Computerworld.com [Hacking News]

Ah, the morning ritual: Once you’ve booted up your computer, it’s time to open all those application windows you need to get work done. You might want to position them just so, especially if you use a variety of apps or rely on multiple displays in your workflow.

But wait: Computers are designed to automate repetitive tasks! Isn’t there be a better way to do this?

The answer is yes — and Microsoft’s new Workspaces PowerToy is how to make it happen. With a few fast clicks, the tool empowers you to pull up any specific group of application windows you need and put them exactly where you want them on your desktop.

It even supports multiple monitors for people who have especially complex desktop setups. If Microsoft were rolling this out as a feature in the next version of Windows, PC users everywhere would be excited! But it’s a free download today and most PC owners don’t even realize it’s available for the taking.

The Workspaces tool is part of Microsoft’s free PowerToys package for Windows 10 and Windows 11. You can download it from the Microsoft Store or Microsoft’s website. (Microsoft added the Workspaces utility in PowerToys version 0.84, released on Sept. 3. If you have an older version, you’ll want to launch “PowerToys” from the Start menu and use the “Check for updates” button on the General tab.)

Once you have PowerToys in place, the real fun begins.

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Create your custom Windows workspace

Once you’ve opened up PowerToys at least once to confirm it has all the required permissions — you can start using the new Workspaces feature by pressing Windows+Ctrl+`. (That last character is known as the “grave accent” — it’s the key above the Tab key on your keyboard.)

(You can tweak this keyboard shortcut if you like. Launch PowerToys, select “Workspaces” in the sidebar, and change the activation shortcut.)

To save a workspace of windows, click the “Create Workspace” button. Now, create the “workspace” you want to use by opening windows, closing windows, and positioning everything where you want on your screen.

Click the “Create Workspace” button to get started.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

PowerToys will remember everything — which applications are open, which windows are positioned where, and even which applications are minimized. When you’re done, click “Capture.” You’ll see a preview of what the Workspaces tool remembers.

You can easily edit this list: To remove an application you don’t want to associate with a particular workspace, just click the “Remove” button next to it.

When you’re happy with your workspace, give it a name using the “Workspace name” box at the top of your screen. Then, consider checking the “Create desktop shortcut” box to make your workspace easier to launch. Finally, click “Save Workspace.”

Go through the list of remembered applications and click “Remove” to remove anything you don’t want launched.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Launch a workspace of Windows apps

After you’ve saved your preferred setup, you have two options to launch it. The easiest is with that desktop shortcut you created just a moment ago. You just double-click the shortcut on your desktop and Workspaces will get to work, opening applications and positioning all those windows for you.

You can also open the Workspaces window by pressing Windows+Ctrl+` and then using the “Launch” button to launch any of your saved workspaces.

Launch a workspace from the desktop shortcut or Workspaces window.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Personally, I prefer the desktop shortcut. When you boot your computer and it’s time to work, you can quickly double-click the shortcut and have Workspaces take it from there.

(Don’t see the desktop shortcut? Right-click an empty spot on your desktop and select View > Show desktop icons to toggle desktop icons on and off.)

You’ll see a dialog box while PowerToys is launching and repositioning the windows.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Tweak your workspace with advanced arguments

If you want to take your Windows workspace setup to even more advanced heights, you can dig into the feature’s app-specific command-line arguments. (These are why Microsoft is positioning PowerToys Workspaces as a tool for developers and not just regular business users!) When you’re creating or editing a workspace in the Workspaces window, you can click an application in the list, and you’ll see a “CLI arguments” field.

You can specify any command-line arguments here and PowerToys Workspaces will use them when launching the applications in that workspace.

Take Google Chrome, for example: You could specify a web address like https://theintelligence.com to launch that specific web page when your workspace opens. Or with a program like Microsoft Word or Excel, you could specify the path to a document or spreadsheet on your computer to launch it.

Click an application’s name and add arguments to the “CLI arguments” field, if you like.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

The available options depend on the command-line switches the application in question supports, so you might have to do some digging to uncover all the available options for any given program.

A Windows workspace warning

When you use PowerToys Workspaces, you could encounter one big problem: The system works best when you have no application windows open and you’re starting from a clean, empty workspace. If you already have some windows open, its behavior can be a little unpredictable.

Here’s the issue: Let’s say you have an app open and you try to launch it again from your Start menu. What happens? It depends on the application. For some applications — like Google Chrome and Microsoft Word — Windows will open an additional window. For other applications — like Spotify or Microsoft To Do — Windows will “reuse” the open application window, bringing it into focus.

That’s because PowerToys Workspaces functions by launching an application — just like you’d launch it from your Start menu — and then moving its window to a configured position on your desktop.

So, if you already have a Chrome browser window open and you launch a workspace that has a Chrome window, you’ll get a new Chrome window in the configured location. For other applications, PowerToys will reposition the current window.

