Windows 11 has a new preview build, and it brings some useful changes to lock screen widgets (though it’s not the addition we really want), along with a few other tweaks.
This is preview build 26252 in the Canary channel (the earliest test builds of Windows 11) and work on widgets has only just begun at this point, so not every tester will see this yet.
In the usual blog postMicrosoft tells us that it will improve weather information and other widgets on the lock screen (including stocks, traffic and sports) with a better card design.
In other words, the little cards that display all the widget info now benefit from an acrylic blur effect, as well as an optimized font, with adjustments to card size and spacing also implemented to give everything a more pleasant look and feel. Or at least that’s the idea – we’re sure Windows 11 testers will let Microsoft know if that’s not the case.
There are a couple of other notable changes with build 26252. First, Microsoft has made it so that you can drag and drop an app from the pinned section of the Start menu straight to the taskbar, where it will also be pinned. Yes, a small change, but a useful addition.
Second, Microsoft informs us: “We’re starting to roll out a new power recommendation to turn off HDR to save power on PCs with HDR displays under Settings > Power & battery > Power recommendations.”
Analysis: Unfulfilled Promise
We don’t mean to sound ungrateful: these widget changes in the new preview are welcome, but they’re more of a deviation from what should really happen with lock screen widgets.
Namely, we want a choice of which widgets appear, and more customization in general – Apple nails this side of the equation better in macOS, with Sonoma making significant strides in terms of selecting and customizing which widgets you want to see. Whereas currently with Windows 11’s lock screen widgets, you have to have all of them or none. (Even if you don’t want, say, the finance widget because stocks and shares bore you – you’re stuck with it.)
Microsoft has promised this change to be able to choose lock screen widgets, but that was a while ago and we’re getting a little impatient as to why it’s taking so long. After all, it’s a pretty basic piece of functionality, right?
That said, it’s good to see that you can drag pinned apps straight from the Start menu to the taskbar – more of that please, Microsoft. You should be able to drag and drop whatever you want, wherever you want (within reason) throughout the operating system in our books, but with Windows 11 Microsoft has taken some strange steps to remove some of this basic ability. Take, for example, dragging a file from one folder window to another via File Explorer’s address bar – this was previously absent from Windows 11, and it’s anyone’s guess why.
Microsoft is generally on the right track with all these changes. We just want some things to go a little faster.