Microsoft is constantly updating Windows with new features and other changes, and those show up first in the Windows Insider builds. Here’s everything Microsoft rolled out in Insider builds this week, most of which should roll out to regular PCs over the coming weeks and months.
You canjoin the Windows Insider programto try out experimental features, but some changes are on a gradual rollout and not yet available to all Insider program members. You should not install Windows Insider builds on an important computer.
Speech Recap in Narrator
Narrator is the built-in screen reader in Windows, giving people with impaired vision the ability to use many applications and websites. Accessibility is one area where generative AI has been incredibly helpful, and now some of that is coming to Narrator in a new ‘speech recap’ feature.
Microsoft said in a blog post, “With speech recap, you’re able to quickly access spoken content, follow along with live transcription, and copy what Narrator last said—all with simple keyboard shortcuts. You can open the speech recap window with Narrator key + Alt + X and can find the last 500 strings Narrator had spoken. Note that we refresh the text in this window every time Narrator starts. You can use standard reading commands and arrow keys to read the contents in speech recap window and copy text required for reference.”
Click to Do (preview)
Windows Share
When you share links or web content using the Windows share window, you will now see a visual preview for that content. Apple devices have a similar preview in the share menu, so it’s nice to see Windows catch up there.
In the Windows share window, Microsoft is adding the ability to quickly edit and enhance images while sharing. This includes in-line image editing capabilities, such as cropping, rotating, and applying filters, as well as the ability to compress images to reduce file size for easier sharing. This ability works only for local images stored on your PC.
Semantic Search
Microsoft is starting to roll out animproved search in the File Explorerfor Copilot+ PCs. It uses the NPU hardware to better organize and index your files, so you’re able to use phrases like “budget spreadsheet” or “landscape” to find files matching that description, even if the file names don’t exactly match.
The company said in a blog post, “We are making finding your documents, photos, and settings across Windows 11 easier on AMD and Intel®-powered Copilot+ PCs by introducing semantic indexing along with traditional indexing. Whether it’s searching in File Explorer, in the Windows search box on your taskbar, or in Settings – just type what’s on your mind to find it on your Copilot+ PC. You no longer need to remember file names, exact words in file content, or settings names.”
Copilot+ PCs will also get the ability to find photos saved in the cloud using the same advanced search. Microsoft explained, “In addition to photos stored locally on your Copilot+ PC, photos from the cloud will now show up in the search results together. In addition to searching for photos, exact matches for your keywords within the text of your cloud files will show in the search results.”
This feature is already live in the Release Preview Channel, so it should roll out to regular builds of Windows 11 in the near future.
Microsoft Photos Updates
The latest update to the Photos app in Windows, version 2025.11030.20006.0, hasa few new useful features. It now has optical character recognition (OCR) with support for over 160 languages, allowing you to select text in images for copying to the clipboard or searching the web.
You can also now right-click an image in the File Explorer and select ‘Create with Designer’. This will open Designer in the Photos app for AI-powered object selection, background replacement, and other actions. I’m not sure why that functionality is in a separate Designer interface, and not just the regular Photos interface, but that’s Windows for you.
Finally, the Photos app now supports JPEG XL files (.jxl format), so you don’t have to open those images in a web browser or other application.
