Windows 10 Windows 10 Insider Preview

ussnorway · Nov 5, 2016

so windows 10, riddled with bugs... thats not news imo

kemical · Nov 16, 2016

New build released to the slow ring for PC users:

NOVEMBER 9, 2016 10:02 AM
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14965 for Mobile and PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

UPDATE 11/16: We have released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14965 for PC only to Windows Insiders in the Slow ring.

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14965 for Mobile and PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

Language Packs for PC have been slightly delayed for this build. For those of you with Language Packs installed, we recommend holding off checking for updates and taking this build until the Language Packs are published. We expect these to be fully published later today. UPDATE: Language Packs for PC are now available.

What’s new in Build 14965
Controlling external monitors from tablets just got easier (PC): You can now drive content on a second display from your tablet without ever having to attach a mouse. The virtual touchpad lets you do more with a tablet and a second screen – just connect to another monitor, PC, or TV, go to Action Center and tap on the “Project” Quick Action to extend your screen. Use it just like you would a physical touchpad to control content on the connected screen. To enable it, press and hold on the taskbar and select “Show touchpad button”. A touchpad icon will now appear in the notification area (just like Windows Ink Workspace does), and tapping on it will bring it up the virtual touchpad.

You’ve seen the work we’ve been doing for precision touchpad customization with the last few builds, and the virtual touchpad is no exception. While the virtual touchpad is open, go to Settings > Devices > Touchpad and you’ll be able to tweak the touchpad settings to your preferences.

Sticky Notes update (PC): Windows Insiders in the Fast ring will receive will receive Sticky Notes app update to version 1.2.9.0 today and we’re very excited to share what it includes!

We’ve expanded our support for Insights to many more languages and regions, with even more to come in further updates, stay tuned! Specifically, with this version:

We’ve added flight detection for Germany (Germany), in more English locales (Canada, Great Britain, India, Arabia), Spanish (Spain & Mexico), French (France, Canada), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), and Portuguese (Brazil).

We’ve added email & URL recognition for every locale (except Chinese (simplified or traditional), Korean, or Japanese, which we’re still working on).

We’ve added phone number recognition to all English, German, Spanish, French and Italian locales.

We’ve added address recognition support for English (Great Britain) and Spanish (United States).

We’ve added time recognition (prompting to create a Cortana reminder) to English (Great Britain), English (Australia) and English (India).

We’ve added stock recognition (for example, $MSFT) to English (Australia), English (Canada), English (India), German (Germany), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), French (France), French (Canada), Japanese (Japan) and Portuguese (Brazil).

If Insights in Sticky Notes isn’t turned on automatically for you, tap “…” > Settings gear > “Enable insights”. Note: The language and region used to detect Insights in Sticky Notes is based off of the active keyboard. We’re currently investigating some issues where Insights may not show up as expected if you switch keyboards while typing in Sticky Notes.

We’ve fixed some issues with Undo and Redo (CTRL + Z/CTRL + Y) while typing, so they’ll now do so more reliably.

We’ve improved the performance of text input while typing.

It’s now easier than ever to get the latest Sticky Notes app updates. When our next update is available, we’ll show an in-app prompt so all you have to do is click ‘Update’.

We’ve also done a whole lot of UI/UX polishing and performance improvements that we hope you enjoy.

We’re been making a bunch of improvements based on your feedback, and have more to come, so let us know what you’d like to see next! In recent versions of Sticky Notes, we’ve added support for many of your favorite keyboard shortcuts, including CTRL + B (bold), CTRL + I (italic), CTRL + N (new note) and CTRL + D (delete note), added a new context menu for easy copy/paste, reduced the minimum note size for typists, as well as generally improved our reliability and performance.

Windows Ink Workspace Improvements (PC): This build includes a number of improvements to the Windows Ink Workspace.

We increased the number of Recently Used apps shown in the Windows Ink Workspace to 6, and added a link to quickly access your pen settings.

We’ve improved the performance of loading Sketchpad when there’s a lot of ink present on the sketch.

We’ve updated the new protractor, so that you can use the scroll-wheel on your mouse to shrink/expand it (depending on the direction of the scrolling).

We fixed an issue where, when using Sticky Notes in the Windows Ink Workspace, the background would ding when tapped.

We fixed an issue where inking and resizing the protractor at the same time would result in Sketchpad crashing.

We’ve updated the “Pen & Windows Ink” Settings for pen users to now include a link to the handwriting training tool – simply click on “Get to know my handwriting” to launch it. We’ve also improved how we learn from your handwriting samples – try it out and let us know what you think!

Enhancing the Address Bar in Registry Editor (PC): We were really excited to hear how excited you were about the new address bar in Registry Editor, and based on your feedback, we’ve already incorporated two new features:

You can now use CTRL + L to set focus to the address bar – while we already supported ALT + D, we recognize that some people prefer this keyboard shortcut instead, so now you have the option to use either one

You can now use shorthand notation for HKEY names – you told us that when sharing registry paths you always use shorthand notation (HKCU) instead of typing out the full HKEY name (i.e. HKEY_CURRENT_USER), so we should support them in the address bar, and you know what? We agree! You can now just use “HKCR”, “HKCU”, “HKLM”, and “HKU” instead of typing or pasting the respective full name “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT”, “HKEY_CURRENT_USER”, “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, or “HKEY_USERS” into the address bar.

Improving Your Hyper-V VM experience (PC): Following the new VM scaling options mentioned in last week’s build, we’ve fixed an issue where depending on the zoom level selected, the VM window might not be created large enough to avoid scrollbars, despite their being enough space for it. We also updated the logic so that when you pick a particular zoom level, that zoom level preference will be preserved for the next VM connection. Along the way, we fixed an issue where the title bar of a maximized VM window would be occluded when taskbar had been set to on top.

Other improvements and fixes for PC

We have fixed the issue causing Internet Explorer to crash a few seconds after launch.

We fixed an issue where, when using Cortana in French (France or Canada), the “Prendre une <photo/video/selfie>” (take a picture, video, or selfie) command was redirecting to a Bing search rather than opening the Camera app as expected.

We’ve made some graphics improvements so the system will now respond better when WIN + L is pressed while playing a full screen game.

We’ve updated the ALT + F4 Shutdown dialog to better respond to DPI changes when connected to an external monitor. We also fixed an issue where the tooltips for the taskbar notification area items would be incorrectly sized after a DPI change until rebooting the machine or otherwise signing out and back in.

We’ve fixed an issue where File Explorer might crash when creating or renaming a folder on a network share.

We fixed an issue resulting in the text on the Outlook Calendar tile on the Start menu being slightly fuzzy.

We fixed an issue where deleted files might reappear in File Explorer with a 0 byte size.

We fixed an issue resulting in a Windows Default Lock Screen window sometimes appearing after logging in.

We fixed an issue resulting in File Explorer crashing after right-clicking an app in Task Manager and selecting “Open File Location”.

We’ve updated our migration logic so that going forward from Build 14965, preferred UAC settings, startup shortcuts, and File Explorer folders that had been pinned to the Start menu will all now be preserved across upgrades.

We fixed an issue resulting in vertical lists written in XAML, such as those found in Groove Music, unexpectedly animating in from the side.

We fixed an issue resulting in Cortana crashing if you typed “Create an appointment” then clicked on the resulting suggestion to “Create an appointment”.

We fixed an issue where in Microsoft Edge, after cancelling a file download, the progress bar for the next file downloaded might appear to be stuck at the point at which the old file’s download was at when it was cancelled.

We fixed an issue that could result in the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) periodically showing the candidate window in the upper left corner of the desktop and not being able to enter text into the Office 2016 apps and some other text editors.

Other improvements and fixes for Mobile

We fixed an issue where, when using Cortana in French (France or Canada), the “Prendre une <photo/video/selfie>” (take a picture, video, or selfie) command was redirecting to a Bing search rather than opening the Camera app as expected.

We fixed an issue resulting in Cortana crashing if you typed “Create an appointment” then tapped on the resulting suggestion to “Create an appointment”.

We improved the performance for English (India) text prediction.

We fixed an issue in Data Usage Settings, where after selecting the data plan to be unlimited, it would still prompt to set a limit. We’ve also made it easier in the Data Usage Settings for those with dual SIM phones to differentiate between the cellular data use on each SIM, and fixed a few other polish issues, including that the sort by dropdown on the Usage Details page was unexpectedly wide.

We fixed an issue where Narrator wasn’t giving feedback when adjusting sliders, for example in Settings, or in the Volume flyout.

We fixed a migration issue resulting in Microsoft Edge to fail to launch for some Insiders after updating to a new build.

November 2016 Bug Bash Update
This week we kicked off our internal Bug Bash and are including Windows Insiders, which will run through Sunday November 13th. Everything you need to know about how to get started with the Bug Bash can be found in the Feedback Hub article here. This build can be used for the Bug Bash. We wanted to take a moment and say THANK YOU for participating in the Bug Bash alongside us and providing great feedback. Engineering teams are actively going through your feedback, understanding the issues, prioritizing, and then determining what next to do. Your feedback counts and goes a long way in helping shape Windows 10 as we make important engineering decisions! If you have feedback on how the November 2016 Bug Bash is going for you, let us know.

We will be live streaming Bug Bush Quests at Beam | Interactive Livestreamingthis weekend if you want to join us in completing Quests together. We will be online Saturday November 12th from 1-3PM PST (21:00 UTC).

Known issues for PC

Double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer will crash Microsoft Excel. The workaround is to open the document from within Excel.

Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt may freeze at the splash screen on launch.

ADDED 11/10: If your Surface Pro 3 has a SD memory card inserted, it will get stuck at “Working on Updates 22%”. If you remove the SD memory card, the update should complete normally.

ADDED 11/12: Apps such as Store, Photos, and People may launch on their own after your PC has been inactive for a period of time. To stop these apps from launching on their own, un-maximize the app before closing it.

ADDED 11/16: Using keyboard monitor hotkeys to adjust brightness won’t work as expected. Desired brightness change could be done via the Action Center or by going to Settings > System > Display.

Known issues for Mobile

If you used the previous ‘date change’ workaround to update to Build 14951 or Build 14955: Please don’t use it any longer! The Microsoft account (MSA) ticket on your device needs to expire and then you’ll be offered today’s build. If you changed your date by 30 years… you’ll want to do a device reset.

You will be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs on your phone for the next few weeks. If you have existing languages, keyboards, and speech packs installed – they will carry over when you update to new builds. You just can’t install any new ones. If you do a hard reset of your phone on these builds – you will also be unable to install additional languages, keyboards, and speech packs. You can use Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 10 Mobile, install any languages, keyboards, and speech packs you need and then update to the latest build in the Fast ring as a workaround.

Team Updates
How are you all enjoying the Bug Bash this week? One of my favorite things to do during these is to use or build a tech that I am not as familiar with so that I am a.) using the product in a different way and b). learning something new. This week, I am investing some deeper IoT learnings. A few weeks ago at Ignite NZ, I attended a session on Smart Cities made with IoT. Of course, this was a fascinating talk about how using the cloud, automation, sensors and data, we are able to build far more energy-efficient, safer, more connected buildings. I’ve been continuing my investigating of Smart Cities and have loved learning more about our partner company AvePoint’s Smart City app that they demoed at Worldwide Partner Conference in July, but unveiled just recently as a trial called Try Citizen Services (a Windows 10 app) and the fastest/easiest way to demo/trial AvePoint Citizen Services. I found this to be a really cool self-guided, click-through demo of the solution.

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Richard Hay @WinObs
So apparently @donasarkar prepares for her MVP Summit keynote by applying her #Winsiders4Good Branding. #MVPBuzz

4:46 PM - 7 Nov 2016 Retweets 1010 likes

A lot more about this can be found available on AppSource. I plan to do an experiment with Azure IoT and Windows 10 to see if I can “smartly” build up my neighborhood in Seattle!

The MVP Summit kicked off earlier this week in Redmond. I had a blast getting to meet many Windows Insiders at the MS Dev Show meetup where I talked about future-tech and innovation.

Bill Karagounis, Jeremiah Marble and I also did session on CoCreating for our Community and Inside the Windows Insider Program which resulted in quite a lively discussion with our Insiders! Slides can be found here.

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Michael Gillett @MichaelGillett
Yesterday I asked @AimeeJayne3 to be my wife, she said yes!

2:48 AM - 8 Nov 2016
22 Retweets 8080 likes

And on a more personal note, congrats to Windows Insider Michael Gillett and Aimee Hardwick both of who I had the pleasure of meeting last Saturday night. They just got engaged on top of the Space Needle during the MVP Summit!

#WIndowsInsiderLove

Thank you everyone and keep hustling,
Dona

UPDATED NOVEMBER 16, 2016 1:02 PM

Reference:
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14965 for Mobile and PC

kemical · Nov 17, 2016

New release on the fast ring, Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971 for PC :

NOVEMBER 17, 2016 10:01 AM
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 14971
Read EPUB books in Microsoft Edge: The reading experience will get even better with the Windows 10 Creators Update! In addition to providing a great reading experience for PDF files – you can now read any unprotected e-book in the EPUB file format with Microsoft Edge. When you open an unprotected e-book in Microsoft Edge, you will be taken into a customizable reading experience where you can change the font and text size and choose between 3 themes: light, sepia, and dark. As you read, you can leave bookmarks. To navigate through an e-book, you can use the table of contents or seek bar at the bottom of the browser. And you can also search for words or phrases and use Cortana to define specific words.

You can download and read unprotected e-books from places like Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Free eBooks (requires sign-up), ePubBooks (requires sign-up), Open Library and even our own Microsoft Press. Try out reading an e-book in Microsoft Edge and let us know what you think!

Bringing 3D to Everyone via the Paint 3D Preview app: Starting with this build and going forward, the Paint 3D Preview app is now included as part of Windows 10. Opening Paint from Start will now take you to the Paint 3D Preview app. Please try it out and let us know what you think we should improve or add next! Currently, Paint 3D Preview is only available in English (aka, regardless of your display language, the text will be in English) – support for other languages will be coming soon. Remix 3D Preview, the community counterpart to Paint 3D Preview, is expanding to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland for Windows Insiders today! Remix 3D Preview is currently only available in English but we will continue to expand our region and language support. You can check it out at Remix3D.com and from within the Paint 3D Preview app.

PowerShell in the Shell: In an effort to bring the best command line experiences to the forefront for all power users, PowerShell is now the defacto command shell from File Explorer. It replaces Command Prompt (aka, “cmd.exe”) in the WIN + X menu, in File Explorer’s File menu, and in the context menu that appears when you shift-right-click the whitespace in File Explorer. Typing “cmd” (or “powershell”) in File Explorer’s address bar will remain a quick way to launch the command shell at that location. For those who prefer to use Command Prompt, you can opt out of the WIN + X change by opening Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, and turning “Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right-click the Start button or press Windows key+X” to “Off”.

