According to the latest Windows 11 build distributed to beta testers of the Windows 11 Insider program, Windows 11 users can expect small but meaningful Start Menu and Taskbar improvements in the near future

Most notably, this new build adds controls for tweaking the Windows 11 Start menu and makes the taskbar more functional when using multiple monitors simultaneously These are welcome upgrades, especially if you are a multi-monitor Windows 11 power user However, Microsoft still has much work to do to make Windows 11 as fundamentally useful and user-friendly as its predecessor

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22509 was released this week to intrepid beta testers in the Dev Channel of the Windows 11 Insider program

Top of the list is a new feature that allows you to right-click the Start button and choose whether you want to see the default Start menu, the "More pins" version, or the "More recommendations" versionThe Windows 11 Start menu is essentially a menu of pinned apps, with a list of apps and files recommended by the algorithm below it

Personally, though, I would have liked to see Microsoft add a control to move the taskbar to the edge of the screen

Speaking of the taskbar, those who use Windows 11 with multiple monitors may be pleased to hear that this latest Windows 11 Insiders Dev Channel build also includes a fix to display the clock and date in the taskbar on all connected monitors Currently, the clock and date are displayed on the primary monitor and the date is displayed on the secondary monitor Currently, the clock and date are only displayed on the taskbar of the primary monitor, which can be frustrating if you spend a lot of time looking elsewhere

Microsoft has also made some improvements to the way the Edge browser interacts with Narrator, Windows 11's screen-reading accessibility tool The company also moved some shared settings from the venerable Windows Control Panel to the new Windows 11 Settings menu as part of an "ongoing effort to transfer settings from the Control Panel to the Settings app" The company also elaborated on the details that appear when searching for a printer or scanner in the Settings app

And of course, the full blog post, including the promise that "the Start, Search, Task View, Widgets, and Chat icons in the Taskbar will no longer grow unexpectedly large" when Windows 11's display scaling is set to 125% There are numerous bug fixes spelled out

These are all welcome improvements, but they don't do much to address our unresolved We have not been able to address many of our complaints

Of course, Windows 11 is a free upgrade, and Microsoft has promised to support Windows 10 through 2025, so there is no need to upgrade if you are not interested