known issues and fixes.

The mute button on the taskbar is designed to allow users to easily mute their own microphone from any screen when they are on a Teams call. Yes, that means that the mute button is only available during Teams calls, but not only that, it is only available for the professional and educational version of Teams. To clarify, this is not the version of Teams that is built into Windows 11, called Chat with Microsoft Teams, which is intended for personal Microsoft accounts. Microsoft says it plans to add this ability to Chat with Microsoft Teams later.

This was actually announced alongside Windows 11 in June, but it's only coming to Insiders now. However, Microsoft notes that this is coming to Windows 11 stable via a service update, so you won't have to wait until next year's feature update to receive it.

Some Windows Insiders users with Windows 11 build 22494 may also start to see Snap Groups appear in the Task View and Alt + Tab app switcher, similar to how they are displayed on the taskbar right now. There are some other improvements in the Settings app, especially in the Applications section. You can now see the search results in the Default apps section without having to press Enter, you can open the Installed apps page with a new URI, and the sorting options on this page have also been changed.

Apart from that, this new version mainly focuses on fixes and small improvements. You can find the full list of fixes below.

👉 Fixes in Windows 11 build 22494

[Taskbar]

• Tooltips should no longer appear in random places on the Taskbar after sliding your mouse over volume, battery, network, or other icons in the Taskbar corner.
• Addressed an underlying issue that was leading to come unexpected duplication of certain icons in the Taskbar corner.

[File Explorer]

• Addressed an issue that was causing the context menu to crash for some people if you tried to scroll it.
• Did some work to help address an issue wherein certain areas of the screen the context menu submenus would draw on top of the context menu instead of beside it (for example, if you hovered over New).
• The context menu icons should be less blurry on systems with multiple monitors with mixed DPI now.
• Addressed an issue that could cause selecting Open Within the context menu to unexpectedly just open the file in certain cases rather than actually opening the Open With dialog.
• Renaming files on the desktop is back up and running in this flight.
• Made another adjustment to the command bar underlying logic to help improve the performance of command actions in File Explorer.

[Search]

• Fixed a recent issue that was causing the indexer database to become too fragmented, leading to the indexer unexpectedly consuming a large amount of memory and CPU for a prolonged period of time. This was particularly noticeable for people that have large Outlook mailboxes.

[Input]

• Mitigated an issue that was causing certain apps to hang when trying to drag something with the Shift or Ctrl key held down.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the touch keyboard to not appear on tablets when tapping the text field if you were to try to reset your PIN from the login screen.
• Improved reliability of the Pen menu.

[Windowing]

• Fixed a few explorer.exe crashes related to using windowing features (snap, ALT + Tab, and Desktops).
• If you open Task View on a system with multiple monitors, the background should now be acrylic on both monitors.
• Addressed a couple UI issues with the window thumbnails in Task View and ALT + Tab, notably that the close button might get cut off if the app window was too thin.

[Settings]

• Addressed an issue where Facial Recognition (Windows Hello) might be unexpectedly greyed out in Sign-in Settings in certain cases until closing and opening Settings.
• Fixed an issue where Storage Sense wasn’t cleaning up C:\Windows\SystemTemp.
• Standard users (aka non-admins) should now be able to change the time zone in Settings if Location access is not granted, rather than the dropdown going blank.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue causing links to Windows Update, Recovery and For developers to show under the main Windows Update Settings page.
• Fixed a bug where images had a yellow tonality in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic when in HDR mode.
• Mitigated an issue related to DHCP that was causing unexpected power usage while the screen was off in recent builds for some Insiders.
• Did some work to help address an issue where Service Host: WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service would unexpectedly utilize a lot of CPU.
• Fixed an issue that could cause some devices to have a black screen when coming out of sleep (where the lock screen wouldn’t display).
• Addressed an underlying issue that was causing some users with ARM64 PCs to experience an increase in Microsoft Teams crashes in the last few Dev Channel builds.
• We have increased the padding for selected items as seen by clicking Show More Options in the File Explorer context menu, or the menu options in Task Manager.
• WSL: Fixed error 0x8007010b when accessing Linux distributions via `\\wsl.localhost` or `\\wsl$` (Issue #6995).

There are also a few issues with this build, but that's to be expected with any development build of the software. Here’s what you need to look out for in this release:

👉 Known issues in Windows 11 build 22494

[General]

• Users who upgrade builds 22000. xxx, or earlier, to newer Dev Channel builds using the latest Dev Channel ISO, may receive the following warning message: The build you are trying to install has Flight Signed. To continue with the installation, enable flight signing. If you receive this message, press the Enable button, restart the PC, and try the update again.
• Some users may experience reduced sleep and screen timeouts. We are investigating the potential impact that shorter screen and idle times could have on power consumption.

[Start]

• In some cases, you may not be able to enter text when using Search from the start or the taskbar. If you experience the problem, press WIN + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog box, then close it.

[Taskbar]

• The Taskbar will sometimes flicker when switching input methods.
• We’re investigating an issue in this build where the clock in the Taskbar can get stuck and not updated, particularly when accessing the PC via Remote Desktop.

[Input]

• The clipboard history says it is empty even if it is enabled and must contain content. This is a UI issue we are investigating: when a flight leaves with a fix, pinned items should be available again.

[Search]

• After clicking the search icon on the taskbar, the search panel may not open. If this happens, restart the "Windows Explorer" process and reopen the search panel.

[Quick Settings]

• We are investigating reports from Insiders that the volume and brightness sliders are not displaying correctly in Quick Settings.

The pace of adding new features to Windows 11 has definitely slowed down after the first public build was released, and that's just the nature of preview builds. These changes and improvements will add up over time, and when the next feature update is ready for the public, general users will have a lot to look forward to. We have a page where you can keep track of all the Windows 11 features available in preview if you are interested in knowing what's to come without signing up for unstable builds.