- Windows 11 has a new preview building with some smart additions
- One of them is a new piece of the interface to make file sharing easier
- The other is a few neat new layouts for part of the start -menu
Windows 11 should have some useful changes in its interface, one of which makes sharing files easier and the other introduces Nifty new layout settings to the starting menu.
These features are in testing right now, to be accurate in Windows 11’s Build 22635,4950, which is in the Beta channel.
The new file sharing menu appears at the top of the screen as you pull a file out of a folder on the desktop and it has a number of icons such as WhatsApp, my phone, Microsoft teams and so on. To drop a file on any icon will instantly share it via the medium.
As for the start of the menu, this change for the ‘all apps’, which as the name suggests, shows all your apps, with the new options here are grid and category views.
The grid display adheres to an alphabetical order of your apps, as in the default list, except with the lattice layout, you can fit multiple apps on with the layout expanded to the side so that there is less rolling to do (see image below).
Or a more different alternative is the category view, where your apps are grouped into different categories and ordered according to use levels. So, for example, there are social apps or productivity or entertainment apps, a whole lot of categories you can dive into, with your most used apps highlighted in a box with their icons (again, see the picture below).
This feature is still rolling out so that not every tester will see it yet (and it will come to the Dev -Builds, as well as the Beta Channel).
That’s pretty much the Preview -Build, although there is another addition to the Availability Front with File Explorer, which is adorned with improved support for scaling text size with dialog boxes in the file or saving dialog boxes (and also with Wizard dialog boxes).
Oh, and Microsoft has also used a number of bug fixes, while there are some recognized problems, all of which are listed in the usual blog post that outlines the content of Build 22635,4950.
Analysis: Almost through testing now
Of course, all this is just when testing and if it does not work to try a given element, this feature can be dropped. However, I can imagine that it is unlikely as both these fresh introductions are useful and welcome touches.
Easier file sharing should be good and I can’t see anyone who is cramping with more choices in starting menu layouts. After all, if you don’t want the ‘all apps’ panel to look different than the default list, you don’t have to go near the alternatives.
It is also worth remembering that after reaching the Beta channel, these features are not far from release now. There is only another step – final testing in the release test channel – before this functionality is ready to be implemented for the finished version of Windows 11.
In fact, the move with the start -Menuelayouts was previously discovered by digging around in test buildings in the past, so it is good to see that it is coming to execution (the above warnings considered).
