Latest Windows 11 update: a thousand and one small details in the first real update

Technically, we’re talking about update KB5010414, but in reality the latest Windows 11 update is the first “substantial” update of the operating system since the day of its launch, October 5, 2021, a crucial date for the business of very many users and resellers.

The latest Windows 11 update should already be available through Windows Update: users and IT managers can already download and test it.

Why issue such an update now, if Microsoft has stated that there will be only one major update per year? Because the KB5010414 Windows 11 update (it’s not known if it will have a nickname) is not a deep-level update, in the sense that it doesn’t touch the lower part of the operating system, the most profound one that developers are relying on to for the various Apps.

In fact, for both commercial and private Apps, nothing changes at all. This update fixes a few issues for users and introduces a great new feature that is long overdue in terms of multimedia: in the review that we’re about to undertake, we’ll start with the latter.

New Media Player with the latest Windows 11 update

The new Media Player brings a new experience to a large number of users or professionals who use a lot of media of any kind, from movies to audio files.

The most obvious novelty is the new interface, now more consistent with the rest of the Windows 11 elements: its possibilities are extraordinary, but at the same time it is designed for an extremely simple use of the product.

You can use it to play multimedia content located anywhere, from the Desktop to one of the folders, like any other App, but if launched by the user, Media Player offers automatic control and management of the media located in the defined folders, starting from the default ones (Music and Video) to others chosen by the user.

It supports video in the most common formats (we tried MP4 files, with the H.264 and H.265 codecs, and MKV without any problems) and also audio, both in compressed and uncompressed formats.

In particular, music tracks can be sorted by different criteria, but most importantly, they can be sorted into customized listening playlists: in the era of streaming music, it is still a pleasurable experience for users to be able to also use local content and sort it in the format of their choice.

This, of course, also includes creators, namely those who work with multiple media and who now have a functional, modern and capable tool to reproduce their content as a test.

New Notepad for Windows 11

Notepad is one of the simplest and most elementary Apps for the management of pure text, but for this reason it has fundamental importance for many users who find themselves having to manage both strings and small or large portions of text, quickly and with powerful functions, without related metadata (often this is the main reason for using Notepad).

In this case as well, the new interface is more straightforward and now includes an interesting word search tool which highlights all the repetitions within the file.

The Windows 11 KB5010414 update improves the taskbar

There are many improvements for “auxiliary” functions that make the Windows experience more productive, pleasant and simple: for example, the function that allows sharing a Windows window directly from the window menu has been activated, without having to start from within the Teams App (a function that has been announced but that needed more work than expected).

Another new feature of the latest Windows 11 update, also related to Teams, is the ability to enable or disable the microphone directly from the icon in the taskbar on the right (no longer only from within the App).

The time display now also appears on all screens, always in the bottom right corner of the Application bar, whereas before it was only present on the home screen.

There’s also something new for the Widgets, whose icon has now been moved to the left and shows the weather in real time (with some possible customizations), while clicking on it opens the overlay window with all the widgets. If you place the Start menu on the left, an operation that we strongly advise against doing, especially for those who sell solutions such as Windows 11, the icon for the Widgets appears immediately to the right of the Start icon.

The Windows 11 maxi-update includes Android, or nearly so

Certainly, the most important novelty is the public release of Android-related features: Windows 11 is now able to download and activate more than 1,000 Android Apps, taking them from the Amazon Store (via the Microsoft Store) directly to the Windows 11 desktop, in a perfectly integrated environment.

Unfortunately, this feature, which is certainly one of the most anticipated, is for now limited only to the U.S. market, with the promise that it will come to us later this year, with further improvements. One example is sideloading, a feature that will allow you to use Android Apps locally, without going through the Store: a crucial factor for developers, who will thus have a very interesting test environment available.