It’ll be some time before we have a full picture of what the next version of Windows looks like, but that’s not stopping Microsoft from rolling out a few updates to Windows 11 amid this year’s Build developer conference. Today the company announced a list of feature updates for the operating system focusing on privacy, security and accessibility. Although most of the new tools are aimed at businesses and IT departments, there are some handy features average users may want to know about.
To start, Microsoft says that Bluetooth Low Energy Audio is coming to compatible devices, starting with the May 2023 non-security preview release. The company said its working with Intel and Samsung to bring the audio standard to the PC ecosystem for the first time, specifically calling out the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro as a potentially compatible set of earbuds.
Speaking of audio content, you’ll be able to understand more of it than ever. Starting this week, live captions for Windows 11 will support 10 new languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugueses and Spanish.
Most of the update focuses on “new and improved features for businesses,” but there’s still one last item you might want to pay attention to: the glanceable VPN icon. This feature will be available in the quick settings menu, and enables a new shield icon that will hover over the active network connection in the taskbar to help users check to see if they’re connected to a recognized VPN service.
Other new features hitting Windows soon include a larger widget page, a Windows 365 boot feature that automatically logs users into Cloud PCs, new privacy controls for managing presence sensor data, QR code verification for document printing, autopatch updates and new messaging tools for IT teams. You can check out the full rundown of the new features on the Microsoft Blog.
This story originally appeared on Engadget
