Microsoft’s latest Dev Channel flight, Build 26200.5742 (KB5064075), lands with a trio of enhancements that push the Windows 11 experience forward while quietly continuing one of the operating system’s longest-running infrastructure efforts. The update redesigns the mobile device companion inside Start, migrates a raft of time and language controls out of the legacy Control Panel, and applies a fresh coat of paint to system dialogs—all while addressing a slew of bugs that have dogged Insiders for weeks.

Insiders who install KB5064075 will immediately spot the revamped phone companion. Instead of a static tile, Start now presents a scrollable feed of recent mobile activity—messages, calls, photos, and pending app updates—pulled directly from a linked phone. The layout mimics the glanceable widgets panel, but it sits front and center in the Start menu, giving users a reason to keep the companion pinned. Tapping any entry launches the full Phone Link experience, but the real win is the at-a-glance utility: you can see who called or read a text snippet without leaving your workflow. The change reflects Microsoft’s deepening investment in cross-device scenarios, especially as the Phone Link app gains support for more Android OEMs and gradually extends to iPhone messaging.

Alongside the phone boost, the build continues the long march to deprecate classic Control Panel applets. This time, six time and language settings have sprouted inside the modern Settings app, each accessible via a refined navigation path.

  • Additional Clocks now live under Settings > Time & language > Date & time, in the “Show time and date in the system tray” section. Users who relied on the old “Additional Clocks” dialog can add multiple time zones with the same three-clock limit.
  • Time Server Configuration moves to the “Additional settings” expander within Date & time. Here you can switch from the default Windows time server to an organizational NTP server or a public pool.
  • Date and Time Formatting—including the ability to customize AM/PM symbols—sits in the same Date & time page, replacing the classic Region dialog’s Formats tab.
  • Number and Currency Format migrates to Settings > Time & language > Language & region, under the “Region” section. The controls mirror the decimal, digit grouping, and currency symbol options previously buried several clicks deep.
  • Unicode UTF-8 Support gains a simple toggle under the “Language” section in Language & region. Enabling it sets the system locale to use UTF-8 for worldwide language support, a feature that advanced users and developers have long accessed via the Region administrative dialog.
  • Copy Language and Region Settings surfaces in the “Additional settings” dropdown of Language & region. From there, you can replicate your current user’s language and region preferences to the welcome screen, system accounts, and new user profiles—a critical step for enterprise deployments and fresh installations.

These relocations chip away at the Control Panel’s remaining footholds. Microsoft’s internal telemetry shows that most users rarely venture into those legacy dialogs, but for IT admins and power users, the new paths are a welcome modernization that eliminates the jarring context switch between the sleek Settings app and the Windows 7-era Control Panel. The company has been transparent about the gradual approach; the Control Panel still exists, but each build that moves a set of settings nudges the OS closer to a unified configuration surface.

Visual consistency gets a boost, too. Dialogs that previously sported mixed-era styling now align with the Windows 11 design language. The most obvious example is the error dialog that appears when an application fails to open. Instead of a bare, blue-background message box, users see a centered, rounded-corner flyout with the updated typography and accent colors. Similar clean-ups touch several secondary dialogs, though Microsoft hasn’t provided a full inventory. The change may seem small, but it reduces the cognitive friction of encountering a UI element that looks like it belongs to Windows 8—a detail that enthusiasts call out regularly in feedback hubs.

Performance-minded Insiders will appreciate the targeted File Explorer optimizations. Launching cloud-stored files from OneDrive or SharePoint folders now feels snappier, with fewer hangs during hydration. The context menu—still a point of irritation since Windows 11’s debut—loads more quickly, particularly when third-party shell extensions are present. In testing, right-clicking a heavily-populated folder shows a near-instantaneous menu, down from a noticeable half-second delay on previous Dev builds. These improvements don’t come with flashy UI changes, but they address real-world pain points that accumulate over a workday.

Every Dev flight carries a payload of fixes, and KB5064075 is no exception. The team tackled a dozen issues spanning File Explorer, Start, Task Manager, input, and system stability.

  • File Explorer received several corrections: icon mirroring in right-to-left layouts no longer flips them incorrectly; tooltips that stubbornly refused to disappear now dismiss as expected; tab duplication no longer causes a flash of the window; desktop icon scaling overlaps have been ironed out; and Narrator’s announcements for file operations are more accurate.
  • Start Menu bugs included an overzealous alphabetical grouping that spawned blank icon categories—now fixed—and a misplacement of Visual Studio’s category that placed it outside the developer tools cluster.
  • Task Manager had a freezing issue in the performance section when switching tabs rapidly, which is resolved. Accessibility improvements include higher contrast for selected elements, better field sizing in the options dialog, and corrected focus handling when tabbing through dialogs.
  • Input users should celebrate the end of a long-standing IME bug that dropped characters after copy‑paste operations. Additionally, older touch‑keyboard IMEs—Changjie, Bopomojo, and Japanese—that had stopped appearing have been restored to functionality.
  • Settings no longer crashes when adding a security key under Sign-in options, a fix that unblocks FIDO2 key enrollments.
  • System stability gets a boost from resolved crashes related to dao360.dll, a legacy database engine component, and a stop error (SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION) that had been hitting a subset of Insiders.

The fixes are a mix of long-tail bug squashing and direct responses to user feedback. The IME character drop, for example, had been reported for months by multilingual users, while the Task Manager freeze was a known issue in the previous two Dev flights.

No preview build would be complete without a list of known issues, and Microsoft has flagged several that could trip up testers.

  • Update rollback errors: Some PCs may encounter error 0x80070005 during the installation, triggering an automatic rollback. The workaround is to retry the update via Windows Update; if it persists, using the ISO from the Insider ISO page may bypass the glitch.
  • Visual Studio crashes on Arm64: A Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) incompatibility causes Visual Studio to crash on Arm64 devices. Microsoft is working on a fix and recommends affected developers use the native Arm64 .NET SDK for console or web projects in the interim.
  • Start Menu layout glitch: After installing the build, the Start menu may temporarily appear smaller than usual, with pinned apps sometimes missing from the Taskbar. Restarting the explorer.exe process or signing out and back in typically resolves the cosmetic issue.

These caveats are standard fare for the Dev Channel, which serves as the bleeding edge of Windows development. Most features aren’t tied to any specific release, but the phone companion redesign and Settings migrations are likely to ship in a future production update—perhaps 24H2 or a later “Moment” release.

The August 8, 2025 flight underscores Microsoft’s multipronged strategy for Windows 11: polish the interface until it feels cohesive, migrate legacy surfaces at a pace that doesn’t break critical workflows, and deepen the ties with mobile devices that have become central to daily life. The phone companion’s new home inside Start is a clear recognition that the taskbar alone isn’t enough; a glanceable feed of phone activity integrated into the launcher could nudge more users to connect their phones. Meanwhile, each round of Control Panel migration eliminates another reason to venture into the old shell, reinforcing confidence that the Settings app will eventually house every configuration option.

For Insiders, Build 26200.5742 is a solid, workable daily-driver candidate—provided you’re not on Arm64 and can tolerate a few transient UI glitches. Those who depend heavily on multi-language input or rely on Task Manager for performance monitoring will find the fixes alone worth the download. As always, the Dev Channel is a two-way street: test the new bits, file feedback, and watch the OS evolve in real time. Microsoft’s August update cycle is off to a strong start, and the coming weeks will likely bring fresh builds with further refinements to these fledgling features.