Build 23451: A smarter way for you to navigate files?

It’s that time again. Microsoft released another build for Windows 11 insiders in the Dev channel. Just like what they did by introducing Facebook widgets for insiders in Canary, Redmond officials are back with Windows 11 Build 23451, shedding more light on this hotly-wanted feature on File Explorer. 

You may remember that Microsoft first introduced the details pane on File Explorer earlier this year with Build 25276 on the Dev channel. After going through a lot of revamps, it is now official that the UI gets reconstructed with a much more modernized look.

Once you enable the pane by choosing the Details pane in the View menu, you can see the file’s thumbnail, share status and button, recent activity, related files and emails, and even other relevant pieces of information. 

Microsoft also says that similarly, you can use the View menu or toggle button to access the preview pane as this updated pane is designed to replace the old details pane in File Explorer.

However, even if you’re in the Dev channel, there are still chances that you may not see this as Microsoft is rolling out this experience to select Dev insiders to monitor feedback before pushing it out for everyone. 

What other improvements that this build brings, you may ask? Aside from the now-official details pane on File Explorer, here’s everything else you need to know as we’ve noted from Microsoft’s release note. 

H2: What other features are coming in Windows 11 Build 23451?

[Start menu]

• We’re beginning to expand the roll out of notification badging for Microsoft accounts on the Start menu. A Microsoft account is what connects Windows to your Microsoft apps, backs up all of your data, helps you manage subscriptions, and where you can add extra security steps so you’re never locked out of your account. With this feature, we’re giving customers quick access to important account-related notifications. These notifications can be managed by going to Settings > Personalization > Start.

• We continue to work on adding more valuable content to the Recommended section in the Start menu by re-introducing websites after trying this out with Insiders last fall. One improvement we’ve made is to recommend more useful and personal websites based on your browsing history instead of generally popular websites. Insiders can right-click on a website and choose to remove a website individually at any given time. Only some Insiders will see this experience and, if you do, please share your feedback. This feature will apply to users who have opted into sharing browsing data with Microsoft and have visited enough websites in Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome (with Continuous Import enabled). As a reminder, the settings for what is recommended on Start can be adjusted via Settings > Personalization > Start. Commercial customers can manage this experience via policy.

[File Explorer]

• For Windows Insiders who have Gallery in File Explorer (which began rolling out with Build 23435), we have updated the icon for Gallery.

[Widgets]

• We are beginning to roll out a new widget picker experience with an image that gives a visual preview of the widget before pinning, a deep linking ability that allows users to jump directly to the picker from the provider app/service as well as a link to the widgets Store collection page where users can discover more apps with widgets.

• We are beginning to roll out animated icons for Widgets on the taskbar. The animation triggers when you hover or click on the Widgets taskbar entry-point or when a new widget announcement is displayed on your taskbar. Currently, only a few weather and finance icons are supported.

[Live captions]

• Languages support has been expanded to include Danish, English (Ireland), French (Canada), Korean, Portuguese (Portugal).

[Developer]

• Enabling end task by right-clicking on an app on the taskbar under Settings > Privacy & security > For developers now works in this build. The setting for this first showed up with Build 23430 but the feature was not working.

Fixes

[Taskbar & System Tray]

• Fixed an explorer.exe crash impacting taskbar reliability.
• Fixed an issue that was causing Quick Settings and its project options to sometimes not respond when using ALT + F4 to close them.

[Start menu]

• Fixed an issue that was causing the Recommended section in Start to be blank the first time it was opened.

[File Explorer]

We fixed the following issues for Insiders previewing the Windows App SDK version of File Explorer

• We fixed an underlying issue believed to be the cause of explorer.exe crashing when opening the context menu in the previous flight for some Insiders.
• If you use an Arabic or Hebrew display language, the tabs should be displaying correctly now.

We fixed the following issues for Insiders with Gallery in File Explorer:

• Fixed an issue where the scrollbar for Gallery was displaying on the wrong side for Insiders with an Arabic or Hebrew display language.
• If you have the Item Check Boxes setting enabled, the Gallery will now show check boxes on images.

[Search]

• Did some work to fix an underlying issue which could cause Search to get stuck and not open. When this happened, you might also see a delay opening the Start menu.

[Input]

• Fixed an issue where the Pinyin IME’s insert text button wasn’t displaying correctly in some cases.
• Fixed an underlying crash impacting the ability to launch the touch keyboard / PIN entry on the login screen.

[Notifications]

• Fixed another 2FA code pattern which wasn’t being recognized. If you see any others, please file feedback!

[Live captions]

• Fixed an issue where caption characters shown in the second line of the default height window were getting clipped on top.
• Features have been added to the enhanced speech recognition language files to improve performance and provide out-of-language filtering meant to limit the incorrect captions for speech not in the caption language.

[Accessibility]

• Fixed an issue where using the down key while navigating by landmark with Narrator in Edge wasn’t jumping to the first line of the landmark correctly.

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11.

Have you joined the Dev channel and installed Windows 11 Build 23451? How’s your experience? Let us know in the comments!