Windows 11 isn’t here quite yet, but soon you’ll be seeing it show up on laptops and PCs all over. While we wait for Microsoft to officially announce the operating system at a special event on June 24th, there are already a few features you can try if you’re a Windows Insider. Insiders – specifically those in the Dev channel – get access to preview builds of Windows, letting them see features before anyone else. Many Windows 11 features are already available in preview, even if Microsoft has been calling it Windows 10.
Here’s the thing, Microsoft has been testing these builds with Insiders for quite some time, and the Windows 11 name isn’t official yet. Because of that, the builds released to Insiders have been labeled as Windows 10. However, these are still Windows 11 features — they just haven’t been attached to that name yet. So here’s every feature coming to Windows 11 you can already try in preview.
HDR improvements
If you have an HDR monitor, Windows 11 is going to bring a couple of major features, especially if you’re into gaming. One of the big features available in preview right now is Auto HDR mode. This is a DirectX feature, and what it does is enable HDR capabilities for over 1,000 games, even if they’re not coded to have HDR support.
It’s not quite the same as having native HDR support, but you should still see a big improvement in lighting in games. You may already be familiar with these features on Xbox, and the concept is essentially the same here.
Image credit: Microsoft
Even if you’re not a gamer, there are some HDR-related improvements for you. Microsoft has added support for HDR for color managed apps, like Adobe Photoshop. This allows those apps to access the full gamut of your HDR monitor. You need to enable this setting per app under its compatibility properties.
x64 emulation for ARM devices
Another big Windows 11 feature is that ARM-powered devices can now emulate x64 apps. Until now, Windows ARM laptops like the HP Elite Folio could only run native ARM apps, or emulate x86 (32-bit) apps. That was a problem because there are a few apps that no longer offer 32-bit variants. With support for x64 emulation, almost every Windows app should now work with ARM-based devices. This was first made available to Insiders in late 2020, but it should arrive with Windows 11.
Better keyboard and input
To clarify, no, this won’t change your hardware. But Microsoft is greatly improving the touch keyboard experience, as well as things like the clipboard and emoji picker. A lot of improvements are already available, so let’s break them down.
First, there’s the touch keyboard. It has a new design that uses transparency effects (when undocked) and has a bunch of new features. For starters, it now has built-in emoji and animated GIF search, so you can easily add a bit more expression to your texts. The menu has been overhauled to make it easier to understand, with labels for every button and a nested structure. Plus, you can now easily undock the touch keyboard from the bottom of the screen and move it around.
Another big improvement is you can now move the text cursor using the touch keyboard by holding the space bar and moving your finger in the desired direction. Additionally, there’s a quick shortcut for voice typing. On that note, the voice typing experience also has a new, more modern look. It too uses transparency effects and the window is much smaller. If you want to use it without the touch keyboard, you can activate it with the Windows key + H.
If you don’t use the touch keyboard, some improvements are also coming your way. The emoji picker (Windows key + .) has been updated to include support for animated GIFs and search features, so you can more easily find the emoji/GIF you want. Additionally, it also now includes the Windows clipboard history feature, so it’s all part of the same UI. You can still go straight into the clipboard with Windows key + V though. On that note, the clipboard UI has a new button for pasting content as plain text, so you don’t have to worry about copying weirdly formatted text. All of these elements have also been refreshed with transparency effects.
New visuals in Windows 11
While the bulk of the visual changes in Windows 11 aren’t available in preview just yet – not officially, at least – some already are. One of the changes you’re most likely to notice are the new icons in the File Explorer.
Icons for folders have changed, including colorful ones for the default system folders. The Downloads folder is green with a download icon, for example. The Desktop folder looks just like a miniaturized desktop environment. There are also new icons for hard drives and a few other things here and there. Microsoft has also added more padding around UI elements in File Explorer, though you can get the old style back.
Outside of File Explorer, some system apps also have new icons, like Windows Security, Notepad, the Task Manager, and Narrator. There’s also a tweaked icon in the notification area for when an app is using your location, if you ever notice that.
In addition to icons, Microsoft is also introducing a new font with Windows 11, and that’s already in preview, too. It’s called Segoe UI Variable, and the big change is in the name. This new font scales better for displays with high DPI, which the old Segoe UI font didn’t account for.
Image credit: Microsoft
Improved Settings app
Microsoft has been trying to converge more system settings into the Settings app. Windows 11 will continue this work, and the Insider builds we’ve seen so far already include some of that. The Settings app now has a few new capabilities, including some that were only available through the control panel.
The storage section (accessed through System > Storage) has the most improvements. Disk management has been integrated into the Settings app, as has the Storage Spaces feature. These let you manage the drives connected to your PC, as well as create pools of storage across different drives.
Other improvements here include reliability warnings for SSDs. When Windows detects that one of your drives is at risk of failing, you’ll get a warning notification so you can replace the drive before losing your data. Meanwhile, disk optimization is still separate from the Settings app, but Microsoft has added a new Advanced view that lets you see additional drives.
