KB5089569

Microsoft released cumulative update KB5089569 (26300.8553) for Windows 11, version 25H2 for Insiders on the Dev Channel (Experimental). The Experimental Channel includes the latest preview builds of Windows 11 with new features. Builds may have low stability and some issues.

• Start menu. This update includes a number of improvements for the Start menu, first described in the blog post Making Taskbar and Start more personal Insider. In particular: the Recommended section has been renamed to Recent in Start and on the settings page; section-level toggles have been added to independently show or hide Pinned, Recent, and All apps; the ability to choose between a small and large Start menu in addition to the already available Automatic (default) setting; an option to hide your name and profile picture in Start; and a completely redesigned Start menu settings page.
• Search. Substring search: files with complex names or content (e.g., MeetingNotesApril, ProjectStatusReport) are now easily found by typing April or status.
• Taskbar. Fixed several minor visual issues when using the taskbar in alternative positions. Thanks to the Insiders who shared feedback on this topic. Also, you can now use a swipe touch gesture to invoke the taskbar when using alternative taskbar positions.

Known issues:

Reset PC. Resetting your PC may hang when using Reset this PC. To complete the reset successfully, choose the cloud download option (Cloud PBR) instead of local. This issue is fixed in this update.

Installation via Windows Update: go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates. A reboot is required to complete the installation. To update Windows 11, version 25H2 to build 26300.8553, you can also download update KB5089569 and install it manually using the links above.

How the new features work:

Start menu: This update modifies the rendering and navigation logic of the Windows shell (Explorer.exe). In the codebase, the "Recommended" section has been renamed to "Recent" with corresponding adjustments to the UI resource keys. Independent toggles (ISV flags) for the Pinned, Recent, and All Apps sections have been implemented, controlling their visibility via the registry. Support for an adaptive tile grid has been added to allow choosing between a small or large menu size in addition to the automatic mode, which dynamically scales content. The option to hide the profile picture affects the rendering of AccountPicture in the header. The settings page has been completely rewritten using XAML islands.

Search (substring): The word segmentation algorithm for Content Indexing has been updated in the Windows Search Indexer (SearchIndexer.exe). When parsing long concatenated file names (e.g., ProjectStatusReport.docx), the indexer now breaks them into n-grams and applies substring matching in addition to prefix search. This allows finding a file by the fragment status without explicitly specifying ProjectStatus, as the tokenizer splits compound parts, and the query is executed against the index database (Windows.edb), bypassing a full file system scan (MFT).

Taskbar: Fixed DPI rendering and positioning bugs of the Shell_TrayWnd window when the taskbar is placed in alternative positions (top, left, right). Smoothing and transparency artifacts related to Acrylic/Mica materials during orientation changes have been resolved. A touch gesture handler (Touch Gesture Engine) has been integrated, allowing a swipe gesture to invoke the hidden taskbar in non-primary positions without relying on OnScreenKeyboard triggers.

Reset PC (known issue): The system recovery logic during local image overwrite (Reset this PC) has been fixed in this build. Previously, the Reset-Engine would hang at the stage of copying the local WinSxS repository due to file descriptor locks. The issue was bypassed by choosing the cloud download option (Cloud PBR), where the image is fetched directly from Windows Update servers and mounted, circumventing the corrupted local component store. The fix adjusts the reparse point application mechanism for the temporary reset sandbox.

The last 10 Windows updates: