With KB5041876 to the Beta Channel, Microsoft tries a new but gorgeous Windows 11 lock screen experience

Microsoft has rolled out a new Windows 11 Insider Program Beta Channel build, numbered 22635.4082, under update KB5041876. This build brings some nifty changes, especially to the Windows 11 Lock screen media control.

For those who like to keep things quiet, there’s an option to turn off suggestions for disabling notifications from specific apps. You can hit the “…” within a notification to silence it or dive into the settings to manage these suggestions. The lock screen has been tweaked for music lovers so that media controls now sit at the lower bottom centre when tunes are playing.

Before, if you were jamming to Spotify or streaming your favourite podcast, you could control playback directly from the right side of your lock screen. But Microsoft decided it was time for a change. With the KB5041876 update, media controls have taken centre stage—literally. They’ve been moved to the centre of the lock screen, complete with a modern, blurry effect that makes them blend seamlessly with the overall aesthetic of Windows 11, as you can see in the featured image above.

This is another important change to Windows 11’s lock screen experience after Microsoft recently added elements to it that might not have been well received by users.

The settings page for Delivery Optimization has been updated to align with the Windows 11 design principles. It’s always refreshing to see consistency in design.

KB5041876 also comes with fixes. Microsoft has addressed an issue causing explorer.exe to crash for some users when closing apps from the taskbar. They’ve also squashed a bug causing the Start menu to crash on launch for some Insiders. And for those experiencing a memory leak after receiving certain notifications, that’s been fixed, too.

There are known issues, like explorer.exe crashing when interacting with archive files and File Explorer crashing when going to Home for some Insiders. But don’t worry; Microsoft is working on fixing it.

You can read KB5041876‘s full changelog here.

What do you think about this new lock screen experience?