For predictable behavior, consider closing all your open applications or just using PowerToys Workspaces when you first sign into your computer and have a clean desktop.

Other useful Windows workspace systems

Windows has lots of other ways to organize the apps you’re using, including the powerful Snap feature for organizing windows and Task View, which lets you organize groups of open windows into different virtual desktops. (Unfortunately, Workspaces isn’t integrated with those Task View virtual desktops.)

For more useful PowerToys, check out FancyZones, which provides extra organization powers for your open windows. And I recommend checking out the Always On Top PowerToy; it offers an easy way to make any window “always on top” of other windows, which is can be helpful in various workflows.

Want more? Dig into this list of 10 excellent PowerToys you should use on Windows. There are many powerful utilities included in this power-user-focused free download from Microsoft; this new Workspaces addition is merely the latest in a long list of worthwhile options.

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If you’ve been following Android for long, you’re probably familiar with two seemingly at-odds realities about the role Google’s platform plays in the greater tech universe:

1. Android has been the dominant mobile operating system (and all-around computing operating system) for ages now, thanks to its prominent and diverse presence on the phone side of things.
2. At the same time, Android has long struggled to gain any meaningful foothold on the tablet end of the equation — with an endless-seeming array of about-faces and puzzling pivots in that area.

Plain and simple, while Android phones have always had their own distinctive identity and appeal, Android tablets have flipped and flopped more times than an inebriated penguin on ice skates. And between their lack of any consistent identity and the on-off nature of their development in general, that’s allowed Apple’s iPad to become the firmly entrenched de facto standard for slate-shaped devices while Android tablets have remained a relative afterthought, in comparison.

Now, though, it looks like Google may be ready to change that narrative — and change the very way we think about Android tablets and the role they play in our lives.

And there’s more than a passing connection to Apple’s own wildly successful tablet philosophy, as we’ll explore more thoroughly in a moment.

[Get fresh, original insight in your inbox with my free Android Intelligence newsletter. Three new things to know and try each Friday!]

Google’s Android tablet (re)reinvention

This latest pivot — yes, technically another one! — comes by way of a quietly published post on Google’s Android Developers Blog just ahead of last weekend.

The post announces a new developer preview of an unassuming-seeming feature called “desktop windowing on Android tablets.”

As El Googenthaal puts it:

Desktop windowing allows users to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize app windows, offering a more flexible and desktop-like experience. This, along with a refreshed System UI and new APIs, allows users to be even more productive and creates a more seamless, desktop-like experience on tablets.

Intriguing, no? I thought so. And then I started actually playing around with the under-development system on my own personal Pixel Tablet, and I quickly realized just how big of a deal this could actually be.

Translated into plain English, the system lets you easily take any app you’re seeing on an Android tablet and shrink it down into a resizable window — just like you’d do on a desktop computer.

A desktop-like canvas on Android, with Google’s new windowed apps system for tablets.

JR Raphael, IDG

That means in addition to the phone-like ability to split the screen in half and view two apps at the same time, you can open up numerous apps and arrange ’em in any way you like — side by side, tiled, overlapping, you name it — with any number of apps visible at any given moment and windows taking up any size your precious heart desires.

It gives you a completely flexible canvas, in other words, and transforms the Android tablet from a mostly consumption-oriented gadget into a computer-like productivity machine. (Samsung, notably, has offered a similar option on its Android devices for some time now. But having such a system present at the actual Android platform level introduces a whole other level of seamless integration, universal compatibility, and all-around prominence — along with a more consistent experience when it comes to actual app interactions, given the operating-system-level connections.)

And even in its early, still-rough-around-the-edges shape, I can’t help but be blown away by just how significant of a change this seemingly small twist could shape up to be.

The ins and outs of Google’s Android tablet app windows

For context, with the new Android tablet desktop windowing setup — which is currently accessible (a) only on Google’s Pixel Tablet, (b) only if you opt the device in to the latest Android 15 beta update, and (c) only if you enable its developer settings and then find and flip the switch to a specific related setting — every app gains a new thin bar at the top-center of the screen.

When you want to move from the standard Android interface into the new windowed mode, you simply swipe down on that bar. And you can then place the app wherever you want and continue to move and resize it from there.

srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?quality=50&strip=all 600w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?resize=300%2C188&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?resize=269%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 269w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?resize=134%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 134w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?resize=576%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 576w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-gesture.webp?resize=400%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 400w" width="600" height="375" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px">Shifting Android apps into flexible windows is as easy as swiping down once, then moving and resizing as needed.