Fun fact! It’s PowerShell’s 10 year anniversary this week. Hop over to Channel 9to see some of the videos we’ve been sharing about it. If you’re looking to learn more about unleashing the “power” in PowerShell, this page is a great resource.

Improved Typing Experience with Japanese and Chinese Input Method Editors (IMEs): This build includes many improvements in this space – here are some of the highlights:

Improved Chinese IME reliability. In particular, we fixed an issue where the IME might crash due to an incompletely downloaded or corrupted dictionary file

Improved Conversion Accuracy for the Japanese IME. We also fixed various issues, in particular, when conversion was used mixed with prediction, and an UX issue when trying to change phrase segmentation.

Improved resource usage when typing with the Japanese IME. In particular, we fixed an issue that could result in unexpected graphic glitches after using the IME for an extended period of time.

Get Office (Beta): We’ve heard your feedback about the Get Office app, and today we’re happy to announce Get Office version 2.0 for Insiders in the Fast ring! (Well, technically, version 17.7614.2377.0). Whereas before Get Office was largely a collection of links to help you get started with Office, the new and improved app will help you explore and manage your Office experience. Easily discover and launch apps and see all your recent Office documents in one place! We still have the familiar help links, but we’ve redesigned the experience to make easier to find what you’re looking for. As you try out the new app, please log feedback – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

First introduced to Insiders in Build 14926, the experimental “Snooze” action on a tab in Microsoft Edge which provides you with a way to set a Cortana reminder on the website you are viewing is no longer available. Based on data we gathered and feedback we received, we decided to remove it from the product and re-evaluate the feature for a future release.

We’ve improved reliability when using the protractor and inking in Sketchpad.

We’ve updated some of our desktop wizards (including “map a network drive” and “extract from zip”) to now be proportionally sized when moved across monitors.

We fixed an issue where Magnifier’s keyboard shortcuts sometimes wouldn’t work on the Lock screen.

We fixed an issue that could result in sometimes not being able to completely remove files in the Windows.old folder using Disk Cleanup.

We have enabled OAuth support for Yahoo Mail accounts. This will improve sync reliability for those accounts, and provide a more secure experience in the Outlook Mail app.

We fixed an issue where trying to shut down the PC while certain Device Manager dialog boxes were open would result in the PC being stuck at the “Restarting…” screen.

We fixed an issue where, as closing multiple tabs with middle click in Microsoft Edge, the width of the tabs might change, resulting in potentially unexpectedly closing the wrong tab.

We fixed an issue where the copy link option when right-clicking a hyperlink in Microsoft Edge wasn’t work.

We fixed an issue where, if you changed the size of the Microsoft Edge window, and then closed the app by closing the final tab, the next time Microsoft Edge is launched it would once again be the default size, rather than retaining the preferred window size.

We fixed an issue where pinned tabs in Microsoft Edge were not being restored.

We’ve made a number of translation improvements, including for Chinese speakers fixing a translation error in the dialog that appears when installing multiple fonts at once, as well as one in Settings > System > Battery. If you see any other translations that aren’t as you’d expect, please log feedback – we’re listening!

We fixed an issue where, if you already hand a notification expanded in the Action Center, clicking the chevron to expand a second notification would result in it expanding then immediately closing.

We fixed an issue where preferred Start menu width might not be preserved after rebooting.

Known issues for PC

Navigating to Settings > System > Battery will crash the Settings app.

Using keyboard monitor hotkeys to adjust brightness won’t work as expected. Desired brightness change could be done via the Action Center or by going to Settings > System > Display.

Apps such as Store, Photos, and People may launch on their own after your PC has been inactive for a period of time. To stop these apps from launching on their own, un-maximize the app before closing it.

Double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer will crash Microsoft Excel. The workaround is to open the document from within Excel.

Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt may freeze at the splash screen on launch.

As we have previously announced we are working on the Windows Holographic Shell that is going to be included in the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update. In today’s flight you will see the Windows Holographic First Run app. While you will be able to launch the app and walk through the first few screens, it won’t detect any hardware. This app and the Windows Holographic Shell is still under active development here at Microsoft and with our partners.

Team Updates
Last week, the Windows Insiders team had several sessions as part of the MVP Summit as well as a #WindowsInsiders dinner. It was awesome to hear everyone’s passion for the future of Windows products!

We love seeing our Windows Insiders organize #WINsiders4Good events on their own! This is exactly why we created the DIY kit and we love seeing you all use it to build relationships and solve problems in your communities.

There is an event happening on London on 12/15 hosted by Michael Gillett, so please register if you are able to attend.

Please note that we will not be releasing any new builds next week. Next week is the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. and much of the team is taking some well-deserved time off to celebrate the holiday with their families.

Thank you everyone and keep hustling,
Dona

UPDATED NOVEMBER 17, 2016 11:54 AM

Ref:
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971 for PC

kemical · Nov 23, 2016

kemical · Dec 5, 2016

As of Friday 2nd of December 2016 Microsoft paused the Insider Program! This is so that the UUP or Unified Update Platform can be made ready although it will be released internally first.

UPDATE 12/2: We are getting ready to start releasing PC builds to Insiders using UUP. To prepare for this, we are going to pause all PC builds for both the Fast and Slow rings starting this evening (Friday 12/2). We will begin flighting the latest builds via UUP starting with our internal rings first then to Insiders based on each ring’s promotion criteria. We’re excited to be able to release builds for PC to Insiders using UUP! Mobile builds are not impacted by this.

Reference

After releasing Windows 10 Preview build 14977 for mobile earlier this week, Microsoft has updated its announcement post to state that Windows 10 PC Preview builds on the Fast and Slow rings are now paused.

We are getting ready to start releasing PC builds to Insiders using UUP. To prepare for this, we are going to pause all PC builds for both the Fast and Slow rings starting this evening (Friday 12/2). We will begin flighting the latest builds via UUP starting with our internal rings first then to Insiders based on each ring’s promotion criteria. We’re excited to be able to release builds for PC to Insiders using UUP! Mobile builds are not impacted by this.

Microsoft is gearing up to release its Unified Update Platform on to Windows 10 PCs, after its introduction to Windows 10 Mobile previously. The Unified Update Platform (UUP) allows updates to only download the changes that have been made, rather than downloading the entire Operating System each time – wasting bandwidth and causing the update process to take much longer than necessary.

The first builds with UUP in are being flighted via Microsoft’s internal rings to begin with, before being pushed out to Windows Insiders. There is no set date on when new builds will begin being pushed again. Windows 10 Mobile builds will still be rolled out as normal.

Windows 10 Mobile builds will still be rolled out as normal.

Reference

Introducing Unified Update Platform (UUP)
By Bill Karagounis / Director of Program Management, Windows Insider Program & OS Fundamentals

We’ve updated over 400 million devices running Windows 10 to date and release new builds to Windows Insiders nearly every week. That is pretty incredible if you think about where we were just 2 years ago. But we know we can do even better! Our customers have told us they would like updates to be more seamless, that they’d like more control over the timing of when updates are installed, that they’d like updating to require less local processing and thus improve battery life, and that they’d like download sizes to be reduced. We’re working on all of the above. In the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we added active hours and improved the control capabilities for our customers. In the next Windows 10 update, we’ll be improving that and more. Today, we are ready to roll out to our Windows Insiders an improvement that works across PC, tablet, phone, IoT, and HoloLens. We are announcing the next generation of our delivery technologies incorporated into our latest Insider builds called the Unified Update Platform (UUP).

One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you’ll see in download size on PCs. We have converged technologies in our build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for all devices built on the Mobile and PC OS. A differential download package contains only the changes that have been made since the last time you updated your device, rather than a full build. As we rollout UUP, this will eventually be impactful for PCs where users can expect their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another. We’re working on this now with the goal of supporting this for feature updates after the Windows 10 Creators Update; Insiders will see this sooner.

We have also revamped how devices check for updates, making them more efficient. As we move to UUP, we are reducing the update data sent to client devices as well as the amount of processing we are doing on devices, this especially important for devices built on the Mobile OS. Using UUP, when your device checks for updates, the Windows Update service will evaluate which updates are needed by a given device. The Windows Update service then returns these updates to the device for download and install. Because more processing is being done by the service, this will lead to faster checks for update operations. It’s important to note that with UUP, nothing will look or behave differently on the surface, UUP is all underlying platform and service optimization that happens behind the scenes.

We’ve also taken concepts that existed in the PC world and have extended them to Mobile. As you may have noticed in the past, PC flights update to the latest build in one operation, regardless of what base build you are currently running, yet that’s not how it worked for the Mobile OS. On your phone, we would sometimes require you to install in two-hops (updates) to get current. With UUP, we now have logic in the client that can automatically fallback to what we call a “canonical” build, allowing you to update your phone in one-hop, just like the PC.

We’re excited to start using UUP to release new builds to Windows Insiders. We plan to roll-out UUP in stages – starting today for Mobile devices. We expect to start using UUP for PC Insider builds later this year and then IoT and HoloLens shortly after. Our team is excited to begin publishing Mobile builds using UUP and seeing the results of a lot of hard work in unifying our update publishing platform for Windows.

Thanks,
Bill
@billkar44

Reference

kemical · Dec 8, 2016

Microsoft release Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring:

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

Hello Windows Insiders!

It smells like snow up in Redmond-town and you know what that means? A big ole pile o’ features to keep us company during SNOWpocalyse! Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 14986
Making Cortana awesomer:

Turn off your computer, change volume with voice commands: Being able to control your computer with just your voice is one of the top requests we get with Cortana, so we’re excited to say that we’ve added several new features to Cortana that let you do just that. Now you can shut down your PC just by asking Cortana. You can also restart, lock, or put the system to sleep, and raise and lower your system volume with just your voice. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Cortana loves music: You can now use Cortana to control music playback on more of your favorite music apps (EN-US only). Starting with this build, we’ve enabled natural language compatibility for iHeartRadio and TuneIn Radio. This will work on both, above the lock screen (PC is locked) as well as below! You can try queries like…

Play <Artist/Track/Title/Genre> on <AppName>
Play Drake on iHeartRadio
Play Christmas music on iHeartRadio
Play NPR Hourly News on TuneIn
Play jazz music on TuneIn

Play <Frequency/Call Letters> on <AppName>
Play 90.3 on iHeartRadio
Play KUOW on TuneIn

While you are listening to music in one of these apps, you can also use your voice to control playback and volume. With radio stations, we often want to know what that catchy tune is that has played a million times, so we added support for “What’s Playing”. Try saying “Hey Cortana, What song is Playing?” and it will work for all apps playing music. As a bonus, we made Cortana smarter by remembering the last played music app so you don’t have to say “on Groove” over and over. All you need to do is say your desired app one time, something like “Play jazz music on iHeartRadio”; then the next time, just say “Play rock music” and it will play on iHeartRadio. Please look for the Quest and give us feedback!

Adding music recognition support to Chinese (Simplified): Cortana can now recognize music for customers in China. Simply tap the music notes icon in the top corner of Cortana’s home page, and Cortana will listen to whatever music is playing and use Netease to tell you what song it is. This works exactly like the feature does in English (United States). You can also say “Hey Cortana, what’s playing?” (except, in Chinese, of course, so you’d say 你好小娜，这是什么歌) and Cortana will start listening to the song.

Full screen when Idle: We’ve made major improvements to Cortana’s look when using “Hey Cortana” when your PC is unlocked and idle. When your PC is in this state, asking Cortana questions will result in a gorgeous full-screen experience that is optimized for far field viewing! Give it a try by enabling “Hey Cortana” and then wait for about 10 seconds or so without touching your PC. May we recommend asking to see if it will snow tomorrow?

Cortana sign-in using Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity: This capability will allow you to sign into Cortana with your work or school account instead your MSA, enabling you to use Cortana even if your organization does not support MSA. To sign in to Cortana using your work or school account, just go to Cortana’s Notebook and “About Me” and sign in. You’ll get the full Cortana experience with most of the same features.AAD join is currently only available on Windows 10 PCs.

Enterprise Cloud Printing: The new Enterprise Cloud Printers discovery UI under Settings > Devices > Printers & scanners will enable corporate users to discover corporate printers when on Azure Active Directory joined devices when the IT admin deploys and configures the backend services.

This feature requires the corresponding backend services to work, which are not yet available. Please continue to use existing UI to discover and install printers in the interim.

Windows Game Bar improved full-screen support: With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we added support for six full screen games in Game Bar. For the Windows 10 Creators Update, we’re working on adding many more. In this build, we’ve added support for 19 additional games in full-screen mode with Windows game bar. As always, just hit WIN + G to invoke Game Bar to capture a recording or screenshot.

ARMA 3

Battlefield 1

Civilization V

Dark Souls III

Fallout 4

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Mad Max

Mafia 2

NBA 2K16

Overwatch

Star Wars: The Old Republic

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

The Binding of Isaac

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Terraria

Tom Clancy’s The Division

Total War: WARHAMMER

Warframe

World of Tanks

Tip: You can control this feature through the Windows Game bar settings. In the settings dialog, look for the “Show Game bar when I play full-screen games” checkbox. See Major Nelson’s post on Game bar for more info on how to adjust settings for best game performance.

Taking your Windows Ink experience to the next level: We’ve already announced and released some of the improvements that will be coming for our pen and Windows Ink users with the Creators Update, and with this build we’re excited to announce some more!

Resuming previous screen sketches: We’ve heard your feedback that it can be too easy to accidentally lose your Screen Sketch sketch, so we’re excited to announce that with build 14986 you can now resume previous sketches! By default, when you open Screen Sketch, it will always open to a new screenshot, but now you can click on the Resume button and it will take you back to the sketch you were working on when Screen Sketch last closed.

Updated Ink Flyout Visuals: The Windows Ink pen, pencil and highlighter flyouts now show a preview of what it would look like to ink with the currently selected color and width. This improvement will be visible in any app that uses Windows Ink with the Windows 10 Creators Update SDK. We’ve also updated the flyouts so that they’ll no longer show what appear to be duplicate color entries when in high contrast, now support using the Esc key to close the flyout, and have returned the flyout to dismissing once you tap a color or change the width (rather than staying open until you manually close it)

Finer control over ruler rotation: We’ve updated the Windows Ink ruler to now rotate in sub-degree increments when you’re moving it with touch, so as to make it easier to line the ruler up with two points on the screen

Polishing your inking experience: The cursor will no longer be shown while you’re inking – we believe this makes the experience feel even more like pen on paper.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

New Extensions in Microsoft Edge: Great news! We have new extensions to share with Windows 10 users. Please take a look at Ebates, Intel TrueKey, and Read & Write. Try them out and send feedback to the Feedback Hub or @MSEdgeDev on Twitter.