Back to the Settings app, the graphics settings (System > Display > Graphics settings) have been made a bit easier. This page will now auto-populate with apps on your PC so you can choose which GPU to use for each one. You can still add more apps manually, though. Moving on to sound, you can now set devices as your default audio input and output devices from the Settings app. This setting is available under System > Sound > Manage sound devices.
DNS settings for your internet connection are now more readily accessible in the connection properties. You can access these by going into Network & Internet > Properties for your current connection. Finally, for those with accessibility needs, the captions settings have been streamlined. You’ll now see quick, easy-to-understand default settings, and you can create a new custom profile if you prefer. These Settings are available under Accessibility > Captions. On that note, Accessibility is the new name for the section that used to be called Ease of Access.
Windows Subsystem for Linux
Windows 11 will also bring a few major features for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which are already in preview. The biggest addition is support for GUI apps. Yes, you can run Linux apps in Windows now, and not just by using a command line interface. Not only that, Linux apps are added to your Windows start menu right alongside your Windows apps. Linux apps also now support GPU compute so you can run apps that depend on GPU power.
File management for Linux has also been improved. When you install WSL, you’ll now see a Linux section in the File Explorer so you can manage your Linux files. Additionally, you can now mount physical disks directly in Linux, so if you want to use a Linux file system that Windows doesn’t support, you can now do that.
Other improvements include new install and update commands for WSL in PowerShell. These let you quickly install WSL on your system and upgrade it to the latest version, which you’ll need to do to get support for GUI Linux apps. You can also now run commands at startup in WSL by configuring the wsl.conf file in your distro. You’ll need to add a command option under a boot section in the file.
Image credit: Microsoft
New apps in Windows 11
Windows 11 is going to ship with at least two new apps that are already available to Insiders — Windows Terminal and Power Automate Desktop. Windows Terminal is the next evolution of the command line, and it brings together all your command line environments. You can run the Command Prompt, PowerShell, Azure Cloud Shell, and your Linux distributions inside Windows Terminal, all with a tabbed interface so you don’t need multiple windows. You can also customize the appearance for each of your profiles so they’re easy to identify at a glance.
As for Power Automate Desktop, it’s a tool that can automatically do all sorts of tasks. Its most basic use is letting you record a series of steps, like opening an app and performing a specific action, then running all those steps automatically whenever you need them. You can however create flows manually for all kinds of purposes. You can automate recurring tasks so you don’t have to do them manually every time.
Other Windows 11 features
There are a few more updates Microsoft has made to Windows, but they’re not all as big. Here are some other improvements you can try in preview right now.
Personalized setup
When you first set up a computer, you can now specify what you’re going to be using it for. This will change things like which apps are pinned to the taskbar out of the box to make the experience more relevant to you.
Improved Bluetooth audio experience
If you’ve ever used a Bluetooth headset with your PC, you’ve probably noticed how messy the experience can be. Until now, you’d see two different output devices for a single headset. That’s because Windows uses one output device for higher quality audio when you’re not using the microphone, then switches to a lower-quality output for communication apps where the microphone is in use. With Windows 11, Microsoft is simplifying the audio outputs for Bluetooth devices, so switching between different types of apps is seamless and your audio always works.
New command line tools
Microsoft is adding a couple of new command line features to Windows 11. One is the ability to reset UWP apps if you prefer over using the Settings app. You can run the following command, using the package name of the app you want to reset:
Get-AppxPackage *calculator* | Reset-AppxPackage
There’s also a new DiskUsage tool that lets you see how your disk space is being used on your drive. You can run the tool in a specific directory to find large files in that folder, for example.
Task Manager improvements
The Task Manager now displays which architecture is used by each of your apps. In the details tab, you’ll see a new Architecture label, which will specify if a given process is x86, x64, or ARM.
Additionally, Windows 11 will add an Eco mode feature to Task manager. If you notice an app using too many resources on your PC, you can toggle Eco mode to throttle that usage. Finally, if you use the Edge browser, Microsoft is testing a more detailed view where each Edge process is clearly identified. That means you’ll be able to see specific services, extensions, and tabs to help you understand what’s using resources. Both of these features are only available to a subset of Insiders though, so even if you get a preview build, you might not have them yet.
Improved time zone switching
If you travel a lot with your PC, Microsoft has tweaked the behavior for time zone switching. When Windows is very confident you’ve switched time zones, it’ll change your time zone and send you a notification letting you know. If Windows isn’t sure whether you’ve changed time zones, the notification will instead ask the user to confirm the change.
Those are all the biggest changes available to try right now, but as always, more is on the way. We’ll keep updating this article with new information as Microsoft releases new preview builds, so keep checking back to see what might have been added. Microsoft should release the first build with the Windows 11 branding after its June 24th event, and that will bring a lot more changes as we’ve seen in a recently-leaked build.
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