KB5095091

Microsoft has released preliminary update KB5095091 (Build 28000.2333) for Windows 11 version 26H1. The update is intended for PCs with ARM64 architecture processors (Snapdragon), as well as for devices with x64 architecture processors (Intel and AMD). This release includes new features and improvements, including AI-based capabilities, platform development, and performance enhancements.

• Screen Magnifier. Now provides clearer and more consistent notifications when working with Narrator. Voice prompts accompany zooming in and out, switching modes, enabling and disabling color inversion, as well as turning the magnifier itself on and off. Added support for magnifying protected content with permissions. Improved smoothness of movement in Lens mode.
• Task Manager. Expanded capabilities for monitoring NPU load. Added optional columns NPU and NPU Engine on the Processes, Users, and Details tabs, as well as columns NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory on the Details tab. Neural engines within GPUs are now displayed on the Performance tab. A new optional Isolation column on the Processes and Details tabs shows which applications are running in AppContainer. You can add any of the new columns via the column header context menu. Fixed CPU frequency display on the Performance tab in virtual machines after resuming from hibernation — inflated values are no longer shown.
• Camera. The Multi-App Camera feature allows multiple applications to access the camera video stream simultaneously. Basic Camera mode enables simplified functionality for troubleshooting or improving stability. Organization administrators can now set these modes via group policy under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Camera > Configure camera settings.
• Windows Setup. You can now choose a custom user folder name on the Device Name page during setup. The updated interface simplifies name selection, but only during the setup process. If this step is skipped, Windows uses a default folder name. Folder names must comply with standard Windows naming rules.
• General Performance. Accelerated launch of applications and core shell elements — Start menu, search, and Action Center.
• Personalization. Improved accuracy of accent color matching to the desktop wallpaper when automatic accent color selection is enabled. Increased reliability of wallpaper preservation between reboots and system updates, including enhanced support for high-resolution wallpapers — this prevents rollback to a solid color background.
• Windows Hello. Optimized the WinBio service — reduced delays when resuming from Modern Standby. Reduced frequency of unexpected Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security authentication lockouts — resolved an issue with missing secure registration metadata. Improved login behavior: if Windows Hello (facial recognition) or Windows Hello (fingerprint) is configured and available, it is now the default sign-in method each time, even if you previously used a different method. If you prefer using a PIN instead and enter it three times in a row, the system will stay on the PIN method until you manually switch to another method.
• Windows Search Box. Search now finds and prioritizes files after typing just two characters.
• Storage. When creating a Dev Drive, the dialog box now allows specifying the size in gigabytes, not just megabytes. The same applies to resizing volumes via Settings > System > Storage. Updated the Settings > System > Storage section — the UAC prompt now appears not when opening the page, but only when navigating to view temporary files.
• USB. Improved reliability of displays connected through USB4 docks and hubs — the image appears more consistently when resuming from sleep mode. The USB3 stack has received additional resilience and recovery mechanisms for specific hardware failures — USB devices operate more reliably.
• Sensors. Improved protection against applications that may keep the sensor hub active and drain the battery.
• HID Devices. Extended battery life in scenarios with malfunctioning HID devices — the operating system no longer keeps the HID/Input stack active for them. Enhanced power hygiene regarding applications that may initiate data exchange with HID devices in sleep mode.
• Input. Improved reliability of invoking the touch keyboard on the login screen when entering or changing a password. Enhanced stability of explorer.exe when closing the input switcher. Accelerated opening and navigation of clipboard history.
• Fonts. Rendering improvements have been made to the Times New Roman font family for combined diacritical marks in Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. Fixed character positioning issues — text is displayed more accurately and consistently.
• Task Scheduler. Now preserves column width settings in task list mode between sessions.
• Desktop Icons. Improved reliability of loading application shortcuts on the desktop.
• Microsoft Store. Made changes that improve download performance and optimize bandwidth usage. Enhanced error messaging when downloads fail due to the Windows Update group policy being enabled.
• Authentication. Improved secured Netlogon connections between domain controllers — connections from a domain member server to domain controllers configured through 2025 are now successfully established.
• BitLocker. Improved BitLocker testing reliability — necessary files are now available for the BitLocker Drive Encryption USB BIOS Logo Test.

Overall reliability of Windows has also been improved on login and lock screens, in File Explorer, when using gestures on touch devices, and when switching themes in Settings.

Installation via Windows Update: Go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates. A computer restart is required to complete the installation. After the update, the build number for Windows 11, version 26H1 will change to 28000.2333.

To update Windows 11, version 25H2 to build 26200.8728, you can also download update KB5095093 and install it manually using the links above.

How the new features work:

Screen Magnifier. The notification mechanism is now integrated with Narrator via the IAccessible system API, generating speech prompts during zoom, mode switching, color inversion, and power toggling. Protected content capture has been added by checking DRM flags on the rasterization buffer. In Lens mode, movement interpolation is improved by optimizing DwmFlush calls and reducing frame update latency.