Updated Rendering Technology: We’ve changed the rendering technology used for many types of UWP app content, so please provide feedback through the Feedback Hub if you notice any new visual glitches in UWP apps. For additional context on this change, we are now widely using the same Windows.UI.Composition API that app developers have access to for XAML UWP app and shell rendering.

Narrator improvements: Making our products more accessible is a goal of ours and improving the experience when using Narrator is a big part of that. As such, this flight comes with a number of improvements, including:

Narrator has a new feature to give you additional information about fonts, colors, line spacing, margins and more. Press Caps Lock + F to hear this information. Continue to press Caps Lock + F to cycle through nine categories of information. Use Shift + Caps Lock + F to move through these categories in reverse.

The default level for a Narrator feature called Context Awareness is now set to 2. You will hear additional information as you move around areas such as the Start Menu, Office ribbon and more about the areas you are in. Use Alt + Caps Lock + / to cycle through the different options. Zero means off for the feature.

The key to get advanced information about the item with focus has been changed to Caps Lock + 0 from Caps Lock + F in Narrator.

We fixed an issue from recent flights where Narrator would only say “No item in view” when placing focus on the Start menu tiles.

If you haven’t already read our plan for what to expect in 2017 with the Windows 10 Creators Update, and Office 365 – we invite you to go over it now. Lots of exciting things yet to come!

New Windows Defender dashboard: We are making it easier for you to view and control Windows 10 device security and health features available on your PC or tablet with the availability of a new dashboard coming in the Windows 10 Creators Update. Windows Insiders will get a preview of the new experience beginning today. After upgrading to this build, Insiders will have to restart their PC. After that, they can find the dashboard by searching for “Windows Defender” and clicking on the search result that says “Windows Defender/Trusted Windows Store app”. Remember, the dashboard is a work-in-progress and not fully functional just yet.

Registry Editor improvements: Continuing our theme of enhancing your registry experience, we’ve taken your feedback and added the familiar File Explorer keyboard navigation shortcuts to Registry Editor, so you can now easily go up (Alt+ Up arrow), backwards (Alt + Left arrow) or forwards (Alt + Right arrow) in the registry. We’ve also added a new entry point in the View menu so you can customize the font Registry Editor uses.

The USB Audio 2 Class Driver and You: Previous builds flighted to Windows Insiders have contained a Microsoft class driver for devices that support the USB Audio 2.0 standard. However, if you had a third-party driver which was specifically written for your device, Windows would use that instead. In order to get more miles on the class driver, we are temporarily changing things as of 14986 to prefer the class driver over third-party drivers – this is so we can flush out device compatibility issues and other bugs in our driver.

When you have a chance, please go through all your regular listening scenarios and see how they sound (we’ll be adding a Quest about this too!). If everything works fine for you, awesome! If you do run into a problem where our class driver does not work with your device, please let us know by filing a problem report, and then manually switching to your specific third-party driver

Some things that we are already aware of:

Our class driver does not support ASIO

Our class driver does not work in WASAPI exclusive mode in certain applications

For the most recent information on USB Audio in Microsoft Windows, see Installing the Microsoft class driver(s) for USB Audio devices.

Improved Update Experience: Windows strives to keep your device running the most secure, reliable and feature rich version of Windows available with minimum impact to you. We’ve heard your feedback, and as such, 14986 comes with two more improvements in this space:

Involving you more when specifying a time to update: For some of you though, receiving these updates has resulted in your device not being available for use when you needed it. For those of you that happened to fall into this category, you will be happy to see that we now have moved to involving you more in specifying when to successfully apply a pending update. If Windows Update in unable to find a good time to restart your machine to apply the latest updates, you will now get be prompted to “restart now”, “Schedule” a time that works for you, or simply “Remind me later” which will not apply the update but offer you these options again.

Improving Windows 10 in Asia
Along with Cortana’s new music recognition support for Chinese (Simplified) that we mentioned above, we’ve also done a few more things to improve the Windows 10 experience in Asia based on feedback.

Chinese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements: We’ve heard your feedback about the Chinese typing experience, and we’ve happy to announce that we’ve made some changes based on what you’ve told us!

Smart fuzzy matching for pinyin and updated Microsoft Pinyin IME candidate pane experience: As part of our effort to improve the efficiency of Chinese input, the Microsoft Pinyin IME candidate pane has been updated to make it easier to find the candidate you’re looking for. The IME now more clearly indicates fuzzy pinyin candidates, along with tips for how to change the related settings. When you’re typing, this feature will be triggered automatically when fuzzy pinyin candidates are detected and it will show them in the candidate window. We’ve also added a small icon to indicate when a particular cloud candidate is trending. In addition, since most of these trending candidates are related to hot stories, when you have that candidate highlighted, we’ve made it easier to search and learn more about it.

New context menu for the IME mode: The IME mode indicator in the taskbar now has a context menu if you right-click it when using the Microsoft Pinyin or Wubi IME! It contains options to easily access that IME’s settings page, or show the language bar.

Microsoft Pinyin IME now supports importing and exporting self-learned phrases: If you enable self-learning, the Microsoft Pinyin IME can learn and store the phrases as you use it to type. With this build, these phrases can be now be exported and imported. This means that if you re-install your PC, or have multiple PCs to maintain, you can now keep the same user lexicon.

Wubi IME has been updated to support user-defined phrases: You can add custom phrases manually, or import and export custom phrase files. In the Wubi IME settings, click the “user-defined phrase” button to enter the custom phrase page.

Line Mode for Chinese (Simplified) Handwriting: With the Anniversary Update, the Chinese (Simplified) handwriting panel only supported entering text using box mode – writing a single character in each box, and then the character would disappear after the candidate had been finalized, and there was no way to edit the ink. We’re excited to announce that with 14986 that is now longer the case! Just like the Japanese handwriting panel, the Chinese (Simplified) handwriting panel now supports line mode, so you can write and edit your characters all in one continuous sentence. We’ve also added two editing gestures for users – a strikethrough to delete, and a circle to grouping.

New experience writing Chinese characters:

Deletion gesture:

Grouping gesture:

Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements:

It’s now possible to remove text prediction candidates. To do this, hover over the entry in the candidate list and an ‘X’ button will appear. Removed candidates will not be suggested next time.

Improving the Japanese IME conversion accuracy: Improving the conversion accuracy of Japanese IME is an ongoing goal of ours – with this build, we’ve enhanced our logic how we take into account previously determined context. To give an example, with the Anniversary Update, when typing “にんげんをやとう” in one shot and then converting the text, the IME would return the correct conversion. However, if you were to do the conversion in two parts (aka, type “にんげんを”, convert, and then type “やとう” and convert), the IME would return a different and potentially undesirable conversion. With the work lighting up with 14986, the IME will now return the same result in both cases. We have also improved learning behavior when user registered shortcut word (短縮語) is involved and added a new keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+.) so that you can flag particularly bad conversion errors. Conversions flagged in this way will be prioritized among all other mis-conversions when we investigate. We rely on your feedback to improve our conversion accuracy so please do report bad conversion errors when you see them!

Improved reliability and responsiveness: We’ve improved the responsiveness of the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) and fixed an issue where key input might sometimes get stuck in certain environments. We also fixed an issue where the Japanese IME’s self-learning wouldn’t work in certain environments, and fixed an issue resulting in being unable to use the IME to enter text in a program that had been launched using Command Prompt’s “runas” command.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We have improved the Windows Hello face which may require you to “Improve Recognition” to get recognized again. To do this – go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options and under “Windows Hello” and “Face Recognition”, select “Improve Recognition” to go through the Improve Recognition wizard.

We updated the Taskbar’s context menu settings entry to now explicitly be called “Taskbar settings”, as that is where it pointed.

We fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad’s left and right buttons might not work on some devices. We also fixed an issue where the Virtual Touchpad wouldn’t launch if the primary monitor was non-touch, and added the Virtual Touchpad icon to the Taskbar settings where you can Turn system icons on or off.

We fixed the issue where apps such as Store, Photos, and People might launch on their own after your PC had been inactive for a period of time.

We fixed the issue where navigating to Settings > System > Battery would crash the Settings app.

We’ve changed the default state of the Handwriting Panel to be floating next to the text field, rather than docked at the bottom of the screen. If you prefer docked-mode, you can still select it by tapping the icon in the top right corner of the Handwriting Panel.

We fixed an issue where using ~ to switch languages using the Thai keyboard when typing in Office apps, such as Outlook or Word 2016, might sometimes result in a hang.

We’ve updated our migration logic, so that going forward from 14986 the default user’s numlock setting will now be preserved across upgrades.

We fixed an issue where double-clicking on an Excel document to open it from File Explorer would crash Microsoft Excel.

We fixed an issue where Windows Hello might get stuck “Looking for you”.

We fixed an issue Insiders with Surface Dial may have experienced recently where rotating the Dial could result in unexpected beeps.

We’re moving some things around in Storage Settings – stay tuned for future updates. For this flight, you’ll notice that the settings to change save locations has moved to its own page. We also fixed an issue where Storage Usage for the Other category might show an unexpectedly high number.

We fixed an issue where the PowerShell entry in File Explorer’s File menu would sometimes be unexpectedly greyed out.

We fixed an issue where the Clock and Calendar flyout in the taskbar wouldn’t launch when the display language was set to Chinese (Traditional) and the system was using the phonetic sorting method.

We’ve updated the full screen Settings search results to now use smaller icons – we feel this delivers an overall more polished feel, as well as enables more search results to display on the page at a time.

We fixed an issue where some notifications might draw too high or too low, and then be seen moving itself to the correct position.

We fixed an issue where the outline incoming notification toasts could still be seen if notification banners as a whole for that particular app had been turned off.

We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced where the Favorites bar on desktop might appear empty, despite having items in the Favorites folder.

We fixed an issue that could result in CPU throttling when idling on certain webpages with many gifs or looping videos in Microsoft Edge.

We fixed an issue that could result in Alt + D sometimes not being able to set focus to the address bar in Microsoft Edge.

For Insiders with PCs that upgraded to builds 14926-14959, some default power settings may have been lost and not recovered on subsequent upgrades. The effect of this causes devices to potentially use more power, change the power button behavior on tablets, etc. Starting with 14986, an attempt to detect this issue and re-apply the power settings will be made during upgrade. This attempt is a temporary process to help address this issue for Insiders, and will be removed once we’re closer to the Creators Update release.

We’ve heard your feedback, and updated our Windows Error Reporting logic so that uploading crash data should no longer interfere with online game play, video streaming, Skype calls, or other network-intensive activity. Please keep an eye out for this if you experience any crashes and let us know how it goes.

We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Studios games like Microsoft Sudoku, Jigsaw, Minesweeper, Taptiles, and Treasure Hunt potentially freezing at the splash screen on launch.

We fixed an issue where, if the taskbar location was set to be on top, it was visible on the Welcome screens after upgrading.

Known issues for PC

Using keyboard monitor hotkeys to adjust brightness won’t work as expected. Desired brightness change could be done via the Action Center or by going to Settings > System > Display.

You may see a popup “Catastrophic Error” dialog when opening OneDrive folders. If you do, the workaround is to open an elevated Command Prompt or PowerShell window and enter “attrib -O <path to OneDrive failure that resulted in the error dialog>”.

We’re currently investigating reports that DirectAccess isn’t working for some Windows Insiders.

When using Microsoft Edge with Narrator, you may hear “no item in view or silence when tabbing or using other navigation commands. You can use Alt + Tab when this happens to move focus away from and back to the Edge browser and then Narrator will read as expected.

Hey Cortana, play <blah> on <AppName> doesn’t work immediately after installing the app. Wait 5 minutes for indexer to kick in and try again.

Currently, the Windows Defender dashboard is primarily aimed at providing some minimal read-only status for Antivirus/Firewall, with some very limited functionality for interacting with the app. Here are some of the known issues with the dashboard to be aware of (not a comprehensive list):

Doesn’t accurately roll up status of Pillars

Doesn’t accurately show status when a 3P AV is on the machine.

History is not yet available in the new app

Advanced/Custom scans are not yet available in the new app

Settings are not configurable through the new app

Firewall control panel not launchable from new app

Firewall settings are not configurable through the new app

Team Updates
I’ve been so excited to see all of the passion from the Windows Insiders community around completing the Minecraft Hour of Code activity. I’ve heard from so many of you that you had fun doing it and you’re ready for the next step. I plan to spend the later part of December building a curriculum for our Insiders so that we can start our mission of first, getting very comfortable with creating WITH tech, rather than just using tech and then working on plans to make tech accessible to the next 5 billion people.

Keep sending me your certificates. I will publish a wall of them next week on this blog as well as on the #WINsiders4Good Hour of Code page.

I am spending 24 hours in NYC this week doing an Hour of Code activity at the Microsoft store with students from a variety of backgrounds. It’s been AMAZING to see the next generation of leaders already stepping up to learn this incredibly important skill.

Do your Hour of Code if you haven’t! You’ll be glad you did

Thank you everyone and keep hustling,
Dona

Reference:
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986 for PC - Windows Experience Blog

Joe S · Dec 13, 2016

I don't see Build 14986 showing up yet. I'm still at 14965 and I am set on fast ring. The last installed update was 11/13 when I updated to 14965. WEindows defender is updating OK
Joe

Joe S · Dec 17, 2016

It finally showed up it took long enough! I thought I had a problem with windows Update!
Joe

kemical · Dec 21, 2016

Microsoft have released iso's for Build 14986

Access their support page here:
Windows 10 Insider Preview ISO Advanced

kemical · Dec 27, 2016

It may very well be Christmas Day, but that doesn’t stop new leaks appearing on the internet, as the internet never sleeps – or spends time with the family – apparently. Nonetheless, in the spirit of giving, the internet is giving us an insight into a leaked Windows 10 build from an internal development branch. Say hello to build 14997 (via Windows Central).

Originally showcased on BetaArchive, the build comes with some new features and several changes:

Improved Settings app
New Personalization menu
Edge now has Tab Expansion
Save tabs for later in Edge
Lower Blue Light mode

More new feature and changes are hidden away in this build and we’ll let you know as soon as we know more.

This is not an officially released build, however, those looking to install it will be able to find a method via the above BetaArchive link. It may impact your ability to upgrade to officially released builds if installed.
Reference:
Leaked Windows 10 build 14997 brings new features and changes | On MSFT

kemical · Jan 10, 2017

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 for PC

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. This is a BIG update so please take time to look through all of the new changes we detail below.

What’s new in Build 15002
Microsoft Edge Updates
The Microsoft Edge Team has lots of new features to share, focused on making it easier than ever to keep track of your tabs and pick up where you left off, as well as a few other surprises!

