Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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11.0.0-preview.5.26304.4

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✨ New in .NET 11

The following 22 features and changes are unique to .NET 11 and not yet in the main branch:

Animation

Checkbox

Docs

Drawing

Navigation

Toolbar

🔧 Infrastructure (7)
🧪 Testing (2)
🏠 Housekeeping (1)
📦 Other (6)

Additional Changes (122)

The following changes are also present in the main branch:

Ai Agents

  • Integrate UI test category detection into PR review and fix gate reliability by @kubaflo in #35133

API

Blazor

Button

CollectionView

🔧 Fixes

DateTimePicker

Drawing

Editor

Entry

Essentials

Flyoutpage

Gestures

Image

Label

Layout

Map

  • [Windows] Implement WinUI 3 MapControl handler using Azure Maps by @jfversluis in #34138

Modal

Navigation

Packaging

  • Bump OpenTelemetry packages in Aspire ServiceDefaults template by @jfversluis in #35333

Picker

RadioButton

SafeArea

ScrollView

Searchbar

SearchBar

Shell

SwipeView

Switch

TabbedPage

Templates

Titlebar

WebView

🔧 Fixes

Xaml

🔧 Infrastructure (5)
🧪 Testing (12)
📦 Other (11)

Full Changelog: 11.0.0-preview.4.26230.3...release/11.0.1xx-preview5

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alvinashcraft
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Microsoft just killed the slow Microsoft Store downloads in Windows 11, after years of throttling

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The Windows 11 June 2026 Patch Tuesday update, KB5094126 brings Low Latency Profile, Shared Audio, Multi-App Camera, and a handful of other noteworthy changes. Buried deeper in the changelog, without much fanfare, are two improvements to the Microsoft Store, one addressing a long-standing download speed problem and another fixing a frustrating gap in error reporting for managed devices.

Neither of these fixes will generate hype the way the CPU boost feature does. But for anyone who has watched a 500MB app update crawl through the Store for twenty minutes while the same file would download in under two minutes through a browser, at least one of them will feel this improvement was overdue.

This feature is being rolled out gradually, and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Microsoft Store downloads were throttled for years, and the June update fixes it

Microsoft Store download speed improvement

For a significant portion of Windows 11 users, downloading apps and updates from the Microsoft Store has been noticeably slower than downloading the same files from almost any other source.

The Store would throttle to a fraction of the available connection speed, pause mid-download for no apparent reason, and occasionally get stuck in a pending state that required restarting the app.

It’s not a question about internet speeds or system specifications. For a user with a 1 Gbps connection, Steam downloads take around ten minutes for a full game, but the same hardware on the same connection sees Microsoft Store speeds drop to somewhere between 200KB/s and 4MB/s.

High-end specs like a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a 5070 Ti, and 32GB of RAM sitting idle while the Store slowly grinds through a download is humiliating enough for Windows 11.

Personally, I run into it most often with CapCut updates, which arrive roughly every two months and clock in at around 700MB. Clicking Update in the Store would usually take a long time to even begin, sometimes stall partway through, and occasionally require a restart to finish.

In the screen recording below, after installing the June 2026 update, Microsoft Store download speeds are finally fixed. I’m now staying at a hotel with just a 30Mbps connection, but I am seeing the Store download the CapCut update at around 3MB per second without pauses.

For the first time in my regular use of the app, the download feels like it is actually using the full available connection.

Microsoft’s official description is characteristically understated:

“This update includes underlying changes that improve download performance and bandwidth usage.”

Whatever the “underlying” change is, whether it is a fix to the BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) configuration the Store uses, a change to how download priority is assigned, or an adjustment to how bandwidth is allocated between Store downloads and other system processes, the practical result is that Store downloads are now significantly faster, without any interruption in the process.

Microsoft Store now tells managed devices why downloads are blocked

The second Store fix in the June update addresses a more specific but common issue in corporate and educational PCs.

When certain Windows Update Group Policy settings are enabled on a managed device, downloads from the Microsoft Store can fail silently or show a generic, unhelpful error.

error in Microsoft Store due to Group Policy

What causes this is a known dependency between the Microsoft Store and Windows Update.

The Store uses some of the same download infrastructure as Windows Update, and IT administrators who configure policies to restrict direct Windows Update access, such as the “Do not connect to any Windows Update Internet locations” policy used in environments with internal WSUS or SCCM update servers, can inadvertently block Store downloads as a side effect.

When this happens, users on enterprise or domain-joined devices have historically seen errors like “This install is prevented by policy. Ask your admin to enable Windows Update” with codes like 0x8024500C, without a clear explanation of which specific policy is the cause.

