Microsoft rolled out a fresh Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5742 (KB5064075) to the Beta Channel on August 8, 2025, packing a substantial list of fixes and continuing the slow exodus of legacy Control Panel features into the modern Settings app. The build, still anchored on the 24H2 codebase and delivered via an enablement package, gives Insiders who actively opt to receive the latest updates a taste of over a dozen relocated time, language, and keyboard options—plus a string of reliability fixes for File Explorer, Task Manager, and Chinese/Japanese IMEs. But it also arrives with a handful of known issues that beta testers should watch out for, including a fresh glitch in the new Click to Do preview and a lingering Bluetooth bug that can crash PCs when an Xbox controller is connected.
The Control Panel Exodus Accelerates
Whenever Microsoft pushes another batch of settings from Control Panel to the Settings app, longtime Windows admins brace for the day the old house is finally boarded up. Build 26120.5742 doesn’t retire anything outright, but it does migrate six specific time and language controls—and one keyboard tweak—that previously forced users to jump back to the classic interface. Now, toggling on the latest updates in Windows Update (the “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” switch) brings those relocated options into the Settings app.
Microsoft has been chipping away at Control Panel’s domain for years, and this build touches areas that affect every multilingual user and anyone who tweaks regional formats. Specifically, Insiders can now add additional clocks to the taskbar, change the time server used for synchronization, adjust regional formatting and location settings, enable Unicode UTF-8 for language support, and copy language and region settings to the welcome screen or new accounts—all from within Settings. Additionally, the Accessibility section gets keyboard repeat delay, repeat rate, and cursor blink rate controls that previously sat buried in Control Panel’s Keyboard applet.
The move follows a pattern established in earlier 24H2 builds, where power settings, network adapter options, and sound controls have gradually appeared in the modern hub. While Microsoft hasn’t confirmed a complete Control Panel sunset, the steady accretion of features in Settings suggests the company is inching toward a day when the legacy applet is either stripped to a bare minimum or removed entirely. For now, these changes are available only to Insiders who manually flip the toggle, meaning mainstream users won’t see them until a future cumulative update—likely in the 24H2 general availability wave.
File Explorer Gets a Polish
File Explorer fixes dominate the changelog, targeting annoyances that have plagued Insiders for several beta cycles. Users of right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew will notice that folder and file icons no longer mirror incorrectly, a bug that could make navigation confusing. Sticky tooltips—those info pop-ups that refused to disappear after hovering—are gone, as are the disorienting black flashes that sometimes accompanied resizing or scaling changes. Microsoft also resolved an issue where icons and text overlapped or clipped when display scaling was set to a non-standard percentage, which should improve the experience on high-DPI monitors.
Performance tweaks are woven throughout File Explorer’s update. Launching cloud files stored via OneDrive or SharePoint now feels snappier, and context menu rendering—a perennial pain point for Windows 11—has been optimized. The Narrator screen reader also benefits from better context descriptions when navigating folder structures. These improvements, while incremental, collectively address the jank that users have long complained about in Windows 11’s file management experience.
IME Fixes and Task Manager Reliability
For anyone typing in Chinese or Japanese, this build delivers crucial IME fixes that should restore stability during everyday tasks. The update corrects bugs that could cause the IME to freeze or crash when copying text, switching between input modes, or simply typing in certain applications. Such issues have been a recurring headache for beta users, and the fixes suggest the Windows IME team has been drilling into the compositor logic that handles candidate window rendering and version switching.
Task Manager also receives a dose of care. The “Select Columns” dialog now draws focus correctly when opened, and several pages have had their field sizes and contrast ratios adjusted for better readability on high-res screens. These accessibility-minded changes make Task Manager easier to parse at a glance, particularly for users who rely on screen magnification or high-contrast themes. Microsoft emphasizes that reliability has been improved overall, but specific crash scenarios are not detailed.
Start Menu and Visual Studio Categorization
A peculiar bug that caused the “All apps” list in the Start menu to generate excessive category headings—or to display blank icons for certain apps—has been squashed. Insiders who saw the All section balloon with nonsensical groupings should now see a clean, logically sorted list. As a side effect, Visual Studio (the full IDE, not Visual Studio Code) finally appears under the correct “Developer Tools” category instead of being dumped into an unrelated bin. It’s a small fix, but one that enterprise developers who pin their tools will appreciate.
The Known Issues You Need to Watch
No beta build ships without caveats, and 26120.5742 has a few that are worth studying before you hit the install button. The most disruptive is a general installation problem: some users may experience a rollback during update with error code 0x80070005, pointing to a permissions hiccup. Microsoft’s temporary workaround is to navigate to Settings > System > Recovery and use the “Fix issues using Windows update” tool—essentially an in-place repair—but if that fails, a clean reinstall of the beta channel build may be the only recourse.