Tab preview bar: It’s easy to lose track of what’s in your tabs, especially when you have many tabs from the same site, with similar titles and icons. Tab preview bar allows you to easily glance at a visual preview of every tab you have open without leaving your page. You can scroll through the list with touch, mouse wheel, or a touchpad. Just click the chevron icon next to your tabs to get started. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Set these tabs aside: We often hear that it’s a headache to keep all your tabs organized, and to pick up where you left off. Sometimes you just need to set everything aside and start from a clean slate. We’ve added two new buttons next to your tabs in Microsoft Edge to help you quickly manage all your tabs without losing your flow.

Jump List for Microsoft Edge: You can now launch a new window or new InPrivate window for Microsoft Edge straight from its Taskbar icon. Simply right-click or swipe up on the Microsoft Edge icon in the Taskbar, and pick the task you want!

Component UI: This release introduces a new UWP architecture for Microsoft Edge’s multi-process model, including a new visual tree and new input model. These changes will help improve stability and input responsiveness and make the browser UI more resilient to slow or hung web page content. Be on the lookout for any issues with tab launches and activation or input (including keyboard, mouse, or touch) and share feedback in the Feedback Hub if you have problems!

Flash Click-to-Run: Microsoft Edge will now block untrusted Flash content by default until the user explicitly chooses to play it. This means better security, stability, and performance for you, while preserving the option to run Flash when you choose. You can learn more about this change on the Microsoft Edge Dev Blog: Extending User Control of Adobe Flash with Click-to-Run. We will be evolving this experience in upcoming flights to make the option to run Flash content more contextually obvious.

Web Payments: Microsoft Edge now has preview support for the new Payment Request API, which allows sites to make checkout easier using the payment and shipping preferences stored in your Microsoft Wallet. This is currently in a preview state for developers and will not process payment information until a future flight. You can learn more about Payment Request on the Microsoft Edge Dev Blog.

For a complete list of all the changes in Microsoft Edge, visit the Microsoft Edge changelog.

Start and Shell Improvements
Tile Folders in Start: As part of our ongoing effort to converge experiences across devices, and to address your feedback, we’re excited to let you know that with today’s build you will now be able to group your Start tiles into folders. Tile folders are a way for you to organize and personal your tiles in Start, and we’re happy to now bring this to Windows 10 PCs. To get started, drag and drop a tile on top of another tile in Start to create a folder.

Updated Windows Share experience: We have redesigned the Windows sharing experience to be more app-focused and integrated with where you are sharing from. The new Windows Share experience will pop-up the new share flyout within the app you are sharing from and give you a list of applications you can share to. This list changes based on your usage.

The WIN + H hotkey, used in the old Windows share experience, has been removed.

Capture a region of your screen: OneNote 2016’s popular screenshot feature is now built into Windows 10! You can use Win + Shift + S to capture a region of your screen and copy it to the clipboard for pasting into OneNote for Windows 10 or any other app. Please note that this feature replaces the one in OneNote 2016.

Improved high-DPI support for desktop apps: Continuing from our work with Build 14986, Build 15002 brings more goodness in the way of high-DPI support. First, much like we did with Microsoft Management Console (MMC), we’ve updated Performance Monitor (Perfmon) to now be more crisp on high-DPI PCs. Second, while we’ve enabled these improvements by default for some Windows desktop apps, you can now enable them yourself for other GDI-based applications, too! To do this, you’ll need to find the application’s .exe file, right-click on it, and select Properties. Go to the Compatibility tab, and turn on System (Enhanced) DPI scaling, and click OK. This setting overrides the way that applications handle DPI scaling (which sometimes uses bitmap stretching and can result in applications rendering blurry) and forces them to be scaled by Windows. The setting that was previously labeled Disable display scaling on high DPI settings is now referred to as Application scaling. This works only for apps that use GDI.

Smooth Window Resize: One of the things we’ve heard from Windows Insiders is that the animation when resizing windows isn’t always smooth. We’ve taken that feedback, and Insiders should see improved performance and smoothness when resizing GDI-based Desktop applications (such as File Explorer, Task Manager, and Notepad) and UWP apps (such as Groove Music and Outlook Mail). In addition to this work, we’ve also updated our code so that when rapidly resizing UWP apps, the window frame background will be transparent as the app adjusts, rather than a flat base color.

Desktop Icon Placement and Scaling Improvements: We’ve heard from you that sometimes desktop icons aren’t scaled or arranged as expected, particularly after docking/undocking your device, working with monitors that have different DPI, or projecting your monitor. We want users to feel that desktop icons are stable, scaled properly, and move predictably when changing monitor configurations, so we’ve made changes to how this logic works in order to address your feedback. Now when you change your multi-monitor configuration, dock/undock your device, project your display, add or remove monitors, or otherwise make changes that affect the icon scaling, you should see an improvement in how the system adjusts the layout of your desktop icons. Try it out and let us know how it goes!

Simplified and faster VPN access: A much requested feature from our VPN users, we’ve updated the Network flyout so that after selecting a VPN, you can now click connect from within the flyout rather needing to open VPN Settings. We appreciate the feedback and look forward to what you have to share next! If you encounter any issues, you can still connect to VPN from the VPN Settings (and please log feedback letting us know about it!)

Improved sign-in dialog for apps: We have improved the app sign-in experience for users with multiple accounts. The new sign-in dialog shows your available Microsoft, Work, or School accounts and gives you the ability to add new accounts to Windows.

Lunar Calendar support for the Taskbar: Those of you who follow the Simplified or Traditional Chinese lunar calendar can now use the taskbar calendar to quickly check the lunar date alongside the current Gregorian date. Special holidays are called out in accent-colored text. Go to Settings > Time & Language > Date & Time to pick which additional calendar you’d like to see. Thanks to everyone who sent in feedback requesting this!

Improving our notification experience for app developers and everyone: App developers are increasingly facing scenarios within their applications where they require more flexibility to organize notifications to provide the desired user experience. To provide a more relevant and crafted experience to Windows users, we will now provide app developers a way to create custom subgroups for their notifications in Action Center. Also, to address issues where notifications might have the wrong time stamp (for example, if your PC was asleep when you received a cross-device notification from your phone), we’re enabling app developers to override the notification timestamp. If you’re an app developer, please check out the Tiles and Toasts blog for coming posts about how you can leverage these new features.

Windows Ink Improvements
We have updated the Windows Ink pen, pencil and highlighter control to now visually indicate which color is selected. You can try this out now in the Windows Ink Workspace. Other apps can take advantage of this with future updates of the Windows 10 Creators Update SDK.

In addition, thanks to your feedback, we’ve added point erase to the Windows Ink Workspace’s Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. This means that now you have the option of deleting your whole ink stroke or erasing only pieces of it. You can select your desired option by tapping the eraser icon, where you’ll find new options to switch between eraser types.

We’ve also updated our taskbar logic, so that if you have the Windows Ink Workspace icon on your taskbar, it displays the taskbar of every monitor. Clicking it launches the Windows Ink Workspace on that monitor.

More Cortana improvements
Easier discovery of Cortana’s app-specific commands: Many of our awesome app developers have been adding commands for Cortana to help you get where you need to go even faster—for example directly launching radio stations, playing movies, or searching for recipes. For apps that support these commands, we will now bubble up suggested commands as you type the app name in Cortana. Clicking a particular suggestion launches the app with that command. Once you know the command, you can also trigger it by simply saying it to Cortana. Not sure which apps have added this feature? Check out this handy Store collection: Better with Cortana! Once you’ve downloaded an app, you’ll need to launch it once. Wait a few hours, and everything will be all good to go.

More recurrence options for Reminders: We’ve heard your feedback, and with this build of Windows we’ve added a new option to set recurring time-based Cortana Reminders for “Every Month” or “Every Year” —great for bill payment or anniversary reminders!

Keyboard shortcut change for invoking Cortana: The keyboard shortcut to invoke Cortana in listening mode is changing to WIN + C. This shortcut will be off by default. If you’d like to use it now, head to Cortana’s settings and you’ll find a new option to enable it. WIN + Shift + C will be used to open the App Charms menu, seen in the title bar of Windows 8 apps.

Accessibility Improvements
A more inclusive experience out of the box: The Windows Out-Of-Box-Experience (OOBE) Team has been working to reimagine how people set up their PCs for the first time. Our goal is to make this simpler and more accessible so every person powering on their new PC can independently set it up. While we have made numerous improvements in past releases to achieve this goal, we now want to take it to the next level where people can listen and respond to Cortana verbally (when asked questions*) to further simplify and make the setup process more accessible to even more people.

This new experience is still a work in progress, so there are some places that still include the older OOBE pages and Cortana is unable to help you get your PC fully set up. We plan to continue to do more work on this so stay tuned! While you can’t access the Feedback Hub during OOBE, please take a moment once you’ve reached the desktop to complete the Quest and log feedback in the Feedback Hub.

*Works for languages that support Cortana. For languages that don’t support Cortana, you will still get the new experience without the speech capabilities.

Note: We are working on making Installation media (ISOs) available for Build 15002 in the next week for Windows Insiders to more easily try out this experience.

Narrator support for WinPE and WinRE: This build also now supports the use with Narrator from WinPE for installing Windows as well as troubleshooting options with WinRE. When we make the ISOs available for this build, you’ll be able to try this out by building a bootable USB drive or other bootable media and using the ISO files. After booting into WinPE, wait 15-20 seconds and then use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + WIN + Enter to launch Narrator. You will need to restart Narrator to use it after any reboot during the install process.

NOTE: Not all audio devices are supported. USB headsets are the recommended option for audio, since the full Windows audio drivers for the PC are not available in WinPE/WinRE. Built-in speakers may also work on some PC’s but if you do not hear Narrator announce that it is starting, try connecting a USB headset and restarting Narrator. Narrator Touch is not supported during OS install.

Braille support in Windows: Not too long ago, we mentioned Braille support was coming to Windows. That work is starting to appear in builds, and you will find a new button that offers the ability to download support for braille via Settings > Ease of Access > Narrator. While this button is present, the feature doesn’t work yet so hold off on giving it a try for now. We’ll let you know in a future post when braille can be used.

Narrator users please take note that the Narrator keyboard shortcut is changing: To help reduce accidental launch of Windows Narrator, we have updated the hotkeys to be more intentional from WIN + Enter to Ctrl + WIN + Enter.

Narrator Improvements: We’ve made several improvements to Narrator for navigation when using Scan mode. You can now navigate to headings of a specific level by typing the number of the heading level you want e.g. 1 for the next heading level 1. Add shift for the previous heading. In addition, Narrator’s Scan Mode now allows you to press Home and End to move to the start and end of a line of text respectively when pressed. Finally, when in Scan Mode you can press Ctrl + Home and Ctrl + End to move to the start or end of the web page or other content you are reading.

Improved legibility for UWP apps in high contrast: As part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we improved the legibility of many websites viewed in high contrast by showing an opaque layer behind the text. We recognize that similar to the state of websites on the Internet, many UWP apps have not been tailored to present an optimal experience for users who need increased contrast. So, we’re taking a similar approach to improve how UWP apps look in high contrast. We’ve updated the XAML framework to now display an opaque layer behind the text and coerce semi-transparent UI to be fully opaque. This addresses the most common issues in apps like in the before/after screenshot below. These adjustments are applied by default in high contrast and apply to *all* XAML Store applications that run on Build 15002 and higher, whether they explicitly target this build (with the SDK) or not. However, applications that render their own text on something such as a SurfaceImageSource do not receive the automatic adjustment from the framework. If you find any issues with this work, please log them here, and as always, you can reach out to @MSFTEnable on Twitter at any time about accessibility problems and requests you have for accessibility in Windows.

In addition, we’ve updated Windows Ink to now support a rich color range experience when using your device in high contrast. Try it out in Sketchpad today and let us know what you think!

Windows Defender Improvements
We continue to make improvements to the new Windows Defender app in Windows 10. Improvements in this build include:

New options to run quick, advanced, or full scans.

Device performance and health scans give you a report on your PC’s health.

Family options has visual improvements and links you to great content/applications on the web to set up a family or view device information.

Settings pages to change configuration on the app or learn more about it

General bug fixes and improvements.

Additionally, we are introducing Refresh Windows on-demand in Windows Defender. If your PC is running slow, crashes or is unable to update your PC, this option may help you. This option starts fresh by reinstalling and updating Windows, which will remove most of your apps but keep your personal files and some Windows settings. For more details – see this forum post.

Settings Improvements
Helping you find the setting you need in Settings: One of our ongoing goals has been to make Settings easier and faster to navigate. Previous updates towards this have included improved Settings search, and adding icons uniquely associated with each Settings category. Based on feedback, we’ve made a few more design tweaks with this build:

Settings pages now contain additional information on the right or bottom (depending on the window size) providing links to support, feedback, and any other related settings if available.

Since our System Settings list was getting quite long, we’ve moved app related settings out of System into a new category called Apps.

You will notice that the header on the landing page of each Settings category will now stay in place as you pan the page.

Updated device settings: The new device settings experience combines the Bluetooth and Connected devices pages to offer a single place to manage your devices/peripherals. Bluetooth accessories, wireless docks, Xbox Wireless controllers, and media devices can all now be discovered and managed from the same place using the same familiar UI on both the desktop and mobile. We’ve also listened to your feedback and added the ability to disconnect and reconnect your Bluetooth audio devices directly from this Settings page. Try out the new page and let us know what you think through the Feedback Hub!

New Display Settings options: Based on feedback of the most commonly used settings, we have updated the Display Settings. In the refreshed display page, numerous changes have been made to make the page clearer and easier to use, including now being able to change resolution straight from the main Display Settings page.

Lower Blue Light: Windows can now automatically lower the amount of blue light emitted from your PC at night. Settings to turn this functionality on or off and use a local sunset and sunrise or custom schedule are in Settings -> System -> Display. If you need to quickly override the schedule or always want manual control, you can enable this quick action in Settings->Notifications & actions. Use this capability for a couple nights and send us feedback through the Feedback Hub, we’d love to know what you think!

New per app Surface Dial settings: App developers have the option of providing custom tools for the Surface Dial when using it within their app. In addition to this, Windows Insiders with Surface Dials will now be able to customize the default tool set for individual apps starting with this build. Setup the keyboard shortcuts most meaningful for specific apps – like Ctrl + Delete in Word 2016, or CTRL + Tab in Sticky Notes. Head to Settings > Devices > Wheel today to try it out and share your thoughts! We’ve also updated the custom tool creator to now enable you to set keyboard shortcuts that include a number of common symbols.

Windows Personalization now supports recent colors: We understand how important colors are for personalizing your Windows experience, and that sometimes it takes a few tries to find the perfect one to match your background. Sometimes you pick a new color, close Settings, only to discover that the color you picked wasn’t quite what you were looking for. We have a solution! With Build 15002, we’ve added a new “recent colors” section to Settings > Personalization > Colors, so you can easily pick between the colors you’ve decided on in the past.

