Windows 10: Windows 11 Reveals 4 Hidden Features in the Latest Experimental Build

Windows 11 build 26300.8289 on the Experimental channel includes four undisclosed changes, in addition to the Windows Update improvements announced by Microsoft. These updates were identified by Windows Central and leaker @PhantomOfEarth.

They include a long-requested Taskbar repositioning feature and a modernized Run dialog that has remained largely unchanged for nearly 30 years.

Movable Taskbar and Redesigned Run Dialog in Windows 11


The most notable update is the early support for moving the Taskbar. New options now appear in the Taskbar context menu, allowing users to position the bar at the top, left, or right of the screen. When Windows 11 was released, the ability to dock the Taskbar to any position other than the bottom was removed, despite being a frequently requested feature.


(Credit: Mauro Huculak)

The Run dialog is getting its first major visual update in about 30 years. The new design follows Fluent Design principles, featuring rounded corners, semi-transparent elements, updated spacing, and support for both light and dark themes. The text field is now larger, and the interface shows recent commands, along with matching apps and paths as you type.



(Credit: Mauro Huculak)

Microsoft will make the new Run dialog optional. You can enable it through Settings, then System, Advanced, by toggling a dedicated switch for the Run dialog. Currently, the new design is available in the Experimental channel without needing to turn on the toggle.

New Login Animation and Storage Volume Unit Toggle


The animated dots that appear during sign-in, sign-out, shutdown, and restart are being replaced with a solid spinning icon. This new animation matches the one used during the boot process. Marcus Ash, Microsoft's head of Windows design and research, confirmed on X that the change aims to create more consistency across most use cases with spinning icons.

A small but useful update can be found in Settings under Storage, Disks and Volumes. The option to change the size of a volume now offers a toggle to switch between megabytes and gigabytes, making it easier to resize volumes measured in gigabytes.


(Credit: Mauro Huculak)

None of the four features is currently available to regular Windows Insiders. Their inclusion in the build suggests active development before wider testing.

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No Fluent Design Reveal Highlight in Start Menu - Fall Creator's Update

Transparency is already enabled. I'm seeing the blurs, but reveal highlight is not transparency. This is reveal highlight, what I
should be seeing:



Thanks!

 

Can't un-combine taskbar items in Windows 11 after latest update

I recommend mentioning features you want to see brought back in the feedback hub or on these forums. The experimental builds aren't all they are cracked up to be.

Features rolled out in experimental builds regularly come with a set of bugs and other issues. For example, with the same update that added this option it also removed the ability to check for updates in the settings. The only workaround is running a command in command prompt. This is why these features come to experimental builds first, so when they come to main builds, they don't launch broken. My point is your sysadmin has a good reason to keep you away from the insider builds, you'd spend a lot of time fixing all the issues that come with them. I don't believe the feature is mainstream yet, but it's gotten a lot of positive feedback so it most likely will be. I do agree that Windows 11 is a huge step back from 10 in terms of user options, it's been 2 years and they are still working on features that came with Windows 10 at launch.

 

Hidden Task Revealer

Hi Cr00zng,

This is the reason I got involved initially and probably the reason others got involved too. A cryptic name with no info and no obvious link certainly looks suspicious. However conversely most malware writers these days try to make their stuff look unobtrusive as possible. In this case this was just a Windows background task.

The Windows task scheduler is now being monitored by a few antiviruses as it's a great place to host simple tasks that reintroduce deleted viruses from the net. The following link gives a few details.

Malware loves Windows Task Scheduler | CSO Online

Notably the Task Scheduler also used by Windows to make sure it's updates keep happening even though the corresponding services have been disabled.

I wrote this app to actually reveal exactly what these tasks are and added an option to delete them if necessary. This is to mitigate any such occurrence.

In regards to suspect tasks Try3's startup script is a great idea. My reply directly after adds to this.

Hidden Task Revealer

Clobbering a suspect task before it becomes a problem is a step forward. However shoot first ask questions later is sometimes a good idea but often it is overkill. A prompt for unknown tasks by such a script would be a good thing.

Cheers