Windows 11 has a new preview build in the Dev channel (one of the older test channels) and it brings some valuable improvements to voice functionality and power saving, plus a few other tweaks.
This is preview build 26120, and as mentioned, one of the biggest changes comes to Voice Access. According to Microsoft's blog post for the release, there's an improved “spelling and corrections experience” for the feature. This is used during dictation when Voice Access notices that you've misspelled a word and allows you to run a correction – saying the correct spelling out loud, letter by letter, for that word.
Specifically, the change means you can now dictate characters at a faster speaking speed when typing a word correction, and Voice Access will keep up (or at least should, hopefully). Plus, you can now use dictation commands here, for example to select or delete something.
Useful movements to help save energy
This preview build introduces a few other nifty tweaks to help with power saving, including a change to Power Saver mode (which will replace Battery Saver mode, the existing mode for Windows 11). With build 26120, when you're using a laptop on battery power and Power Saver mode is set to “Always on,” you'll get a notification prompting you to plug in your laptop if its charge drops to 20%.
Another power-saving measure is a new recommendation that suggests disabling HDR on the display to conserve power (assuming it supports HDR, of course, which allows for better contrast and more vivid colors). This will appear as part of the recommendations provided in Settings > Energy and battery > Energy recommendations.
Other improvements implemented by Microsoft here include a new option to turn off “enhanced mouse pointer precision” if you don't like it, and the ability to change the scroll direction of the mouse wheel (in Settings > Bluetooth & device > Mouse).
Overall, it's not the most dynamic Windows preview I've seen, and some of these changes have been seen elsewhere before, but I appreciate that Microsoft is continually working to genuinely improve the Windows 11 experience in a number of ways, including accessibility and power savings, two very important areas for the operating system.
