14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 11 is getting all kinds of refinements, and the most recent preview build shipped to the Dev channel comes with a small change that I’ve personally been waiting for years.
As a user who relies on a VPN connection 24/7, the changes that Microsoft has made in the way VPN connections are handled have sometimes been confusing, to say the least.
In Windows 8.1, for example, enabling a VPN connection was pretty easy, and the same was the case in Windows 10 as well, as you only had to click the network icon in the system tray. In Windows 8, on the other hand, I had to open the Settings app every time I wanted to connect to my VPN server, not to mention that there was no indicator when the connection was active.
Things are far better in Windows 11, so enabling a VPN connection is a pretty straightforward experience. However, the thing that’s still missing is an indicator when the connection is active – this obviously shouldn’t be too much of a headache for Microsoft to make it happen, especially because the easiest way to do it is by turning to a special network icon in the system tray.
As it turns out, I’m not the only one who needs a more convenient way of telling when the VPN connection is active, so the company is now working on shipping such a feature in Windows 11.
The most recent preview build, which was shipped to the Dev channel earlier this week, comes with a new network icon that is activated when the VPN connection is established. This is precisely how the whole thing should work in the first place, as the standard network icon gets a small blue shield when the VPN connection is active.
The new feature, however, is not enabled by default, and users who want to try it out today need to turn to Vivetool to manually activate this new icon.
To do this, download Vivetool, navigate to the root folder and in your terminal app, run the following command:
vivetool /enable /id:38113452
Just reboot the device and the new icon should then show up when the VPN connection is active on your Windows 11 device.
For the time being, there’s no ETA as to when Microsoft could enable the new VPN icon in the Windows Insider program, but without a doubt, it shouldn’t take too long before this happens. Most likely, the VPN icon would show up by the end of the year in a Windows Insider preview build – keep in mind, however, that Microsoft isn’t going to release a new build next week, as the team takes some time off for the holidays.
At the same time, it’s hard to tell when users who aren’t running preview builds would receive the new VPN icon, especially as this feature is currently being tested by Microsoft in the Insider program. However, what everybody should know is that Microsoft doesn’t need to wait for a new feature update for Windows 11 in order to release this kind of improvement for the operating system, as the company can very well use a quality update for the whole thing.
Needless to say, Microsoft has so far remained tight-lipped on this improvement, and while features in the Dev channel come and go, there’s no doubt that a VPN indicator for the network icon makes a lot of sense and should have been there from the very beginning in a modern operating system like Windows 11.