A new bug has crept into the Click to Do preview feature, which forms part of Microsoft’s broader AI-assisted productivity push. Insiders report that text and image actions triggered by Click to Do sometimes fail to execute, and in some cases the feature crashes outright. Microsoft promises a fix in the next build, but for now, testers who rely on the tool for quick content extraction may need to wait or disable the feature.
The redesigned Start menu layout continues to behave unpredictably. Immediately after upgrading, the menu may temporarily shrink to a 6-column grid instead of the intended 8 columns, making pinned icons feel cramped. A system restart or simply waiting a few minutes often resolves the issue, but it’s an unpolished edge that betrays the layout’s ongoing evolution.
File Explorer’s dark mode still struggles with color accuracy for low-disk-space indicators. Drives that are nearly full show their usage bar in a too-light red that blends into the background, while the text displaying remaining space inappropriately turns black—illegible against the dark theme. This visual bug has survived several builds, and while not system-breaking, it undercuts the cohesive dark mode aesthetic Microsoft has been refining.
Live captions on Copilot+ PCs can crash during live translation sessions, a frustrating limitation for users who depend on real-time transcription and translation across languages. The crash does not bring down the OS but requires restarting the Live Captions feature. Given that Copilot+ devices are marketed heavily on AI-powered experiences, this sort of instability in a marquee accessibility feature is worth noting.
Finally, the Xbox Controller saga continues. Pairing an Xbox Wireless Controller via Bluetooth can trigger a bugcheck (BSOD) under certain conditions. Microsoft describes it as a system crash and suggests a surgical workaround: open Device Manager, locate “XboxGameControllerDriver.inf” under Game Controllers, right-click and uninstall it, then scan for hardware changes to let Windows reinstall the driver. It’s a tedious but effective fix for gamers who consider their controllers essential. The root cause appears tied to how the Bluetooth stack handles the controller’s HID profile, but Microsoft hasn’t provided a timeline for a permanent driver update.
How the Beta Channel Operates
For newcomers to the Insider program, it’s important to understand the delivery mechanics behind these builds. Windows 11 version 24H2 is the current release branch, and Beta Channel builds like 26120.5742 are cumulative updates that stack on top of it via an “enablement package.” This technique allows Microsoft to ship features that are already baked into the OS but remain dormant until a tiny switch flips them on—minimizing update size and installation time. That also means many of the changes described here exist in the codebase already and are merely being enabled for testers.
The “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” toggle in Windows Update acts as a feature gate. Leave it off, and you get only the most stable, widely deployed Beta Channel updates. Flip it on, and you become a voluntary early adopter of changes that may still have rough edges. Microsoft uses telemetry from these early adopters to gauge stability and user sentiment before rolling features out to the broader Insider population—and eventually to general availability.
What This Build Means for Windows 11’s Trajectory
Build 26120.5742 is a maintenance release with meaningful under-the-hood improvements. The relocation of time, language, and keyboard settings from Control Panel to Settings continues Microsoft’s march toward a unified control pane. For users, the practical benefit is fewer clicks and fewer disorienting jumps between old and new interfaces. For developers, it signals that the Settings app is now the canonical home for OS configuration, and any remaining Control Panel applets are on notice.
The File Explorer fixes, while individually minor, address the kind of daily friction that erodes confidence in the desktop experience. Smooth icon rendering, proper scaling, and responsive cloud-file interaction are table stakes for a modern OS, and this build delivers them. The IME corrections similarly cater to a global audience that has historically felt underserved by Windows’ input methods. By stabilizing Chinese and Japanese typing, Microsoft fortifies its position in markets where Windows dominates but where localization bugs can sour the experience.
The known issues, however, underscore the reality that the Beta Channel is still a testing ground. An installation rollback with error 0x80070005 can strand users without a clear update path, and the Xbox controller crash remains a significant annoyance for anyone who uses Windows for gaming. The Click to Do hiccup, while limited to a preview feature, hints at the growing pains of integrating AI-powered actions directly into the shell. These are acceptable risks for Insiders who enjoy tinkering, but they serve as a reminder that the build is not meant for production machines.
If you’re on the Beta Channel with the latest updates toggle enabled, navigating to Settings > Windows Update and checking for KB5064075 will deliver this build onto your machine. As always, back up your data and perhaps keep your Xbox controller unpaired during installation—just in case.
Looking ahead, the next beta builds will likely polish the Click to Do experience, address the lingering dark mode color issues, and possibly unveil more Control Panel migrations. The 24H2 feature set is settling into place, and the focus is shifting from introducing new capabilities to hardening the ones already seeded. For Windows enthusiasts, that means fewer flashy announcements but a more reliable operating system—exactly the kind of cadence the platform needs as it approaches its next major update.