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Release date: 24 April 2026
As a reminder, these release notes apply to those who are in the Canary 29500 series Channel. As we begin the transition to the updated Windows Insider Program, all new build release notes will be labeled under the new channel names, even though Insiders in the Canary 29500 series Channel may not yet find themselves having transitioned to Experimental (Future Platforms). See the Windows Insider Blog for more details.
Changes and Improvements gradually being rolled out*
[Sound settings]
We’ve been making some improvements to Settings > System > Sound in the latest Canary builds. This includes:
We’ve updated the design of the volume slider, so now if there is audio actively playing it will be displayed on the side.
If your audio device supports hardware acceleration, an option to allow hardware acceleration has now been added to the Advanced section in Properties that device.
Configuring exclusive mode for an audio device is now available in the Advanced section of the Properties for that device, so you don’t have to navigate to Control Panel to do it.
Configuring adaptive communication sound levels (reducing volume of other sounds when communications activity is detected) is now available directly in Settings, so you don’t have to navigate to Control Panel to do it.
The option to set an audio device as default sound device for communication will now always display in Properties, just greyed out if the device is already the default (rather than the control hiding in this case).
[Point-in-time restore for Windows]
- Point-in-time restore for Windows empowers you to quickly roll your device back to a previous state — helping minimize downtime and simplify troubleshooting when disruptions strike. Whether you’re dealing with a widespread outage or a one-off issue, point-in-time restore helps recover your system (including apps, settings, and user files) to get you back to productivity faster. For more details, check out our documentation.
Point-in-time restore shown in the Troubleshoot menu for Windows RE
- Feedback: Share your thoughts in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Recovery and Uninstall > Point-in-time restore.
[Task Manager]
We’re making a few improvements to Task Manager:
We’re updating Task Manager to provide better insight into NPU usage for PCs that include an NPU. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are now available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages. The Details page also adds NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns to give you deeper visibility into how workloads are using NPU resources. Additionally, if there are neural engines that are part of a GPU, they will now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI‑related system activity.
We’re also adding a new optional Isolation column to the Processes and Details pages, allowing you to see which apps are running in an AppContainer.
Once these changes are available to you, you can add any of the new columns by right‑clicking a column header in Task Manager and selecting them from the menu.
Feedback: Share your thoughts in Feedback Hub (WIN + F) under Desktop Environment > Task Manager.
[Other]
- Fixed an underlying issue causing some rendering issues in certain apps with recent Canary flights.
Reminder for Windows Insiders in the Canary 29500 Series Channel (Soon transitioning to Experimental (Future Platforms))
These builds can be unstable and may be released with limited documentation.
The builds we release to the the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows. Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.
Many features in the Canary Channel are rolled out using Control Feature Rollout technology, starting with a subset of Insiders and ramping up over time as we monitor feedback to see how they land before pushing them out to everyone in this channel.
The desktop watermark shown at the lower right corner of the desktop is normal for Windows Insider pre-release builds.
Some features may show up in the Dev and Beta Channels first before showing up in the Canary Channel.
For Windows Insiders who want to be the first to get features gradually rolled out to you, you can turn ON the toggle to get the latest updates as they are available via Settings > Windows Update*. Over time, we will increase the rollouts of features to everyone with the toggle turned on. Should you keep this toggle off, new features will gradually be rolled out to your PC over time once they are ready.
Some features in active development we preview with Windows Insiders may not be fully localized and localization will happen over time as features are finalized. As you see issues with localization in your language, please report those issues to us via Feedback Hub.
To get off the Canary Channel, a clean install of Windows 11 will be required.
Check out Flight Hub for a complete look at what build is in which Insider channel.