Microsoft’s changelog entry for the June update says it “improves error reporting when downloads fail due to Windows Update group policy settings being enabled.”

In plain terms, when a Group Policy setting is blocking a Store download, the Store will now report that accurately, pointing toward the relevant policy rather than showing a vague failure message.

For IT admins who troubleshoot issues with the Store on managed PCs, a specific policy name in the error message saves a lot of time.

Faster downloads are welcome, but the Microsoft Store still has a sluggish interface

From the screen recording given above, it’s very clear what the issue with the Store is. It’s just too slow. Loading different pages shouldn’t be taking this long.

Scrolling apps in the Microsoft Store isn’t smooth and is borderline laggy.

The Microsoft Store is built on UWP, not WinUI 3 (or WinUI). UWP is the older framework that Microsoft has been gradually moving away from. Scrolling through the app library or the game section feels choppy. Clicking between pages has a frustrating delay.

On a budget Android phone in 2026, the Google Play Store scrolls fluidly at 60fps. On a premium Windows 11 laptop, the Microsoft Store still feels like it is running behind by multiple frames.

Recently, we covered Microsoft’s explanation of why the Gallery section in File Explorer scrolls smoothly but not everywhere else, and the answer was that the parts of File Explorer that were rebuilt in WinUI have smooth scrolling, and the parts that were not still do not.

WinUI renders through the compositor correctly and gets the benefits of frame-rate-independent animation. UWP does not.

Although the technology and application are different, rebuilding the Store in WinUI 3 would likely bring smooth scrolling to it. But WinUI 3 currently has its own problem to work through.

As we reported, Microsoft admitted that WinUI 3 apps have a black screen tearing issue during window resizing. Fortunately, a fix is coming this summer. Once that is resolved, a WinUI 3 version of the Store would be a significant step forward. Currently, the Store, built on UWP, doesn’t have any screen-tearing issues, but resizing it isn’t smooth.

The Store has also not been immune to the AI integration wave that swept through Windows apps last year. We covered how Microsoft was testing a Copilot floating button inside the Microsoft Store to drive app downloads.

Copilot in Microsoft Store

However, it seems like Microsoft has removed this button, which is a good thing.

Microsoft removed Ask Copilot from Microsoft Store

Microsoft has been pulling back Copilot integrations from native Windows apps, and the Store is better for not having a floating AI button when it’s already sluggish enough. Even in Office, Microsoft admitted that the floating Copilot button in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint was a mistake and now lets users hide it.

To be fair to the Store, the use of AI in review summaries that condense user reviews into a quick overview before you install something is a good practical application.

Review Summary in Microsoft Store

Microsoft is not abandoning AI on Windows regardless of the individual retreats, as the company has pledged to make Windows 11 the OS for building AI, but the focus on useful AI over visible AI is a healthier direction for apps like the Store.

Microsoft Store’s download speed fix in the June update is a meaningful improvement, and it is something users will notice in everyday use. But if the software giant wants people to reach for the Store rather than a browser download or Steam, the app needs to feel as smooth as those alternatives.

The macOS App Store is noticeably faster, more responsive, and more visually consistent than what Windows 11 has today. As more developers publish apps built in WinUI on the Store, the app quality inside the Store should improve. But the Store itself needs to follow Microsoft’s recommendation of making apps in WinUI.

That said, the June 2026 Cumulative Update has a bunch of useful features and improvements. Hopefully, we’ll see more improvements in the Store as the year goes by.

The post Microsoft just killed the slow Microsoft Store downloads in Windows 11, after years of throttling appeared first on Windows Latest

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The evolution of agentic surfaces: building with Claude Managed Agents

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The evolution of agentic surfaces: building with Claude Managed Agents
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Decoding Copilot Token Costs Using VS Code

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Learn to read VS Code's Copilot token logs and calculate the exact AIC cost of each request step by step.

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Microsoft Reportedly Cuts Hundreds of Azure Jobs in China

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Microsoft reportedly cut 200 to 400 Azure jobs in China as US and Chinese data rules tighten around cloud operations.

The post Microsoft Reportedly Cuts Hundreds of Azure Jobs in China appeared first on TechRepublic.

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alvinashcraft
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Xbox exploring ‘radically different’ console business models

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Picture of the Xbox Series X, showing its power button and vent.

The RAMageddon crisis has got Microsoft rethinking its Xbox console hardware business. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox strategy chief Matthew Ball have both revealed this week that Microsoft is reevaluating plans for its next-generation Project Helix console and exploring "radically different" console business models in the meantime.

"We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it's flexible," said Ball in an interview with The Game Business

Read the full story at The Verge.

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alvinashcraft
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