Windows 11 build 25977 is now available for download in the Canary Channel with a few new changes, such as Bluetooth Low Energy Audio support, reworked location permissions, additional access control options for SMB over QUIC, and a few fixes for known bugs.
What is new in Windows 11 build 25977?
Here is the official changelog:
Improving accessibility with Bluetooth® LE Audio
We’re excited to announce that Windows has taken a significant step forward in accessibility by supporting the use of hearing aids equipped with the latest Bluetooth® Low Energy Audio (LE Audio) technology. Customers who use these new hearing aids are now able to directly pair, stream audio, and take calls on their Windows PCs with LE Audio support.
This feature is available on Windows devices with our recently announced Bluetooth® LE Audio support, which will be a growing market of devices in the coming months. In upcoming flights, we will be introducing additional capabilities to the hearing aids experience on Windows, such as controlling audio presets directly within Windows settings. Stay tuned for more details about these new capabilities as they roll out.
Windows Location Improvements
We’re adding new controls to help you manage which apps have access to the list of Wi-Fi networks around you, which could be used to determine your location. You can view and modify which apps can access the list of Wi-Fi networks by navigating to Settings > Privacy & security > Location.
To simplify the process of sharing your location with trusted apps, we have also added a new prompt that will appear the first time an app attempts to access your location or Wi-Fi information. This prompt will enable location services and allow the app to access your location, helping you complete tasks such as finding directions or checking the weather without navigating to Settings. Additionally, the prompt will notify when an app unexpectedly requests access to location services so that you can deny it. If you never want apps to access your location, you can turn off ‘Notify when apps request location’ on the Location Settings page to hide these prompts when location has been turned off.
Once you have granted permission, apps that use location or Wi-Fi information will now appear in Recent activity on the Location page, and the location icon will show in the taskbar while the app is in-use. This will help you better monitor when apps are using this information.
App developers can learn about changes to the API permissions and actions they can take to improve app experiences by reviewing https://aka.ms/WifiAccessChange
SMB over QUIC Client Access Control
Starting with this build (Build 25977), SMB over QUIC now supports additional access control options for clients. This improves the existing SMB over QUIC feature, which introduced an alternative to the TCP network transport, providing secure, reliable connectivity to edge file servers over untrusted networks like the Internet.
With this new option, administrators can restrict which clients can access SMB over QUIC servers. This option gives organizations additional SMB over QUIC connection protections but does not change the Windows authentication used to make the SMB connection or the end user experience.
Starting with this build, Mail and Calendar will no longer be installed after doing a clean install using the provided ISOs here. This ONLY applies for clean installs of Build 25977 and higher in the Canary Channel today. Mail and Calendar will not be removed on upgrade for Insiders in the Canary Channel. You can click here to learn more about the future of Mail and Calendar in Windows.
[Start menu]
The Xbox Game Bar will now show as just Game Bar under the Start menu and also under Settings > System > System Components. This change will come through a Game Bar update via the Microsoft Store.
[Settings]
In Settings, when looking at your Wi-Fi password under the Wi-Fi properties, we now show a QR code so you can more easily share it with others. We also show a QR code when you set up a mobile hotspot to share your network connection.
Fixes for known issues
Fixed an underlying issue believed to be the root cause of various games having issues launching (citing graphics issues) or changing resolution in Build 25967.
Did some work to help improve performance when expanding the navigation pane in Task Manager.
Fixed an issue where certain .rar files would open blank or with an unexpected message saying there was insufficient memory to open the file.
And here is the list of known bugs and issues:
[NEW] Using dictation in voice access makes voice access crash.
We’re working on the fix for an issue causing the print queue to no longer be accessible and showing an error when you try to open it.
Some popular games may not work correctly on the most recent Insider Preview builds in the Canary Channel. Please be sure to submit feedback in Feedback Hub on any issues you see with playing games on these builds.
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