Microsoft is refreshing the lock screen in Windows 11 yet again. This update doesn’t change the experience significantly but enables a new interactive weather card on the lock screen.
This is a minor change, but more significant changes are likely ahead. Microsoft is testing the updated lock screen with the “cards” feature in Windows 11 Build 23612, which is available in the Canary channel. You can control the new weather card by heaving to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen > status.
As you can see in the screenshots below, the new lock screen with a weather card requires a simple hover to display the dynamic weather information. When you hover over the weather card, you can see more information without leaving the lock screen. When you click the card, Windows will redirect you to the MSN’s weather page in Microsoft Edge.
It only works in the United States, but the tech giant plans to expand the rollout in the coming days.
Interestingly, Microsoft is planning to enable the feature by default. For now, it is not possible to change the weather source, so you’ll need to rely on MSN Weather, which opens the web page in Microsoft Edge.
Windows 11 Build 23612 improves voice access
Windows 11’s flagship feature, voice access, which replaces Speech Recognition, is also getting some much-needed improvements in Build 23612.
In addition to lock screen updates, Build 23612 adds multi-display support, custom commands and new languages for voice access.
For those unaware, voice access is a new way to control your PC using voice. Starting with Build 23612, you can finally use French, Spanish, and German voice access. Voice access works best in English (United States), but you can expect gradual improvements in the upcoming cumulative updates.
The second significant change is support for creating commands. With this feature, you can create custom voice commands to control different parts of Windows 11. For example, if you want to make a new command for opening a URL, you can go to the Voice Access settings and click “Create command”.
You can input the command using voice or text and select the final ‘Create’ button to proceed with the custom voice command.
You can switch between languages by going to Settings > Language within the voice access interface.
Most of these changes should arrive with Windows 11’s optional cumulative updates, and you don’t need to