Windows Theme Management in Settings: As we’ve mentioned in the past, one of our ongoing efforts is to consolidate Settings and Control panel, and we use your feedback to prioritize the convergence into Settings. We’re happy to unveil the next piece of this project: Management of themes has now moved out of Control panel and in to the Settings app. It can be found, along with all your other familiar personalization options, under Settings > Personalization. Pick one of your recent themes, or create and save custom new ones. How would you like to see Settings evolve next? Let us know in the Feedback Hub!

Improved Cross-Device Experiences Settings: With the Anniversary Update, we added the ability for app developers to create cross device experiences. Users could enable or disable this feature for their account via Settings > Privacy > General “Let apps on my other devices open apps and continue experiences on this device”. With Build 15002, we’ve moved this setting to its own page – a new entry under Settings > System, called “Cross-device experiences”, and we’ve added a new dropdown to allow you to switch between My Devices or Everyone. If you’re interested in learning more about experiences an example experience that app developers can create with this, check out this blog post.

Metered Ethernet Connection Support: Based on your feedback, we’ve added the “Set as metered connection” option to the Ethernet (LAN) connections in Settings > Network & Internet > Ethernet. Just like mobile broadband and Wi-Fi connections, this option helps you to restrict background data usage from some applications and gives you more control over how data is used over the Ethernet connection.

Improving your precision touchpad experience:
Adjusting the volume control experience: When assigning three or four-finger swipes to control volume, the volume control UI will now appear as you’re changing the volume. We have also fine-tuned the gesture, so it now takes less swipes to adjust the volume by a significant amount

Polishing the Touchpad Settings page: Based on user feedback, we have made some UI improvements to the new touchpad settings page, including creating two new groups for three and four finger swipes, updating search terms to make them more discoverable, providing more flexibility to control how taps work, and fixing an issue where Touchpad Settings wasn’t showing an icon next to the name.

BSOD is now GSOD
In an effort to more easily distinguish Windows Insider reports vs the reports of those on production builds, we’ve updated the bugcheck page (blue screen) to be green. Released versions of Windows 10 will continue to have the classic blue color, including the final release of the Windows 10 Creators Update.

Quick Virtual Machine Creation in Hyper-V
Hyper-V Manager has a new page that makes it faster and easier to create virtual machines. Just open Hyper-V Manager and click ‘Quick Create’. The simple wizard will help you set up a VM in just a few clicks. After the virtual machine has been created, the confirmation page will allow you to connect to it or enter advanced settings.

This is still a work-in-progress and we would love to hear what you think. Next time you need a VM, please give it a try and send us your feedback!

Improving your update experience
We’ve already made a number of updates based on the feedback you’ve shared with us and today we’re happy to let you know there are some more headed your way:

We’ve added an option that will enable you to pause updates on your computer for up to 35 days. To pause your machine, go to the Advanced options page of Windows Update Settings. This capability will be available on Professional, Education, and Enterprise editions of Windows.

We’ve added an option that will now allow you to decide whether or not to include driver updates when you update Windows. This capability will be available on Professional, Education, and Enterprise editions of Windows.

We’ve added a new icon to the Windows Update Settings page to make easier to see your update status at a glance. This update status and experience is consistent with the experience you’ll find in the new Windows Defender dashboard

We’ve made some improvements to our logic to better detect if the PC’s display is actively being used for something, such as projecting, and avoid attempting to restart.

Windows Insiders with the Home edition of Windows will now also be able to leverage the increased 18 hour max window for Active Hours.

Windows Information Protection improvements for business customers
Placing Work Files on Removable Drives: Some enterprise customers have found that saving Work files to a removable drive would prevent them from accessing the files on a different device due to encryption. We’ve added a prompt to let you choose what you want to do in this case, which should make it easier to transfer work files to a removable drive:

When copying Windows Information Protection (WIP) encrypted files to a removable drive, we now ask if you want to keep your files as Work, convert them to Personal, or cancel the copy operation.

When saving Windows Information Protection (WIP) encrypted files to a removable drive, we now ask if you want to keep your files as Work, convert them as Personal, or save to a different location.

Open Dialog for Work Files in Personal Apps: We protect companies using Windows Information Protection (WIP) by displaying a warning message when opening work files in un-allowed applications (in other words, applications that are not on the whitelist of approved apps that can be used in an enterprise setting). When opening WIP files in un-allowed applications, we now inform the customer that the file is a work file and cannot be converted to personal in un-allowed applications.

You can read more about Windows Information Protection in Windows 10 here.

Power usage experiments on select Windows 10 devices
We are running experiments on a small set of Insider devices to evaluate an upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update feature which helps improve Windows battery life. Depending on the experiment configuration, you may see one or more applications reported as “throttled” in the task manager (see insert). The experiment should have no noticeable impact on your user experience and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Please share your experience with us through the feedback hub (under “Power” category & subcategory “throttled Applications”). In support of this experiment, some of you will also see a new power slider in the battery flyout; we’re still experimenting with these power modes that this slider sets. Stay tuned for more updates mid- February 2017.

Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements
Improved access to Microsoft Pinyin IME settings when using the language bar: We’ve heard your feedback – with Build 14986 it was going to be easier to access the appropriate settings with the IME mode indicator. This week we’re happy to announce that the same will be true for those who prefer the language bar, as we’ve updated the settings icon to now directly open IME settings.

New settings page for Microsoft Pinyin IME: To go alongside with the new customization options we’re adding for the IME, we’ve revamped the Microsoft Pinyin settings page – now divided into 5 categories so you can more easily find what you’re looking for. Have a look through the new settings and setup your IME experience the way that feels best to you!

Hotkeys for the Microsoft Pinyin IME: We’ve added some new features to improve the keyboard experience when using the IME. Including candidate window switch keys configuration, Chinese/English punctuation switch, default punctuation mode, Full/half width switch, default full/half width mode, Simplified/Traditional Chinese output switch and 2nd/3rd candidate submission. Learn about this new option in Microsoft Pinyin settings > Keys. We’ve also added a new hot key to open the emoji panel (Ctrl + Shift + B), so you can open it directly without having to first have the candidate window visible.

Roaming self-learned phrases: In the last build flighted to Insiders we mentioned that the Microsoft Pinyin IME now supports imported and exporting self-learned phrases. This week, we’re happy to announce the natural extension of that work: If you have an MSA connected to your device, your self-learned phrases will now roam between all of your MSA connected PCs.

The Microsoft Pinyin IME emoji panel gets a redesign, new predictive emoji, and stickers: Since their conception, emoji have become an important tool for quickly convey thoughts. Along with our new keyboard shortcut (CTRL + Shift + B), we’ve updated the look of our emoji panel to make it easier to find the emoji, kaomoji and symbols you’re looking for. We’ve also added a totally new section: Stickers! The stickers tab will appear for apps that support sticker input. In addition, based on the words you type, we will now bubble up suggested emoji and stickers. Simply type something and then click on the face icon in the candidate pane (or use the new hotkey, tap the thought bubble, and the emoji predictions will be presented to you.

Making it easier to type complex input faster: Since there isn’t any pinyin starting with U or V, previously the Microsoft Pinyin IME would primarily just give English suggestions in that case, Knowing that about how pinyin is written, we’ve taken the opportunity to add two new modes: U-mode and V-mode. U-mode can now be used for advanced input features, like inputting complex characters, and V-mode can be used to input content which normally is not easy/quick to type (for example, 2016年6月6日”, “十三时三十分”, or “壹仟贰佰叁拾肆”). Try these new modes out today and let us know what you think! Once you start typing “u” or “v” with the IME on, a tip will appear displaying all the available options.

Name input mode: Since most names are not commonly used words, it can be difficult to type with the IME because the correct candidate will appear far down the list (or not at all). In order to solve this problem, we’re introducing a new name input mode for the Microsoft Pinyin IME. When you enter name input mode, instead of your normal candidate predictions, all candidates will be from a dictionary of names, thus making it more likely you’ll find the one you want. Press the “;” key (in double pinyin mode, press “Shift +;” key combination) and then press the “r” key to enter the name input mode. Name input mode can be disabled or enabled in the Microsoft Pinyin settings page.

Custom double pinyin schemes: Double pinyin is a method for creating shortcuts that speed up typing. Microsoft Pinyin IME users can now add, edit, or delete custom double pinyin schemes, so you can create the one that feels best to you. To do this, go to the IME > General settings, and switch the pinyin style from Full to Double. You will then be presented with options for setting up the scheme of your choice.

Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) Improvements:

When the IME is turned on or off (by you or an application), we will now display a large indication of the current mode in the center of the screen. This is to help be more aware of active mode and avoid unexpectedly typing in the wrong mode. This large indicator can be turned on or off in the IME Properties.

We’ve changed the trigger timing of showing the predictive candidates, from typing 3 characters to 1. This will not impact those who have previously adjusted the length. If you’d like to change the length, there is an option to do so on the IME’s Advanced Settings > Predictive Input page.

We’ve changed the logic to show English words more frequently as predictive candidates so that IME users can input English words more easily if they choose to leave the IME on.

Windows Insider Program website updates
We are starting to update the Windows Insider Program website with new content, first starting with the landing page. We would love to hear your feedback on other changes that you would like up to plan for future updates at Feedback Hub - Windows Insider Program.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

The 3D Builder app has been moved to the “Windows Accessories” folder on Start.

We fixed an issue where the display brightness keys on some devices weren’t working as expected.

We fixed an issue where the display may stay black after resuming from sleep if a USB display is connected.

We fixed an issue where opening an app that uses the camera, such as the Camera app, would sometimes result in a bugcheck.

We fixed a crash in the RPCSS service which in turn was resulting in some Insiders experiencing CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED bugchecks on recent builds.

We fixed an issue for touch keyboards sometimes requiring multiple clicks to invoke on non-touch PCs.

We fixed an issue where Disk Cleanup would sometimes unexpectedly show 3.99TB worth of Windows Update Cleanup files.

We’ve updated our logic so if the Microsoft Edge window is narrow and Cortana has a tip, Cortana will only appear as an icon in the address bar. If you expand the window, you’ll see the full suggestion as before.

We’ve updated tooltips for the Microsoft Edge favorites bar to wrap around for longer website names rather than truncate.

We fixed an issue where Touchpad settings page via Settings > Devices > Touchpad wasn’t displaying an icon next to its name in the navigation pane.

We fixed an issue that may have resulted in a recent drop in Action Center reliability for Insiders.

We’ve updated the Speaker Properties dialog to now allow you to configure Spatial Audio for different endpoints. If the current playback device has Spatial Audio enabled, the volume icon in the notification area will now indicate this.

We’ve made some tweaks to the backend for how users connect to devices, such as Miracast displays and other PCs. Use the Connect UI (WIN+K) as you normally would, and file feedback if you encounter any issues.

We’ve removed the rerouting of mspaint.exe to Paint 3D – appreciate everyone who’s shared feedback on the Paint 3D experience, please keep it coming.

We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced on recent builds where navigating to OneDrive folders could unexpectedly result in popup saying there had been a “Catastrophic Error”.

We fixed an issue that could result in a Visual Studio crash when trying to open, add, or save a file.

We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders using PCs with certain older chipsets from seeing colored boxes in the place of text and various other UI in UWPs apps.

When you use Miracast to a device that supports input (for example, an Actiontec Screenbeam or Miracast-enabled Windows 10 PC), you will now see a toast notification to help you enable input (touch, keyboard, etc) on that device.

We fixed an issue where the Home and End keys were unexpectedly not working in certain Settings pages, for example “Apps & features”.

Fixed an issue that could cause some progress indicators in UWP apps to appear to wobble or glitch.

Known issues for PC

Opening Battery settings page via Settings > System > Battery will crash the Settings app.

The option to enable the Virtual Touchpad is missing from the taskbar context menu.

Cortana’s cross-device scenarios won’t work on this build (including notification mirroring, missed call, share photos, share directions, low battery, and find my phone).

Some websites in Microsoft Edge may unexpectedly show “We can’t reach this page”. If you encounter this, please try accessing the site from an InPrivate tab.

Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid won’t work. For now, please right-click on the desired app in order to pin it.

Using CTRL + C to copy in Command Prompt won’t work.

When projecting to a secondary monitor, if you set the connection to “Extended”, Explorer.exe may start crashing in a loop. If this happens, turn off your PC, disconnect the secondary monitor, then restart your PC.

The touch keyboard button may be unexpectedly missing from the taskbar. If this happens, open the taskbar context menu, and select “Show touch keyboard button”.

You may see an error from Windows Hello saying “Couldn’t turn on the camera” on the lock screen.

Brightness changes made via Settings > System > Display will unexpectedly revert after closing the Settings app. For now, please use either Action Center, power flyout or brightness keys to change the brightness

The list of apps in the Surface Dial “Add an app” page via Settings > Devices > Wheel may unexpectedly be empty. If that happens, tap the “Browse for an app” button at the bottom of the screen to pick the desired app instead.

Miracast sessions will fail to connect.

The Netflix app may display a black screen rather than the expected video content. As a workaround, you can use Microsoft Edge to watch video content from Netflix.

On certain hardware types (e.g.: Acer Aspire), the Netflix app crashes when starting a movie.

3rd party UWP apps would crash on devices if the DPI settings on the machine are >=150% (Generally people do this on high resolution devices – Surface book etc.)

If you upgrade from Windows 8.1 directly to Build 15002, all your store apps are lost during upgrade process but you can go and re-download all the lost apps from the Store.

When using Microsoft Edge with Narrator, you may hear “no item in view” or silence while tabbing or using other navigation commands. You can use Alt + Tab when this happens to move focus away from and back to the Edge browser. Narrator will then read as expected.

Saying “Hey Cortana, play <item> on <AppName>” doesn’t work immediately after installing the app. Wait 5 minutes for indexing to begin and try again.

Whew! Please enjoy this build—we certainly have been and we VERY MUCH look forward to hearing your feedback. We have lined up the team and the Customer Champs to be on high alert in Feedback Hub.

Thank you everyone and keep hustling,
Dona

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002 for PC - Windows Experience Blog

kemical · Jan 17, 2017

Microsoft have release the iso files for build 15002:
Windows 10 Insider Preview ISO

kemical · Jan 20, 2017

Dona Sarkar has pushed the big red button and launched Windows Insider build 15014 to the fast ring. The new build is introducing a ton of new features and fixes, and contributes to a recent string of particularly hefty insider builds.

Windows 10 build 15014 released to Insiders with lots of new features

After a brief tease on Twitter, Dona Sarkar has pushed the big red button and launched Windows Insider build 15014 to the fast ring. The new build is introducing a ton of new features and fixes, and contributes to a recent string of particularly hefty insider builds.

Here’s a look at all of the new features that have come with 15014:
Purchase and read e-books in Windows 10 Creators Update (PC & Mobile): Windows Insiders in the U.S. can now purchase e-books directly from the Windows Store and read them in Microsoft Edge.

