Microsoft is testing a desktop search widget in Windows 11 Insider Preview

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25120 for Dev Channel users. It introduces a search bar on the desktop.

Novedades de Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25120

The Redmond company calls it “lightweight interactive content.” Why not call it what it is? It is a desktop widget. You will need to restart your computer after installing the update to activate the search bar. Users can paste a URL into it or type their query to perform a web search via Bing (via Microsoft Edge?)

Image credit: Microsoft.

Microsoft says the search bar isn’t available to everyone yet as it’s being A/B tested. The search widget can be implemented on a larger scale if it receives positive feedback from users. I’m not a fan of Bing’s giant search bar, but does this mean more desktop widgets are on the way? I miss the Windows 7 gadgets, they were really cool.

How to disable the desktop search bar in Windows 11

Not a fan of the new desktop search bar? You can remove the widget quite easily. Right-click on the desktop, select “Show more options” and click on the “Show search” option to change it.

Microsoft offers Build 25120 for ARM64 devices.

Fixes in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25120

The suggested actions feature that debuted a week ago, in build 25115, has been updated to support more date and time formats. It should now work more reliably. Viewing the battery usage graph will no longer crash the Settings app. The Wi-Fi section in the Quick Settings panel is faster at displaying available wireless networks. Text on the Task Manager performance page can now be read when a contrast theme is active. Windows Update will not stop or roll back updates for users who have WSA enabled on their computer.

Known issues in Windows Insider Preview Build 25120

Games that use Easy Anti-Cheat may crash or cause a blue screen of death on your PC, with a bug check. Issues related to live subtitles that were present in the previous build are still unresolved in the current build. You can read the announcement article on the Windows Insider Blog, for more details.

My windows update was stuck at 99% downloaded and not progressing. I did not have WSA enabled. A few others seem to have had this problem. I also had an Update Stack Package version 922.415.111.0 that failed to install with an error code of 0xc4800010. The problem is that this stack update was successfully installed in the last week of April, but Windows 11 wanted to re-download it and failed every time it tried to install it. I’m not sure about this, but the stack update error may have corrupted the Windows Update files, so maybe the Build update didn’t go above 99%.

This had been happening for the last few Insider builds, but I usually fixed it by rebooting the VM and checking for updates again, running Disk Cleanup to remove the update files, or resetting the Windows Update components. None of these steps fixed my problem on the last build, I even deleted the SoftwareDistribution and Catroot2 folders, but I ended up updating the OS manually using an ISO I downloaded from UUdump.

The same problem occurred today with build 25120, so I installed it using the ISO from the previous build, after which the VM was able to download the build 25120 update and install it. If you have similar problems, you can download the ISO image of the current build directly from Microsoft, back up your data and perform a clean install of the operating system.

Do you like the new search widget?

advertising