Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday update build signals A/B testing in the Release Preview this week

Microsoft rolled out its November 2022 Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 10 and 11 users earlier today and a look that delivers fixes for users whose File Explorer broke back in October and ‘miscellaneous’ security improvements.

Diving into the details of update (KB5019980) for Windows 11, (KB5019961) for version 21H2, and (KB5019959) for Windows 10 we find that Microsoft may have held back on delivering the new Tabbed File Explorer and Task Manager UX to some Windows 11 users in a sort of A/B release.

While the listed highlights for (KB5018496) include addressing issues that affect File Explorer’s that fail to localize files and security issues for the Windows operating system, Microsoft included an accompanying 3:38 minute walking through Tabbed File Explorer and Task Manager UX in the Taskbar UI that indicates that some users may ‘notice some visual changes’ related to the enhanced back up experience in today’s update.

The video goes on to explain that some of the noted visual ‘treatments’ such as different search icons or even the famed rounded corners across the entire taskbar, will be delivered to some users at first and eventually rolled out more broadly later.

Update (KB5019959) also delivers similar Task Manager context menu features and improvements to Windows Search results and performance as KB5019961 but without the promise of A/B tested features in the future.

Moving on to Windows 10 users, (KB5019961) on versions 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2, you received a relatively underwhelming OS build update to 22000.1219 accompanied by “It makes miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality. No additional issues were documented for this release.” On the bright side there were no known issues left behind by the patch.