Earlier today, Microsoft officially started rolling out the Moment 4 update to Windows 11 users. The update brings a subset of features that Microsoft planned for the Windows 11 23H2 update which is due out towards the end of the year.

In preparation for the launch of the new update, Microsoft has shed light on the new features and changes that come to the new update. These features are for developers as Microsoft strives to improve the development experience in Windows 11.

First, Microsoft announced a new option that will allow developers to declare their intent when setting up a new machine for the first time. Microsoft is now asking users about their use case on the “Let’s Personalize Your Experience” page. It will now also include a development option that will allow users to take advantage of Dev Home.

Speaking of Dev Home, the feature is a new addition to Windows 11 and will allow developers to manage all their apps and services from a single screen. Dev Home connects to services like GitHub and offers a dashboard that helps you monitor both system and development projects. The dashboard is customizable and can connect to tools as well as services to bring you the latest data.

Microsoft is also bringing WinGet Configurations to all users with the new Windows 11 update. This was something that Microsoft announced at Build earlier this year and is now making its way to Windows 11. Microsoft has several Samples are available On its website and the company claims it will drastically reduce developer time.

Moving on to Dev Drive, a feature that was also announced at the beginning of the year. Microsoft is finally bringing it to Windows 11 users with the new update. Dev Drive basically allows users to set up a new storage volume that is specially adapted for developers. It is based on Resilient File System (ReFS) and offers better performance as well as security.

Microsoft is also updating Windows Defender with new features to help developers. The company brings asynchronous scanning to development drives, which will offer better performance to developers while protecting against malware. The new options can be controlled from the Windows Defender settings.

Microsoft is also bringing the following improvements to Windows 11 starting today, based on community feedback:

Starting today, all of these improvements will be available in the stable version with the latest Windows 11 update.

Now you can quickly identify and access any instance of any app on the taskbar with just one click. All instances of the app are not grouped with taskbar labels.

You can now hide your time and date using a setting in the taskbar.

You can quickly and easily shut down applications by simply right-clicking the application directly from the taskbar without opening the task manager. This setting can be enabled on the Developer Settings page so that “Task End” appears in the context menu when you right-click the icon in the taskbar.

The developer settings page has moved from “privacy and security” to system. This provides a quick and easily discoverable entry point to developer settings.

You can now get improved performance of the archive functionality during compression on Windows. We’ve added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and many others via the libarchive open source project.

Next on the list is File Explorer. Microsoft is bringing new features to improve the File Explorer experience as well. With the new update, ItemsView will offer “LinedFlowLayout and Island functionality provides an easy way to adopt the WinUI3 look and feel in every part of your app without changing your entire app.” The company has also updated File Explorer with WebUI3 which opens up new features and experiences. Microsoft also introduced multithreading to File Explorer. The feature will greatly improve functions such as copy and paste. Microsoft claims that the new experience features over “40% improvements in bulk deletion operations, giving back time to developers.”

Finally, Microsoft has made updates to the Windows Terminal and the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Windows Terminal is getting new features Like Suggestions UI, Broadcast Input and web search while Windows Subsystem for Linux will come with VM drive auto-shrinking, Hyper-V firewall protection, IPv6 support and more. WSL features are currently under review and you can Sign up for experimental features to try them out.

Note that many of these features will be available with the Moment 4 update starting today. However, you may have to wait for the 23H2 update to get the rest of the features. We have a consolidated article on what’s new in the 23H2 update if you want to get more insight into the upcoming update.