Windows 11 update boosts taskbar with handy new features and tweaks

Windows 11 in the Insider program received update KB5040550, introducing a few minor but valuable new features. Most of these pertain to the taskbar and allow modifications to icons, notifications, and even the date format. These changes will likely be rolled out to the stable version of Windows 11 soon.

Before that happens, however, Windows 11 testers need to check how all the new features work in the Beta release, as described by Windows Latest. Among the new features, the most interesting involves the taskbar: the ability to shorten the date format so that the year is not displayed, the option to disable the notification "bell", which was also tested earlier in the Insider program, and a new option to highlight icons on the Windows 11 taskbar using the keyboard.

This involves the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T, which in Windows 11 sets the indicator on the taskbar. In the stable system release, you can currently navigate between them only with the arrow keys. Update KB5040550 introduces the ability to jump to the next application based on the first letter of its name that you can press on the keyboard. This solution will be especially useful for people who use many programs and find navigating through their taskbar shortcuts cumbersome.

The tested update KB5040550 also introduces several other new features unrelated to the taskbar. An interesting addition is a feature that feels like a long-overdue fix—the System Information application will start respecting Windows 11 interface scaling settings, which will improve information readability. Currently, fonts are not enlarged regardless of how much the user "zooms in" on the interface, a commonly used option today, especially on laptops with rapidly increasing screen resolutions.