Windows 11 has some big changes on the way to one of its best accessibility features. Magnifier will soon have a contrast theme that improves visibility by reducing glare. At first glance, the feature appears similar to color inversion, but it works differently in several key ways.
Color inversion changes everything on your screen, including photos, videos, and other forms of media. In contrast (pun intended), contrast themes change the colors of an interface without adjusting media.
Four different contrast themes are in testing currently: Aquatic, Desert, Dusk, and Night sky. I think Microsoft could make these themes more accessible by picking more straightforward names. My prediction is that many will be surprised to see "Aquatic" is quite similar to dark mode and is not blue.
The new contrast themes are available for testing to Windows Insiders in the Experimental Channel. Build 26340.9502 is the first to include the themes.
The contrast themes are entirely separate from color inversion. You can still invert all the colors on your PC if you'd prefer.
That same update also brings improvements to Live Captions, Cloud Rebuild, and Mouse indicator. Here's everything that's rolling out, as shared by Microsoft.
Build 26340.9502: Changes and improvements
Accessibility - Mouse indicator
- We're introducing a sleeker new animation for the Mouse indicator. You can enable this animation under Accessibility settings. We've also added the option to keep the indicator activated until you press the Esc key.
Magnifier
- A new contrast theme toggle for a lower-glare screen. If bright screens are uncomfortable, many people use color inversion to reduce glare. However, inversion changes everything on screen, including photos, charts, and videos. With this update, we're introducing a new contrast theme toggle in Magnifier.
- Reduce glare with a single toggle. Turn on a contrast theme directly from the Magnifier toolbar for a more comfortable viewing experience.
- Choose the contrast theme that works best for you. The dark theme is applied by default, and you can choose which contrast theme the toggle uses under Settings > Accessibility > Magnifier.
- Photos, videos, and charts keep their original colors. Unlike color inversion, the contrast theme recolors the interface without touching your photos, charts, or videos, so they keep their real colors.
- Color inversion is still here. This isn't a replacement. If you use inversion today, it works exactly as it always has. The contrast theme is a separate, purpose-built option to reduce glare when you want a darker interface without inverting colors.
Cloud rebuild
- We're updating Cloud rebuild, the recovery option that restores a Windows 11 PC to a clean, known-good state by performing a full OS reinstall, with two additions.
- Cloud rebuild can now sanitize the device's drives as part of the rebuild. When you start a rebuild in WinRE, choose Remove files if you're keeping the PC, or Remove & sanitize files before recycling, returning, or reassigning it. The sanitize option uses the storage hardware's erase capability to securely erase data before Windows is reinstalled and is irreversible.
- IT administrators can now configure and start a Cloud rebuild remotely through the Recovery CSP, using either the currently installed build or a target build you specify.
Live Captions
- We're improving Live Captions with a new Include Screen Reader audio setting, which is off by default. With the setting off, Live Captions won't transcribe audio from screen readers such as Narrator, JAWS, and NVDA, keeping captions focused on microphone and system audio.
Hyper-V
- Fixed an issue where some applications that used HCS-managed virtual machines experienced issues when sharing host folders with Linux VMs using Plan9. Folders shared from the Windows host using Plan9 didn't appear or couldn't be accessed in the guest environment.
Other
- Fixed an issue where backing up using File History unexpectedly failed with an error saying, "No usable drives found."
Some of the same changes shipped to Insiders in the Beta Channel recently as well, including the improvements to Live Captions and Hyper-V. The Windows Recovery improvements related to Cloud rebuild are also live in the Experimental (26H1) Channel.
Microsoft revamped how its Insider channels work earlier this year, so we often have several builds roll out at once. We'll highlight the biggest changes here at Windows Central. You can always browse through the full documentation on Microsoft's website to see complete change logs for every single build.
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