After purchasing your e-books – you will find those in your Books library, which is a new hub entry in Microsoft Edge right next to your favorites, history, downloads and reading list. Windows Insiders in the US get to try out this experience today starting with this build and we expect to add more content over time.

Interactive reading experience: To navigate through an e-book, you can use the table of contents or seek bar at the bottom of the browser. You can search for words or phrases and ask Cortana to define specific words and view embedded video and audio content. And of course, pick up where you left of and leave bookmarks on the most interesting pages. You can even read your books when offline.

Learning tools: You can widen text spacing to improve reading fluency and benefit from typography tailored to reading efficiency.

Customize for you: Microsoft Edge is built for reading digital content on Windows 10 devices. You can make the reading experiences yours by changing the font and text size, themes, navigation control and more.

EPUB support: In addition to PDF files and books purchased via the Store – you can read any unprotected e-book in the EPUB file format with Microsoft Edge.

With Books in the Windows Store and Microsoft Edge, everyone can discover and read their favorite content. This is a first step towards empowering people like entrepreneurs, students, creators, educators and others to learn and achieve more.

Books in the Windows Store!

Lighter shade for Cortana’s search box (PC): We’re experimenting with a new look for Cortana’s search box on the taskbar. Let us know what you think.

Bigger text in notifications for Cortana (PC): Cortana’s voice in notifications and Action Center just got an update to get a consistent visual treatment throughout the OS. This means it is now a bit larger and now uses the accent color.

Pick your own custom accent color (PC): Speaking of accent colors, and for those who sent feedback asking for more than our default selection of accent colors, we’re happy to share that Build 15014 comes with a new custom color option to our Colors Settings. Go in and select any color that piques your interest! Use the color picker to explore and preview your options, or if you know specifically the color you want, click “more” and enter the RGB, HSV, or HEX color code. Try it out and share your thoughts! We’ve also made our new custom color picker available in Background Settings if you have “Solid Color” or “Picture” (type “Center” or “Fit”) selected.

Automatically free up space (PC): To save you an extra step when low on disk space, we’ve added a new option in Storage Settings to automatically get rid of the files you don’t need. Currently we support this for unused temporary files and items that have been in your recycle bin for 30 days. The option is off by default, but you can turn it on under System > Storage Settings and choose what it cleans up.

Merged Wi-Fi settings under “Wi-Fi services” section in Settings app (PC & Mobile): We have combined some of the advanced Wi-Fi settings. Wi-Fi Sense and Paid Wi-Fi Services have been merged into a single section entitled simply “Wi-Fi services” under Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi. While you may not see “Wi-Fi Sense” mentioned – the feature is still there. “Connect to suggested open hotspots” is one of the settings under “Wi-Fi services”.

Accent color picker

New power slider on select Windows 10 Devices (PC): As we mentioned with Build 15002, we are conducting experiments on features which help improve battery life for Windows devices. In a continuation of our battery life work for the Windows 10 Creators Update, some of you will start seeing a new slider in the power flyout on the Taskbar in this build (this is enabled only on select PCs currently, and is not yet wired up to performance/power settings – we have enabled it to get early feedback):

Some of our Windows PC OEM partners have asked for the ability to give people a number of options for how to ‘tune’ their PC for different scenarios. A person playing a game, for example, might be willing to have a few less FPS when on a long flight if it gets them more battery life – whereas the same person playing the same game, when near a power supply, may want top-end CPU performance to eek out every ounce of performance they can get. Please note – the slider does not actually set new power or performance configurations. It’s just the UI right now. We’ll be working with OEMs to determine the best settings for their customers, so that they can ship those on new Windows 10 PCs. In this Insider build, we’re just looking to get your feedback on this UI!

So, what should you expect from this UI?

Some of you will see the UI while others will not – this is intentional! We need Insiders giving feedback both on the new UI and on the “slider-less” UI, since many PCs receiving the Windows 10 Creators Update will continue to not have the slider.

If you turn the slider all the way to the left (when on battery power), it will turn Battery Saver ‘on’ (similarly to how, if your PC does not show the slider, there is a ‘toggle’ that can turn on Battery Saver on or off).

None of the other slider positions – from “Recommended” through “Best Performance” – will affect performance or battery life at all in today’s Insider Preview build.

In future Insider builds, we will make sure that the only people who can see the slider are the people for whom the slider actually provides different levels of performance and power savings. For now, we want all the feedback we can get!

If you have feedback on the UI, we’d love to hear your feedback – submit it via Feedback Hub under the Power and Battery > Settings category.

While this is just one piece of UI, we’ll be talking more about battery life investments in the Windows 10 Creators Update in a few weeks – so stay tuned!

New battery slider UI

If you’re already registered to receive Windows Insider builds through the fast ring, you should be able to download the build now.

Reference
Windows 10 build 15014 released to Insiders with lots of new features | On MSFT

kemical · Jan 24, 2017

kemical · Jan 27, 2017

Microsoft release Windows Insider build 15014 to the fast ring.

JANUARY 27, 2017 11:31 AM
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15019 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group
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Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15019 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. FYI: This build does have some platform related bugs that will impact the ability to play popular games on your PC. These platform bugs are unrelated to the new gaming features such as Game Mode. We recognize that this is painful for those wanting to try out the new gaming features announced this week. We deliberated a lot on whether to release this build to Insiders with these issues, however we decided to go ahead and release it as we need feedback from Insiders on other areas of the OS. The team is working hard to get these platform bugs fixed and we plan to push the new gaming features again when we release a build that includes these fixes.

What’s new in Build 15019
Xbox Gaming Features: As part of Windows and Xbox Insider Programs, updates have rolled out this week bringing some awesome new features for gamers. For more details – check out this blog post on Xbox Wire.

Built-in Beam streaming: Beam is the easiest and quickest way to stream gameplay, and it’s part of Insider Preview builds starting today for both your Windows 10 PC and Xbox One. After updating to this build, you can start Beam broadcasts by pulling up the Game bar — Windows + G.

New Games section in Settings: A new settings page has been added to Windows 10’s Settings app specifically for gaming: Gaming. This new section will be identifiable with the Xbox logo. We’re also beginning to consolidate some system and user settings for gaming in this unified location, where PC users are accustomed to accessing their settings. Starting today, you’ll find settings for Game bar, GameDVR, Game Mode, and broadcasting and streaming in this new Gaming area. Not all elements of this section will be visible in today’s Windows Insider build, but we’ll continue to develop and deploy Gaming settings over time.

Game Mode: With Game Mode, it’s our goal to make Windows 10 the best Windows ever for gaming. Our vision is that Game Mode optimizes your Windows 10 PC for an improvement in game performance. To enable Game Mode, go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode toggle the feature on. Doing this will give you the ability to enable the feature for each UWP and Win32 title you play by pulling up the Game bar (Windows + G) and the clicking the Settings button. There you’ll be able to opt individual games into using Game Mode. (See below for an known issue regarding Game Mode in this build.)

We look forward to your feedback! We’ll test and refine these features between now and release and continue to evolve the Windows 10 gaming experience.

Windows Game bar improved full-screen support: We are continually adding more titles with this support. In this build, we’ve added support for 17 additional games in full-screen mode with Windows Game bar. As always, just hit WIN + G to invoke Game bar to capture a recording or screenshot.

Battlefield 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 – Zombies

FIFA 14

FIFA 17

FIFA Manager 14

Grim Dawn

Guild Wars 2

Left 4 Dead 2

MapleStory

Paragon

Payday 2

Rocket League

The Elder Scrolls Online

The Sims 4

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

Warface

Tip: You can control this feature through the Windows Game bar settings. In the settings dialog, look for the “Show Game bar when I play full-screen games” checkbox. See Major Nelson’s post on Game bar for more info on how to adjust settings for best game performance.

Microsoft Edge can now read aloud: Last week many of you asked about this and we are proud to announce that Microsoft Edge will now read aloud* your e-books! Just press the “read aloud” button at the top-right corner after opening one of your e-books and listen to Microsoft Edge read you the book with focus on the line and the word being read along. This feature is also extended to all non-store EPUB files opened using Microsoft Edge.

*Supported languages: ar-EG, ca-ES, da-DK, de-DE, en-AU, en-CA, en-GB, en-IN, en-US, es-ES, es-MX, fi-FI, fr-CA, fr-FR, it-IT, ja-JP, nb-NO, nl-BE, nl-NL, pt-BR, pt-PT, sv-SE, tr-TR, zh-CN.

Microsoft Edge and emoji: Microsoft Edge will now display full-color, updated emoji by default on websites that use emoji.

Continuing our progress towards a more inclusive OOBE: You all gave us a TON of feedback on the new first experience over the past few weeks. The Windows Out-Of-Box-Experience (OOBE) Team offers their thanks and continues their work to reimagine how people set up their PCs for the first time. Building off what was first introduced in Build 15002, this build brings even more improvements to make setting up a PC more inclusive!

Privacy: The new privacy settings in the set up experience (OOBE) that Terry talked about in this blog post are now included in this build.

Wi-Fi Captive Portal: The Wi-Fi connectivity experience in OOBE has been updated to support “captive portal” Wi-Fi networks. When connecting to such a Wi-Fi hotspot, OOBE will navigate to a lightweight browser experience allowing you to complete the connection and reach the internet. We’ve also included some updates allowing you to configure some basic properties for the Wi-Fi network during OOBE.

MSA Sign-in/Sign-up: The Microsoft Account (MSA) Sign-in and Sign-up flows in OOBE are now updated to the new design for the Windows 10 Creators Update. Users will see that these experiences are paginated and simplified will help in reducing the overall cognitive load and in improving accessibility in the MSA sign-in/sign-up experiences.

Windows Hello enrollment: Users can now enroll into Windows Hello using the new design implementation for the Windows 10 Creators Update with Cortana voiceover and support for speech input.

Updated voice: The audio track in this build is recorded by voice actors, so it is much friendlier and the intonations are better too (compared to the synthetic voice track we had in Build 15002).

Subtitles: The primary purpose behind this redesign of OOBE is to be inclusive and improve accessibility. This build supports subtitles to ensure that our deaf/hard of hearing users are also included in the new Cortana voiced OOBE.

Bug fixes and visual polish: This build also has improvements for visual polish and a good number of bug fixes which help in overall stability.

Insiders will still see that some pages (e.g. Enterprise flows and Ownership Disambiguation page) are in the design see in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. This is a temporary state while we are working to convert these pages also into the new format.

Blue light is now night light: To make it more accurately reflect what the feature does, we’ve renamed it “night light”. We made some improvements to the night light feature that lets you preview the setting before applying it.

We also made some improvements in the range of color temperatures in the night light feature and fixed a few issues including:

We fixed an issue where right-clicking the night light quick action from the Action Center and selecting Settings brought up the Settings home page and not the night light specific setting.

We fixed an issue where waking your device from sleep or connecting a new monitor would not have the night light setting applied correctly.

We fixed an issue where explorer might hang after waking a device if night light was enabled.

Night light still in the same place, so if you haven’t tried it out yet – you can do so via Settings > System > Display.

Resize your Virtual Machine Connection in Hyper-V: You can now quickly resize VMConnect by dragging the corners of the window and the guest operating system will automatically adjust to the new resolution. This requires that you are logged into the guest operating system and running in Enhanced session mode.

Store app and game download progress in Action Center: Building off of the work we shared with Build 15007, newly downloaded apps and games from the Store will now show download progress inside of the Action Center! Perfect for checking the status of a large game download while doing something else.

Improved discovery for Troubleshooters: Troubleshooters can find and fix many common problems for you. With Build 15019, we bring the latest piece of our ongoing effort to converge Control Panel into Settings and are happy to let you know that the Troubleshooters section of Control Panel has been migrated into Settings. We also flattened the hierarchy to make them easier to find, and added more solutions, too! Head to Settings > Update & security > Troubleshoot to see the complete list.

Improved high-DPI support for ITPros: With Build 15002, we shared our new option to override a GDI-based app’s high DPI scaling with our own System (Enhanced) scaling. With Build 15019, we’re happy to let you know that this System (Enhanced) application compatibility setting will now also available to be enabled or disabled via the Windows ADK for IT Professionals, so you can make adjustments to a broad audience of PCs.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed an issue where connecting an Xbox 360 or Xbox One Controller to your PC would cause the DWM to crash, resulting in your display flickering and/or appearing blank or black.

We fixed an issue where with certain games if you used Alt + Tab to change focus to a different window, you could see both the newly focused window and the game flicker.

We fixed an issue where when using Microsoft Edge with Narrator, you might hear “no item in view” or silence while tabbing or using other navigation commands.

We fixed an issue where pasting on top of selected text in a Web Note would result in Microsoft Edge crashing.

We fixed an issue that prevented some users from viewing Twitch.tv streams in Microsoft Edge.

We fixed an issue from recent builds where Microsoft Edge would crash when sharing a PDF.

We’ve updated the e-book viewer in Microsoft Edge so that if you’ve clicked on an image, you can now Ctrl + Mouse wheel to zoom.

We fixed an issue where typing [ into the F12 Developer Tools window wouldn’t work when using the Hungarian keyboard.

Custom scaling has been migrated from Control Panel to now be a subpage in Display Settings.

We fixed an issue where Taskbar preview icons were unexpectedly small on high-DPI devices.

To help save characters when typing in fields with a character limit, we’ve added a new ellipsis child key for Latin-based languages (such as English, German, and French) when you press and hold the period key on the touch keyboard.

We fixed an issue where in certain UWP apps, tapping outside of a text box currently with focus while in tablet mode wouldn’t dismiss the touch keyboard.

We fixed a typo in the new compatibility option to override high DPI scaling behavior for GDI-based apps.

We fixed an issue where newly pinned secondary tiles (for example, a pinned page from Settings) would unexpectedly appear in Start’s Recently Added list.

We’ve polished the animation when moving tiles in and out of folders on Start, and fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to drag the final tile out of a folder onto the same row as the folder tile.

We fixed an issue from Build 15014 where using Hey Cortana might result in SpeechRuntime.exe using an unexpected amount of CPU.

We fixed an issue where, with a maximized Notepad window and enough text to require a scrollbar, the right-most edge of the scrollbar wouldn’t do anything when dragged in an attempt to scroll.

We fixed an issue where, after pressing Alt to set focus to the menu bar, certain apps could become unresponsive if then pressing Ctrl or clicking inside the app’s child window.

We fixed an issue where Cortana might crash when slowly typing out a UNC path that has already been typed out and opened through Cortana once before.

We fixed an issue where Default apps Settings would crash of you clicked an app under “Choose default app” and selected the option to look for an app in the Store.

We’ve updated Themes settings page to now contain a link to the Store to find more themes to download.

We fixed an issue where certain apps might crash after using the Open dialog to rename and open a folder.

We fixed an issue where Win + Shift + S wouldn’t work if the mode in Snipping Tool was set to something other than Rectangle.

