Windows 11 Build 27749: New Shortcut Feature for Narrator Accessibility

Microsoft has unveiled the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27749 to participants in the Canary Channel of the Insider program. This latest version introduces a range of enhancements, bug fixes, and some known issues that users should take note of.

One notable addition in this build is a new keyboard shortcut for Narrator, allowing users to copy the last spoken sentence directly to the clipboard. This can be achieved by pressing the Narrator key in conjunction with Control and X.

Furthermore, the Narrator will now automatically read out message contents in the revamped Outlook application, mirroring the functionality previously available in Outlook Classic.

Additionally, Microsoft has resolved a problem in File Explorer that resulted in navigation pane items being overly spaced for certain users. An issue causing RAW images taken in portrait orientation to mistakenly display as landscape thumbnails has also been fixed.

The taskbar and system tray have been adjusted so that when the taskbar is set to auto-hide, users will now see a search box instead of an icon, provided the search setting is configured to display a “Search box.” Microsoft has also tackled an issue where the circular mouse pointer indicators appeared too small on high-DPI screens.

Moreover, Microsoft reports improvements in the performance of the Narrator, which previously experienced slowdowns after 15 minutes of uninterrupted usage within a single application.

Additional fixes include one where Narrator announced “contains style” when focusing on text with specific styling attributes across various applications like Microsoft Edge, Teams, and Outlook, along with addressing an issue where some dialog boxes in Narrator did not apply the 200% text scaling setting.

This new build rectifies an issue that caused Task Manager to display zero counts for applications and processes, as well as an underlying problem resulting in certain audio devices unexpectedly amplifying sound to 100% upon boot or after sleep. It also fixes a blank entry in Settings > Privacy that caused Settings to crash upon selection.

Microsoft has also addressed an issue that impacted Git functionality for Insiders using Arm PCs in the prior flight, corrected a bug check error with KERNEL_MODE_HEAP_CORRUPTION from the last build, and resolved issues that could prevent users from joining a domain and caused DirectAccess to halt in a connecting state.

The build comes with a variety of known issues, including a potential bug that may cause audio on specific devices to spike to 100% upon startup or resuming from sleep.

For a comprehensive list of changes in Windows 11 Build 27749, check out Microsoft’s official blog post.

In other updates, the Windows Snipping Tool now features a new keyboard shortcut as well.