Final Windows 11 Insider Dev Channel build of the year says goodbye to Windows Speech Recognition (WSR)

Windows Insiders Build 23606 has landed in the Dev Channel, marking the final Dev release before we all hibernate for the holidays.

In this update, Microsoft is transitioning from WSR to a new assistive technology called voice access. Voice access provides on-device speech recognition for controlling your PC and writing text without an internet connection. Users are encouraged to migrate to voice access, which will support multiple languages and custom commands in the future.

Another change is that The “Phone Link” settings page under Bluetooth & devices is renamed “Mobile devices.” This change paves the way for future features enabling seamless PC-to-mobile device connectivity.

A couple of known issues have also been mentioned.

• Copilot in Windows: When using voice access for the first time, users may need to manually activate Copilot in Windows by saying “Show grid.”
• Widgets: The Microsoft Start feed may experience loading delays, and its announcements may persist on the taskbar after hiding the feed. Additionally, the Widgets Board may not always automatically close and reopen when enabling or disabling feeds, and keyboard navigation within settings subpages may be inconsistent.

Some Insiders may encounter a download “loop” due to an error. This does not indicate a problem, and the download will eventually succeed.

Again, this update marks the end of Dev Channel releases for 2023. New builds are expected to resume in January 2024.