We fixed an issue where you could end up with multiple Snipping Tool processes open after using Win + Shift + S and hitting Esc to stop the snip.

We fixed an issue where certain file attributes, such as +s, would be lost when copying or moving a folder to a different partition.

We fixed an issue where using Command Prompt with certain fonts could result in conhost.exe unexpectedly using a lot of CPU.

We updated Dial Settings to now list customized apps alphabetically.

We fixed an issue with Windows Ink where undoing and redoing a point erase could result in the ink reappearing in an unexpected order.

We improved Screen Sketch copy reliability.

We fixed an issue some insiders may have experienced recently with the mouse and keyboard sometimes going unresponsive for a few seconds at a time.

We fixed an issue resulting in certain apps crashing when you switched to Tablet Mode.

We fixed an issue where calendar appointments marked as Tentative or Out of Office were showing up as Free in the Taskbar clock and calendar flyout.

We fixed an issue where, if multiple folders were selected in Background Settings under Slideshow mode, slideshow would not work.

We fixed an issue where you could see the page flash when navigating from and back to Themes Settings.

We fixed an issue where the Bluetooth & other devices Settings page unexpectedly said “Systemsettings.Viewmodel.settingentry” at the bottom.

We’ve improved Settings reliability.

We fixed an issue where, when using Phonetic as the sorting method with the zh-tw display language, the clock on the lock screen wouldn’t appear.

Based on feedback, we’ve adjusted the look of the Virtual Touchpad to make the left/right buttons more visible.

We’ve fixed an issue that could result in the Netflix app crashing on launch. Try again and it should work. We also fixed an issue where on certain hardware types, the Netflix app would crash when starting a movie.

The game DOTA2 should now launch normally.

Known issues for PC

IMPORTANT: The download progress indicator shown when downloading this build is currently broken under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. It may look like you’re getting stuck at 0% or at other percentages. Ignore the indicator and be patient. The build should download fine and the installation should kick off. See this forum post for more details.

After updating to this build, nonstop exceptions in the Spectrum.exe service may occur causing PCs to lose audio, disk I/O usage to become very high, and apps like Microsoft Edge to become unresponsive when doing certain actions such as opening Settings. As a workaround to get out of this state, you can delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Spectrum\PersistedSpatialAnchors and reboot. For more details, see this forum post.

Some Windows Insiders may have had trouble connecting to certain Google sites due to an implementation of a new security model being rolled out to further enhance user security. The team is working on a resolution. In the meantime, users can access these sites from an InPrivate tab.

Extensions in Microsoft Edge do not work in this build. Extensions may appear to load but will not function as expected. This issue should be fixed in the next Insider release build we release. If you depend on extensions in Microsoft Edge, we recommend skipping this build. You can pause Insider Preview builds by going to Settings > Updates & security > Windows Insider Program, clicking on “Stop Insider Preview builds”, and choosing “Pause updates for a bit”.

Microsoft Edge F12 tools may intermittently crash, hang, and fail to accept inputs.

Microsoft Edge’s “Inspect Element” and “View Source” options don’t correctly launch to the DOM Explorer and Debugger, respectively.

Windows Insiders will unexpectedly see a “Mixed Reality” entry on the main page of Settings.

Some captive portal Wi-Fi networks may fail to connect during OOBE. If a captive portal network is using DNS hijacking to redirect to a secure site, the captive portal app will crash and the user cannot clear the portal.

Yes/No voice commands in the Wi-Fi portion of OOBE are currently failing.

Quicken 2016 will fail to run with an error stating .NET 4.6.1 is not installed. For Insiders familiar with Registry Editor, there is an optional workaround. Take ownership of the following registry keys and edit the “version” value to be 4.6.XXXXX instead of 4.7.XXXXX:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Client

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full

Note: Please take caution when editing the registry. Changing the wrong value can have unexpected and undesirable results.

Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid won’t work. For now, please right-click on the desired app in order to pin it.

Some Tencent apps and games may crash or work incorrectly on this build.

Under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update you might see the text “Some Settings are managed by your organization” even though your PC isn’t being managed by an organization. This is a bug caused by an updated flight configuration setting for Insider Preview builds and does not mean your PC is being managed by anyone.

On some PCs, audio stops working sporadically with ‘device in use’ error”. We are investigating. Restarting the audio service may fix things for a bit.

The Action Center may sometimes appear blank and transparent without color. If you encounter this, try moving the taskbar to a different location on screen.

Gaming known issues

Popular games may experience crashes or black screens when trying to load due to a platform issue.

When clicking on certain elements in desktop (Win32) games, the game minimizes and cannot be restored.

Game Mode is enabled system wide by default, however, the ON/OFF toggle in Settings will incorrectly show it as being OFF until the user manually toggles the Setting to ON which will cause it to update and accurately display the status of Game Mode system wide.

Broadcasting to Beam via the Game bar currently requires a number of Privacy settings to be changed. Please visit this forum post.

Certain hardware configurations may cause the broadcast live review window in the Game bar to flash Green while you are Broadcasting. This does not affect the quality of your broadcast and is only visible to the Broadcaster.

Community Updates
Next week, we are off to the NexTech Africa Conference in Nairobi, Kenya where our team will have presence in the keynote to kick off an East African fellowship along with participating in panels related to Digital Transformation and Engineering at Scale. We are very excited to continue our learning about places with less reliable connectivity and how we can build the best possible products for these markets.

We would also like to share a touching article written by longtime Windows Insider Adam McLellan on how the Insider program gave him a sense of community and belonging. Thank you for sharing!

Keep hustling team,
Dona

kemical · Jan 28, 2017

Windows Insiders who are subscribed to the Fast ring can begin testing out the much anticipated Game Mode in the latest Windows 10 preview build (15019). However, Microsoft warns that there are some unrelated bugs in the newest build that could impact the ability to play popular games. In fact, Microsoft debated the decision of whether or not to release this build in its current state.

In this newest build Microsoft added support for more than a dozen games in full-screen mode with Windows Game bar. They include:
Battlefield 3,
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 2 - Zombies,
FIFA 14 and 17, FIFA Manager 14,
Grim Dawn,
Guild Wars 2,
Left 4 Dead 2,
MapleStory,
Paragon,
Payday 2,
Rocket League,
The Elder Scrolls Online,
The Sims 4,
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, and Warface.

"We recognise that this is painful for those wanting to try out the new gaming features announced this week. We deliberated a lot on whether to release this build to Insiders with these issues, however we decided to go ahead and release it as we need feedback from Insiders on other areas of the OS," Microsoft stated in a blog post announcing the new build. "The team is working hard to get these platform bugs fixed and we plan to push the new gaming features again when we release a build that includes these fixes."

The post specifies "Popular games... may experience crashes or black screens when trying to load due to a platform issue. When clicking on certain elements in desktop (Win32) games, the game minimizes and cannot be restored."

In other words, don't download this build for a peek at Game Mode unless you're okay with some big issues—some stuff's definitely going to be broken. We wouldn't recommend this build for your primary PC, but if you have a secondary gaming system sitting around, go wild.

Microsoft's new Game Mode is an optimization scheme that prioritizes resources and stifles some background tasks to boost performance in games. Users who want to test it out can navigate to Settings > Gaming and flip the Game Mode toggle on. Once that's turned on, users can enable the feature in UWP and Win32 games by bringing up the Game bar (Windows + G) and clicking the Settings button.

Microsoft gave us the first details of how Game Mode will work in an interview earlier this week. The ultimate goal is to provide a performance boost by bumping up the average and peak framerates.

The newest preview build also enables built-in Beam streaming to broadcast gameplay for both Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One. This is another option that can be found by pulling up the Game bar.

In this newest build Microsoft added support for more than a dozen games in full-screen mode with Windows Game bar. They include Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 2 - Zombies, FIFA 14 and 17, FIFA Manager 14, Grim Dawn, Guild Wars 2, Left 4 Dead 2, MapleStory, Paragon, Payday 2, Rocket League, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Sims 4, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, and Warface.

The last bit of interest to gamers is a new Games section in Settings. This has been added to Windows 10's Settings app in the latest build to make it easier to access the new gaming features. It's not fully fleshed out yet, but will continue to receive more features as Microsoft makes available new preview builds.

Reference:
Windows 10 Game Mode goes live in latest Insider build | PC Gamer

kemical · Feb 4, 2017

Microsoft release Windows Insider build 15025 to the fast ring.

FEBRUARY 1, 2017 12:01 PM
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15025 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

Hello Windows Insiders!

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15025 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring as the primary build for the second Creator’s Update Bug Bash which starts on Friday. Please look for a detailed bug bash blog post on Friday morning PST. We have discovered a bug that impacts our ability to release this build to PCs running 32-bit (x86) versions of Windows 10 Insider Preview builds. Because the majority of Insiders in the Fast ring have PCs running 64-bit (x64) – we decided to go ahead and release this build with 32-bit PCs blocked until our next flight. We plan to release ISOs for this build by the end of the week and Insiders on 32-bit PCs will be able to update from the ISOs.

UPDATE 2/3: The ISO images for Build 15025 are now available here.

What’s new in Build 15025
Announcing braille support in Narrator: We love getting feedback from our visually-impaired Insiders and implementing features to support your needs. It’s so important that we keep our diverse customers in mind as we co-create with you. Today, we are excited to announce braille support for Narrator . This experience is currently in beta. So try it out and give us feedback! In order to use braille with Narrator, you will need to do the following:

Ensure Narrator is running. Then go to Settings > Ease of Access (WIN + U) and under the Narrator settings, activate the “Download Braille” button. You will be prompted to install braille support.

Under Settings > Ease of Access, activate the “Enable braille” button and add a braille display. Note that USB and serial connections for the display are supported.

Under Settings > Ease of Access, choose the language and braille table you want to use.

Note detailed documentation about braille display key mappings will be made available in the Narrator User Guide closer to when the Windows 10 Creators Update is released.

NOTE: There are coexistence issues with braille support and third party screen readers. Until the documentation is available, we recommend that braille be enabled for Narrator only on PCs that do not also have a third-party screen reader configured to use a braille display.

New mono audio option in Ease of Access settings: Visually impaired users use a screen reader application to read the PC screen content and information to them, and frequently use headphones or earbuds to hear the computer when in meetings or having conversations with others. When doing so, they generally use only one earbud to hear the PC in one ear so the other ear is free to hear conversations and sounds around them. That can cause them to not hear sounds that may be directed to the other earbud. In order to change the sound to be mono mode and so all audio is directed to both ears, they used to need a physical earphone adapter. You can now switch your audio to mono straight from the new Audio section under Settings > Ease of Access > Other options.

Introducing Collections in Feedback Hub: A few months ago, we asked you what was one of your biggest pieces of feedback about the Feedback Hub. You said, “too many duplicate pieces of feedback!”. We love working with you to create a better experience for everyone using the Feedback Hub, so today we are so happy to announce Collections. Collections are now live in Feedback Hub starting with app version 1.1612.10251.0.

A Collection groups together feedback for similar problems and suggestions into single items that bring together all the voices who expressed that sentiment in one place. All of your individual voices will be amplified when your feedback and upvotes are joined together into collections, and you’ll be able to see just how big your voice can become. Same as with individual feedback, you’ll be able to upvote Collections, upload screenshots to show the engineering team a problem you’re seeing or a suggestion you have, and comment on the feedback with others.

Thank you for your feedback, Insiders. Because of you, the Feedback Hub is becoming better for ALL customers.

More night light improvements: The night light color temperature range has been extended to go down to very red (1200 K) and the entire range of the slider now works correctly.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

[GAMING] We fixed the issue where clicking on certain elements in desktop (Win32) games causes the game to minimize and cannot be restored.

Windows Insiders should no longer have trouble connecting to certain Google sites due to an implementation of a new security model being rolled out to further enhance user security.

Extensions in Microsoft Edge are back to working as expected.

App developers can now request to pin their primary tile, just like secondary tiles, allowing apps to highlight their awesome live tiles – see this blog post for more info.

Quicken 2017 should launch and working normally again.

Windows Insiders will no longer see a “Mixed Reality” entry on the main page of Settings.

We fixed an issue Insiders may have experienced where the Network flyout would unexpectedly appear blank instead of listing available Wi-Fi networks.

We fixed an issue where the custom color picker in Color Settings might stop working when selecting new colors.

We fixed an issue where certain colors in the recent colors section of Colors Settings would unexpectedly not appear selected after being selected.

We fixed an issue where if you downloaded a theme from the Store, deleted it, then downloaded it again, it wouldn’t appear in Themes Settings.

We’ve improved the performance when using point erase to ease ink in Sketchpad.

We’ve updated the Windows Ink Workspace so it will now remember your most recently selected stencil (ruler or protractor) and keep that choice the next time you open Sketchpad.

We fixed an issue where, after upgrading, some Insiders were left with certain tiles that couldn’t be unpinned from Start. We also fixed an issue where pinning a tile might unexpectedly add it in the middle of an existing group of tiles.

We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders using PCs with certain older chipsets seeing colored boxes in the place of text and various other UI in UWPs apps.

We fixed an issue where desktop shortcuts pointing at URLs weren’t working for some Insiders.

We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to tab over to Other Users section on the login screen using only the keyboard.

We fixed an issue resulting in Microsoft Edge sometimes freezing for a short after using CTRL+C to copy selected text in the address bar.

We fixed an issue resulting in the shadows behind the set aside tabs in Microsoft Edge not being as dark as expected – the thumbnails should pop more now.

We fixed an issue with notification toast priority from recent flights where an alarm or skype call toast would not interrupt a reminder toast.

We fixed an issue where some captive portal Wi-Fi networks might fail to connect during OOBE, and if a captive portal network was using DNS hijacking to redirect to a secure site, the captive portal app would crash and you wouldn’t be able to clear the portal.

We fixed an issue where Yes/No voice commands in the Wi-Fi portion of OOBE weren’t working.

We fixed an issue resulting in the screen flashing and explorer crashing in a loop for some Insiders if they entered Safe Mode on recent builds.

We fixed an issue for devices with TPM chips on 15019 where the TPM was unexpectedly not able to start.

We fixed an issue where a window might appear to get “stuck” on the mouse when releasing it after dragging to resize it – requiring an extra click to let go.

We fixed an issue resulting in poor quality scaling of taskbar and task view thumbnail previews. We also fixed an issue where periodically when you moved your mouse to hover over a taskbar thumbnail preview, it might unexpectedly immediately dismiss.

Known issues for PC

[UPDATED] IMPORTANT: You may see “Initializing…” when attempting to download this build and the download progress indicator shown when downloading this build may seem broken under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. It may look like you’re getting stuck at 0% or at other percentages. Ignore the indicator and be patient. The build should download fine, and the installation should kick off. See this forum post for more details.

