Microsoft is making it easier to track NPU utilizations and apps running in an AppContainer.
The latest Windows 11 preview builds Microsoft released this week do not contain much, and we are still waiting for the company to ship some of the promised “fixes” for the operating system. However, there are some interesting changes for Task Manager, a critical component of every Windows PC. With build 26300.8142, Microsoft is improving hardware utilization tracking, allowing you to see which apps use your PC’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and which apps run in containers.
Now, when you go to the Processes tab in the updated Task Manager, you can add new columns for NPU usage and NPU Engine. They will let you sort processes by NPU load so that you can better understand what is utilizing your Neural Processing Unit at the moment, which is useful when you work with apps that support local AI processing on dedicated hardware. Just keep in mind that these tabs are available on systems with dedicated NPUs and systems with NPUs integrated into graphics cards.
Here is what Microsoft says in the release notes:
We’re updating Task Manager to provide better insight into NPU usage for PCs that include an NPU. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are now available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages. The Details page also adds NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns to give you deeper visibility into how workloads are using NPU resources. Additionally, if there are neural engines that are part of a GPU, they will now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI‑related system activity.
If you have a device with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit, you can enable NPU-related columns in Task Manager by right-clicking one of the columns. They are optional, so if you do not care about the NPU, you can leave everything as is.
Finally, in addition to new columns for the NPU, Microsoft now lets you see apps that are running in an AppContainer, a special mode where the app has no access outside its “sandbox.” The new Isolation column is available on the Processes and Details pages, while NPU-related columns can be shown on Processes, Details, and Users.
You can find the rest of the changelog for the latest Windows 11 Dev build in our dedicated article.