After more than a month, Microsoft finally flights Build 27718 to Windows 11 Canary Channel

After more than a month of inactivity, prompting many to believe the Canary Channel was being deprecated, Microsoft finally released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27718 to the Canary Channel. It comes with some pretty exciting changes.

First things first, though: starting with Build 27695, the expiration date for Insider Preview builds flighted to the Canary Channel has been updated to September 15, 2025. To avoid any issues, it’s recommended that Insiders in the Canary Channel make sure they’re on the latest build of Windows 11.

Three new features are rolling out to the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27718 in the Canary Channel. First, the Windows sharing experience is getting a minor redesign that should make sharing content with friends and family easier. Microsoft is changing the Lock screen to show the media controls at the lower center when media is being played.

The update also brings the ability to drag apps from the Pinned section of the Start menu and pin them to the taskbar, first letter navigation in the toolbar, an improved Windows Share window, performance improvements for Narrator scan mode, and more.

The Windows 11 Share experience has been simplified for sending content to friends and family. There’s now a search box in the Windows Share window, and Microsoft has made some visual tweaks to the share sheet to make it easier to find the app you want to use to share content.

They will also have a more direct sign-out option and a list of signed-in users under “…” in the new account manager on the Start menu – Microsoft introduced this feature recently in another Insider Channel.

There are also a slew of fixes for things like sporadic explorer.exe crashes, a bug check with the error message “SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION,” the emoji panel closing when trying to switch to the kaomoji and symbols sections.

Users may also be unable to access purchased content in the Movies & TV app on the recent Canary Channel builds, but Microsoft is currently working on a fix.

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27718 is now available for download through Windows Update, and Microsoft has also released ISO images for this build—they can be downloaded here.

For the time being, we are not planning to release SDKs for 27xxx series builds.

You can Build 27718’s full changelog here.