Microsoft released the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview to the Canary channel on Wednesday, introducing two significant upgrades. The biggest inclusion is an update to the Prism emulator for Arm PCs which brings support for additional extensions to devices running Windows 11 on Arm-based chipsets. With this, these devices will be able to run more legacy apps and games, as well as the latest Adobe Premiere Pro 2025. Alongside, the update has also introduced a new on-screen gamepad keyboard.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Gets Updated Prism Emulator
In its Windows Insider blog post, Microsoft announced the release of the Windows 11 Insider Preview build 27744. The new version updates the Prism emulator to let laptops and desktops powered by Arm chipsets such as the Snapdragon X series run unsupported apps and games.
Microsoft says the upgraded Prism will be able to run “more 64-bit x86 (x64) applications by adding support for more CPU features under emulation. This means software such as the Adobe Premiere Pro 2025 as well as legacy gaming titles will now work on these devices.
The newly added CPU extensions with this version of the emulator include AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, F16C, and more. The tech giant highlighted that while these extensions are not necessary to run Windows, however, they have become so common that some apps expect devices to have support for them. Notably, while in preview, only x64 applications will be able to use these new CPU features.
Apart from this, Microsoft has also introduced a new on-screen gamepad keyboard layout in Windows 11 Insider Preview. It supports the ability to utilise the users' Xbox controller to navigate as well as type. The keyboard also comes with button accelerators and has a vertical alignment for better controller navigation.
Additionally, the new Windows 11 build also addresses several bugs and glitches. The design of the Disconnect and Logoff dialog in Task Manager now supports dark mode and text scaling. Another issue where PCs with older Nvidia GPUs saw the display appear as a black screen has also been fixed.