Task Manager. Neural processor monitoring has been expanded: NPU and NPU Engine columns display computational core load, while NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory columns appear on the Details tab. Neural blocks within GPUs are parsed via WDDM and shown on the Performance tab. An optional Isolation column signals process execution within an AppContainer. Columns are added through the column header context menu. Fixed CPU frequency parsing on virtual machines when resuming from hibernation.

Camera. The Multi-App Camera feature enables simultaneous video stream access by multiple applications through the Windows.Devices.Enumeration framework, replicating the stream at the media source level. Basic Camera mode disables extended frame processing for troubleshooting and stability. Administrators configure these modes via group policy, updating parameters in the HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Camera registry key.

Windows Setup. On the device name page, the OOBE wizard now allows setting a custom user folder name, saving it to %USERPROFILE%. The wizard validates input against NTFS file system rules and prohibited reserved names. When this step is skipped, the system generates a standardized name by extracting a fragment from the email or creating a truncated string.

General Performance. Application and shell element launch has been accelerated by pre-compiling IL code into native images via a background delivery optimization task. Critical Shell paths — Start menu, search, and Action Center — receive reduced initialization latency thanks to prioritized resource loading and deferred initialization of secondary components.

Personalization. Accent color matching with desktop wallpaper has been improved: the K-means clustering algorithm more accurately extracts dominant hues from wallpaper pixel data during automatic selection. The reliability of preserving high-resolution wallpapers between reboots has been enhanced — a race condition in the themes service has been fixed, preventing rollback to a solid color due to deserialization failure of the cached image.

Windows Hello. The WinBio service has been optimized: delays when resuming from Modern Standby are eliminated through asynchronous biometric sensor reinitialization. The issue of missing secure registration metadata has been resolved, reducing false Enhanced Sign-in Security lockouts. If face or fingerprint recognition is configured, the system calls CredUIPromptForWindowsCredentials with a biometric flag by default at every sign-in. Upon three consecutive manual PIN entries, the authentication scheme locks onto it until the user switches methods.

Windows Search Box. The indexer engine now activates file search and ranking after typing just two characters. The ISearchQueryHelper trigger threshold for incremental search has been lowered, enabling faster return of prefix-matching results without waiting for longer strings.

Storage. When creating a Dev Drive, the dialog now allows specifying size in gigabytes, converting it to megabytes before calling CreatePartition. The same approach applies to volume resizing in Settings. The UAC prompt is now deferred until navigation to the temporary files subsection, preventing privilege elevation when merely opening the Storage settings page.

USB. Reliability of displays connected via USB4 docks has been improved: the DisplayPort connection manager updates topology more consistently when resuming from sleep by re-interrogating the AUX channel. The USB3 stack has received resilience against specific hardware failures: endpoint reset retry cycles and channel recovery mechanisms have been implemented without requiring a stack reload.

Sensors. Protection against background sensor hub retention has been implemented through strict reference checking of ISensor in standby mode. The system more aggressively cuts power to the sensor MCU if a process holds an open handle without a system service flag, preventing hidden battery drain.

HID Devices. A faulty HID device detector has been introduced: if an endpoint fails to return a successful acknowledgment packet within a timeout, the HID/Input stack ceases keeping it active, preventing idle power consumption. Power hygiene during data exchange in sleep mode has been improved — applications initiating requests are now prohibited from waking the system from S0 Low Power Idle.

Input. On the login screen, the reliability of invoking the touch keyboard has been enhanced by trapping the UISettings.TextEntry event and retrying UI component initialization upon focus change. The stability of explorer.exe has been strengthened when closing the input switcher — a race condition capable of causing a use-after-free write has been eliminated. Clipboard history opening and navigation have been accelerated through a dedicated WinUI rendering thread.

Fonts. The Times New Roman font family has received glyphs for combined diacritical marks in Greek and Cyrillic alphabets with correct anchor points in the GDEF table. Character positioning has been fixed: hinting and kerning metrics in the CFF font tables now ensure precise placement of composite glyphs without offsets.

Task Scheduler. Column width settings are now preserved in the user registry under the MMC\Task Scheduler key between sessions. A snapshot of column metrics is recorded upon console closure and restored during ListView widget initialization.

Desktop Icons. The reliability of loading application shortcuts on the desktop has been improved through an additional verification step. The system checks the integrity of the .lnk file before parsing the Shell Link Binary; on error, it triggers asynchronous recovery from the icon cache to prevent broken white icons from appearing.

Microsoft Store. The Store client download manager has been improved: the package splitting algorithm has been modified to optimize bandwidth and minimize request fragmentation in Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). Error messaging has been enhanced when the Windows Update group policy blocks downloads: the HRESULT refusal code is now parsed, and the message precisely indicates the root cause instead of a generic error.

Authentication. Secured Netlogon connections between domain controllers have been improved: member servers now successfully establish a channel with controllers configured to the 2025 standard by supporting new session key negotiation schemes and signing algorithms via the MS-NRPC protocol.

BitLocker. The reliability of BitLocker testing in the pre-boot environment has been increased: necessary cryptographic files are now guaranteed to be present on the USB drive for the BIOS logo test, preventing false negative boot compatibility verification failures.

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