While we fixed the primary bug causing this issue, some Windows Insiders may still hit nonstop exceptions in the Spectrum.exe service causing their PC to lose audio, disk I/O usage to become very high, and apps like Microsoft Edge to become unresponsive when doing certain actions such as opening Settings. As a workaround to get out of this state, STOP the Spectrum.exe service and delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Spectrum\PersistedSpatialAnchors and reboot. For more details, see this forum post.

[GAMING] Popular games may experience crashes or black screens when trying to load due to a platform issue. UPDATE: We believe this is fixed!

[GAMING] Game Mode is enabled system wide by default, however, the ON/OFF toggle in Settings will incorrectly show it as being OFF until the user manually toggles the Setting to ON which will cause it to update and accurately display the status of Game Mode system wide.

[GAMING] Certain hardware configurations may cause the broadcast live review window in the Game bar to flash Green while you are Broadcasting. This does not affect the quality of your broadcast and is only visible to the Broadcaster.

Microsoft Edge F12 tools may intermittently crash, hang, and fail to accept inputs.

Microsoft Edge’s “Inspect Element” and “View Source” options don’t correctly launch to the DOM Explorer and Debugger, respectively.

Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid won’t work. For now, please right-click on the desired app in order to pin it.

Some Tencent apps and games may crash or work incorrectly on this build.

Under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update you might see the text “Some Settings are managed by your organization” even though your PC isn’t being managed by an organization. This is a bug caused by an updated flight configuration setting for Insider Preview builds and does not mean your PC is being managed by anyone.

On some PCs, audio stops working sporadically with ‘device in use’ error”. We are investigating. Restarting the audio service may fix things for a bit.

The Action Center may sometimes appear blank and transparent without color. If you encounter this, try moving the taskbar to a different location on screen.

ADDED: The Desktop App Converter Preview (Project Centennial) will fail to run on the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15025. If you are a developer utilizing the converter tool to convert your desktop app to UWP, we suggest skipping Build 15025 or switching to the Slow ring until we can fix this issue.

ADDED: [GAMING] We’re aware of an issue due to a kernel change which may affect some games that use copy protection technologies.

Community Updates
This week, we are in Nairobi, Kenya at the NexTech Africa Conference (where we will be announcing an East Africa Fellowship as well as participating in sessions around Engineering at Scale and Digital Transformation at Scale.

You’ll recall that last September we gathered at the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos to kick off the very first #Insiders4Good Fellowship. After reviewing over 5,000 applications, in November we announced the first cohort of 25 diverse people with diverse ideas to change Nigeria, Africa, and the world. We are inspired by the ideas from those 25 entrepreneurs, and hopeful that their creativity and hard work can address decades-old problems like illiteracy, kidnapping, agricultural waste, healthcare access, and much more.

We started in Nigeria because of what we could learn from that market. 1 of every 7 Africans lives in Nigeria. 41 percent of working-age Nigerians were involved in an early-stage business in the preceding three and a half years. 81% of Nigerians value entrepreneurship as a career choice. As with other countries in Africa, we can also learn a lot from working alongside social entrepreneurs overcoming obstacles: regulations, processes, and custom; working around corruption; mitigating poor electricity, roads, and connectivity.

Over the next few months, our fellowship cohort has received support from Microsoft and from the Windows Insider community. They’ve received hardware, software, tailored mentorship and access to our global network of people and organizations spanning nearly every industry and geography. As we enter month three of the #Insiders4Good Nigeria fellowship, we’re honored to watch these 25 Fellows progress together from a group of strangers from all across Nigeria—to a cohesive community of creative leaders with promising ideas—into a group of friends, together growing those ideas into viable businesses to make Nigeria a better place to live.

In working with the Nigeria Fellows, we’ve learned so much. Literally every day we use their learnings to improve Windows, and improve the Microsoft tech stack. For example, this month back in Seattle we are focusing on improving the Windows experience in low-bandwidth regions. This is a HUGE focus in our bug bash and we are having “Nigeria Day” where we will encourage the whole Windows team to run quests on a 2G network we have set up.This focus area is a direct result of our time spent in Nigeria working with our Fellows, and hearing about their difficulties when the power goes out or the wireless is poor.

We’re not done learning yet. Not even close. In fact, we’re doubling down. Today, in partnership with GrowthAfrica, the Windows Insider Program is thrilled to expand our #Insiders4Good fellowship to East Africa. The #Insiders4Good East Africa Fellowship will be awarded to 25 entrepreneurs from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda who have innovative social business ideas with the potential to improve their communities, the East African region, and the world. #Insiders4Good Fellows will receive a suite of Microsoft hardware and software, plus six months of tailored technical and strategic mentorship from local and international leaders.

Thousands in East Africa are creating extraordinary solutions that change the way communities and businesses solve problems and improve people’s lives. Innovation is in the DNA of all Windows Insiders. East Africa is a key region where exciting new ideas are growing. We’ve been impressed and heartened by the progress made already by the first 25 #Insiders4Good Fellows in Nigeria, and we’re thrilled to expand the #Insiders4Good Fellowship into East Africa. The region is well known as a hotbed of technological innovation.We look forward to deepening our relationships with these exceptional entrepreneurs across East Africa and to supporting their goals with this Fellowship.

The #Insiders4Good Fellowship aims to recognize visionary entrepreneurs, enable them with technology and expert support, and unlock opportunities for them through the global network of Windows Insiders, the world’s largest community of people using technology to solve problems. The Fellowship aims to accelerate their journeys toward achieving their goals.

The deadline to apply for the #Insiders4Good Fellowship is March 31, 2017, 23:59 p.m. East Africa Time. However, applicants are encouraged to apply well in advance of the deadline. Applicants should visit Insiderfellows.com for full information and the application form.

Windows Insiders are the millions who represent the billions. Come join us today.

Keep hustling team,
Dona

UPDATED FEBRUARY 3, 2017 10:19 AM

kemical · Feb 4, 2017

The Iso files are also available for Preview Build 15025:
Download Windows 10 Insider Preview Advanced

kemical · Feb 10, 2017

Microsoft release Windows Insider build 15031 to the fast ring.

FEBRUARY 8, 2017 10:02 AM
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031 for PC
By Dona Sarkar / Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group

Hello Windows Insiders!

Thank you very much to those of you who joined in on yesterday’s Beam webcast for our Bug Bash! It was a pleasure to hear from so many familiar names in real time. We loved talking with you all and definitely want to do so more often. We will vary the times so that we can hit various regions around the world!

Are you a Windows Developer? Today is Windows Developer Day! Check out our livestream from 9am-1pm PST, which outlines what’s new for developers in the Windows 10 Creators Update. Whether you’re building for the web or UWP, the latest consumer app or line of business tool, there’s something in it for you. Tomorrow will be our “Developer focus” day for the Bug Bash, so tune in today to learn what’s new, and get ready to bash on it! We’ll have a new set of Developer-focused quests ready for you in the Feedback Hub tomorrow.

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 15031
Do more at once with the new Compact Overlay window: Ever want to continue watching a movie while switching app to check your email? Or keep an eye on your video chat even as you’re browsing the web? We do all the time! Some tasks don’t require the user’s full attention but is perfect to leave at the corner of the screen so we’re introducing a new compact overlay mode for UWA app developers. When an app window enters compact overlay mode it’ll be shown above other windows so it won’t get blocked. The best part is that compact overlay windows work just like normal windows in all other ways so app developers can tailor the experience with what they already know. Updates to the Movies & TV app and Skype Preview app will take advantage of compact overlay windows in the near future!

Introducing Dynamic Lock: Dynamic Lock automatically locks your Windows 10 PC when you’re not around based the proximity of a Bluetooth-paired phone. If your Bluetooth-paired phone is not found near your PC, Windows turns off the screen and locks the PC after 30 seconds. To enable Dynamic Lock, make sure your phone is paired to your PC via Bluetooth and go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options and toggle Dynamic lock to “on”.

NOTE: See known issues below regarding a bug preventing PCs on this build from successfully pairing devices via Bluetooth.

New Share icon: We’re introducing a new share icon. Apps that used the “share” font glyph in Segoe MDL2 assets should get the change automatically. You can read more about the change here.

Windows Game Bar improved full-screen support: We got a ton of feedback on Game Bar and we are continually adding more titles with this support. In this build, we’ve added support for 52 additional games in full-screen mode with Windows game bar. As always, just hit WIN + G to invoke Game Bar to capture a recording or screenshot.

Aion

Borderlands 2

Call of Duty Black Ops III

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Civilization VI

Company of Heroes 2

Crusader Kings 2

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Dishonored 2

Elite: Dangerous

Euro Trucks 2 Simulator

Europa Universalis IV

Eve Online

F1 2016

Fallout New Vegas

Far Cry 4

Football Manager 2016

Football Manager 2017

Garry’s Mod

Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Hearts of Iron IV

Hitman – Full Experience

Killing Floor 2

Lineage 2 – The Chaotic Throne

Mafia III

Mass Effect 3

Mechwarrior Online

Metro 2033 Redux

Metro Last Light Redux

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

Need for Speed

Path Of Exile

Planet Coaster

Planetside 2

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare: Deluxe Edition

Pro Evolution Soccer 2016

Project CARS

Roblox

Smite

Source Engine Titles/Half Life 2

Team Fortress 2

TERA

The Sims 3

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Titanfall 2

Total War: Attila

Watch_Dogs 2

World of Warplanes

XCOM 2

Tip: You can control this feature through the Windows Game bar settings. In the settings dialog, look for the “Show Game bar when I play full-screen games” checkbox. See Major Nelson’s post on Game bar for more info on how to adjust settings for best game performance.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed the issue causing Tencent apps and games to crash or work incorrectly.

We’ve updated OOBE so that if there’s no detected audio output device, for example with VMs, it now skips Cortana’s introduction.

[GAMING] We fixed the issue causing popular games may experience crashes or black screens when trying to load due to a platform issue.

[GAMING] We fixed the issue where Game Mode is enabled system wide by default, however, the ON/OFF toggle in Settings will incorrectly show it as being OFF until the user manually toggles the Setting to ON which will cause it to update and accurately display the status of Game Mode system wide.

We fixed an issue where the night light quick action was unexpectedly disabled in the last Insider flight.

We fixed an issue resulting in audio going quiet each time the Start menu is opened after a SpeechRuntime.exe crash.

Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid will now work. We also fixed an issue on recent builds where some tiles might unexpectedly appear blank and with a name starting with “P~…” after upgrading.

We fixed an issue where Win + Shift + S wouldn’t work to capture a region of the screen if the Snipping Tool was already running. We also fixed an issue where taking a snip with the Snipping Tool would fail on 4k monitors when 60-80% was selected.

We fixed an issue resulting in “Fn”+”Pause/Break” key not working to pause the checking progress when running chkdsk.

We fixed an issue where resizing windows with a pen would be unexpectedly slow. We also fixed an issue where resizing a window across monitors with different DPIs could be unpredictable.

We fixed an issue where the Windows Ink highlight preview wouldn’t be visible in Web Notes when Microsoft Edge was using dark theme.

We’ve improved gesture recognition for 3 finger swipes on precision touchpads.

We fixed an issue where a number of files with the name GLOB(0xXXXXXX) could be unexpectedly found in the system root directory after upgrading.

We fixed an issue where you couldn’t rename disk volumes via File Explorer in recent flights.

We fixed an issue where rapidly tapping a button to bring up the new Share experience, for example in Microsoft Edge, could result in the Share UI not coming up again until the device had been rebooted.

We fixed an issue resulting the lists of thumbnails in Photos and Groove Music visibly shifting up when the app resumed.

We fixed an issue where the Themes Settings page would blink when a theme was deleted.

We’ve updated the help string on each page of Settings to be a bit more succinct.

We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to type ę on the Polish keyboard into the Settings search box.

We fixed an issue where Cortana Background Task Host might have ended up using an unexpectedly large amount of CPU in recent flights. We also shorted the two factor authentication notification from Cortana so that it won’t be truncated.

We fixed an issue where the UI to input credentials wouldn’t have keyboard focus after initiating a remote connection to another PC.

We’ve improved reliability when handling malformed Gifs in XAML-based apps.

The icons should now be shown as expected instead of squares under Settings > Gaming.

Known issues for PC

[UPDATED] IMPORTANT: You may see “Initializing…” when attempting to download this build and the download progress indicator shown when downloading this build may seem broken under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. It may look like you’re getting stuck at 0% or at other percentages. Ignore the indicator and be patient. The build should download fine, and the installation should kick off. See this forum post for more details.

While we fixed the primary bug causing this issue, some Windows Insiders may still hit nonstop exceptions in the Spectrum.exe service causing their PC to lose audio, disk I/O usage to become very high, and apps like Microsoft Edge to become unresponsive when doing certain actions such as opening Settings. As a workaround to get out of this state, STOP the Spectrum.exe service and delete C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Spectrum\PersistedSpatialAnchors and reboot. For more details, see this forum post.

Going to Settings > Devices will crash the Settings app. You will be unable to pair a Bluetooth device. Bluetooth quick actions from Action Center also does not work.

You will not be able to launch the Connect UX via Action Center, Win + K, or Settings (it will crash upon launch). This will impact wireless projection scenarios.

[GAMING] Some popular games might minimize to the taskbar when launched. You can click on the game on the taskbar to get the game back.

[GAMING] Certain hardware configurations may cause the broadcast live review window in the Game bar to flash Green while you are Broadcasting. This does not affect the quality of your broadcast and is only visible to the Broadcaster.

Microsoft Edge F12 tools may intermittently crash, hang, and fail to accept inputs.

Microsoft Edge’s “Inspect Element” and “View Source” options don’t correctly launch to the DOM Explorer and Debugger, respectively.

Under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update you might see the text “Some Settings are managed by your organization” even though your PC isn’t being managed by an organization. This is a bug caused by an updated flight configuration setting for Insider Preview builds and does not mean your PC is being managed by anyone.

On some PCs, audio stops working sporadically with ‘device in use’ error”. We are investigating. Restarting the audio service may fix things for a bit.

The Action Center may sometimes appear blank and transparent without color. If you encounter this, try moving the taskbar to a different location on screen.

The icon for Windows Insider Program under Settings > Update & security is shown as a square.

Community Updates
Last week our team traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to launch the second #Insiders4Good fellowship in East Africa. The response to our announcement was tremendous and the Windows Insider Program was talked about in 11 sessions, interviews, press events and panels across the two days. You all are famous!

We continue to learn about the more developing parts of the world and today, we are celebrating Nigeria Day, a day to reflect upon our learnings from and investments in our time spent in Africa. We have invited the entire Windows org to come and bug bash on our 2G network using some standard quests (install Windows, join the Windows Insider Program, set up your machine, etc.) so our team can develop more empathy for what most of the world experiences quite often. We will have a full recap of our experience next week!

Happy bug bashing—and see you on the next Beam live stream on Saturday 7-9 pm PST.

Keep hustling team,
Dona

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