It’s been a long time coming, but the first non-Microsoft widget to appear on Windows 11 is finally here — as long as you’re a Windows Insider, at least. Microosft is rolling out Windows 11 build 25284 to its Dev Channel subscribers, and with it comes a widget for Facebook Messenger, the first third-party widget ever to grace the operating system.
Microsoft enabled support for third-party tools a few months ago with an earlier version, and then updated the Windows App SDK to allow the development of these tools. Now, we’re seeing the first results of that. The Messenger widget will make your most recent messages readily available on the Widgets panel, so your recent conversations are easy to access.
That’s really all there is to this design, but it’s very exciting news in and of itself. You will need to have the latest version of the Messenger app installed from the Microsoft Store in order to try out the new tool. It’s not yet clear when we can expect third-party tools to be more widely available, but this release indicates that we’re getting increasingly close to a full-scale rollout.
As usual, there are a bunch of minor fixes and improvements in Windows 11 build 25284 as well. You can find the full list of fixes below:
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- Fixed an issue where right-clicking certain icons in the hidden icons popup menu would dismiss the popup instead of showing the context menu for that icon.
[Search on the Taskbar]
The fixes only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of the different handles for how search appears on the taskbar that started rolling out to Insiders with Build 25252:
- Fixed an explorer.exe crash that was affecting some Insiders, related to the taskbar search box.
[Input]
- When turning on search suggestions while using the Pinyin IME, keyboard focus will now remain on the current filter. To move the focus to the search suggestions, press Tab.
[Windowing]
- Fixed an issue on touch PCs where when using certain apps in full screen mode, it was not possible to swipe down from the top of the screen to bring up the title bar.
[Other]
- Fixed an issue that was causing some apps to crash or crash when saving files as PDF in the last few versions.
- Fixed an issue where using the cast option in an app might unexpectedly not show any devices in recent versions.
Of course, there are also some known issues with this release, which includes a persistent issue with Windows Hello facial recognition on Arm64 devices. Here’s what you need to look for:
[General]
- [NEW] Some Insiders may have problems accessing websites and other resources over VPN connections. See this forum post For details and how to solve the problem.
- Important: Some Arm64 devices may fail to resume from sleep/hibernation when running Build 25281, experiencing a hang at the OS boot logo. To bypass this error, please use Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) to roll back your device to the previous build. Instructions can be found here: ms / WinRERollback.
- Using Windows Hello to sign in with facial recognition may not work on Arm64 computers. The workaround for this is to use the Hello PIN route.
- Some users are experiencing longer than expected update times while installing recent versions. We are actively investigating this issue.
- We’re investigating reports that some Insiders are experiencing hangs when using the browser and certain other apps after their previous Dev Channel journey.
[Widgets]
- [NEW] Third-party tools may sometimes disappear from the Tools panel. They can be re-added by clicking Update or by reinstalling them from the widget chooser.
- [NEW] Third-party tools may sometimes get uninstalled when you use a Microsoft account to sign in to multiple Windows 11 devices.
- [NEW] Sometimes the undo button on the pinned/unpinned toast notification does not work on the widget.
[Taskbar & System Tray]
- The taskbar is sometimes cropped in half when using the tablet-optimized taskbar. You may also see this problem on secondary monitors.
[Search on the Taskbar]
The following known issues only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of the different handles of how search on the taskbar appears that began rolling out to Insiders with Building 25252:
- There is an issue where you won’t be able to change the taskbar search box to show it as an icon only via the taskbar settings in some cases. To get around this problem, first change to a different option and then after that you should be able to choose Display as icon only.
[Task Manager]
- Some dialog boxes may not display in the correct format when applied from the Task Manager Settings page.
- The data content area of the Operations page may flash once when applying theme changes in the Task Manager Settings page.
[Windows Spotlight]
The following known issues only apply to Windows Insiders who have received one of the different Windows Spotlight wizards that you have started rolling out to Insiders with Building 25281:
- [NEW] Clicking on a secondary monitor does not take away from the full screen experience.
- [NEW] Spotlight wallpaper does not show correct resolution on multiple/mixed resolution monitors.
- [NEW] In some cases, people do not get a consistent update on a daily basis.
As with every Insider build, you can get Windows 11 build 25284 by checking for updates in the Settings app, as long as you’re signed into the Dev Channel.
Source: Microsoft