JR Raphael, IDG

A few other interesting touches come into play once you’re in that Android tablet windowed mode:

• A taskbar, similar to the one that can already be summoned on any large-sized Android device, appears in a permanent position at the bottom of the screen — providing an extremely desktop-reminiscent setup, with easy anytime access to your currently opened apps along with any pinned apps and your entire Android app drawer.
• Each individual window gains its own title bar area, which contains an “x” for closing the window as well as an icon for maximizing the window and a dropdown for snapping the window into a series of standard sizes and positions.
• And anytime you want to exit the windowed mode and go back to the standard Android interface, you can drag any window to the top of the screen to make that transition.

srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?quality=50&strip=all 600w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?resize=300%2C188&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?resize=269%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 269w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?resize=134%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 134w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?resize=576%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 576w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-exit.webp?resize=400%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 400w" width="600" height="375" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px">Pushing any Android app back to the top of a tablet’s screen is all it takes to exit the new windowed-apps mode.

JR Raphael, IDG

As for the broader implications, three points in particular jump out at me based on my time with the setup so far — the second of which ties into that tantalizing Apple connection at the start of this story:

1. The Android windowed tablet interface feels a lot like ChromeOS

As anyone who’s spent much time with Google’s other primary platform is likely to notice, this setup bears more than a passing resemblance to the main ChromeOS interface present on the company’s many Chromebook computers.

That’s true from the taskbar to the overall interface styling and also the ability to move an Android app between its phone-like state and a more large-screen-optimized interface simply by changing the width of its window.

srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?quality=50&strip=all 600w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?resize=300%2C188&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?resize=269%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 269w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?resize=134%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 134w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?resize=576%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 576w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-android-tablet-windowed-app-resize.webp?resize=400%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 400w" width="600" height="375" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px">Just like on ChromeOS, you can move between an Android app’s phone-style interface and its more desktop-like presentation simply by changing the app’s size.

JR Raphael, IDG

When Google first restarted its Android tablet strategy two years ago — just a few years after officially announcing it was done with focusing on tablet development entirely, in 2019 — I raised the question of how Android tablets and Chromebooks could coexist and make sense together without awkwardly overlapping and stepping on each others’ toes.

Early on, after all, the line between the two device types was easy to understand: Android was for smartphones, while ChromeOS was for laptops, desktops, and the most optimal Android-app-supporting tablet experience.

Once Google made it clear it intended to resurrect the native Android tablet as a prominent option, the narrative got much more muddled. But Google had an answer: When I asked for clarification in 2022, the company told me the difference ultimately came down to how you intended to use the product.

Go, go, gadget self-quoting machine:

In short, Android tablets are intended for “productive mobility” — with content consumption being the top priority and a bit of more complex productivity being an occasional add-on.

Chromebook tablets, on the other hand, are the exact opposite: They’re intended for “mobile productivity,” with the active work being the primary purpose and the more passive consumption being a pleasant side perk.

Now, it seems like Google’s working to rethink that narrative and make Android tablets about active productivity, too. So where does that leave Chromebooks — and how will any regular person figure out the differences between the two approaches and which type of device is most suitable for any given purpose?

That’s a question I’m not entirely convinced anyone is ready or able to answer.

2. This Android tablet expansion seems like a very deliberate response to the iPad’s shortcomings

While Apple may well wear the crown of the all-around tablet champion, one thing I’ve consistently heard from even the most enthusiastic Apple fanatics is that iPads are being held back by Apple’s intentionally limiting software.

In short, folks on the Apple side of the Great Tech Divide are hungry for a more powerful framework that brings desktop-like computing capabilities onto their otherwise capable devices.

Federico Viticci of MacStories assembled an impressively thorough list of such desires earlier this year, ranging from a fix for the iPad’s surprisingly rudimentary file management capabilities to an improvement for its “fractured mess” of multitasking shortfalls:

iPadOS’s multitasking … could be so much more. I think several iPad users (and I was guilty of this, too) have convinced themselves due to Apple’s pace of updates that we’ve reached the peak of what tablet multitasking should do with Split View and Stage Manager. But look outside Apple’s stance on iPadOS, and you see that is not the case. Once again, I’m not arguing for macOS features on the iPad; I’m saying that, if Apple wanted to, it could design innovative, high-performance, delightful tablet-first multitasking systems. Sadly, iPad multitasking tells a very different story.

Six Colors founder (and frequent Computerworld sister site Macworld contributor) Jason Snell has shared similar sentiments around the iPad’s productivity boundaries:

Professionals multitask. Professional tools should, too. This is an area where the iPad Pro fails its users. …

I have such an affinity for my iPad that I have wanted to integrate it into as much of my life as possible. And for an increasing number of tasks, I can. But for many others, I am eternally bumping up against the severe limitations of the platform.

At the risk of giving Google too much credit, it certainly feels like this Android tablet expansion is a direct reaction to the void Apple’s creating with those decisions. It positions the Android tablet as the anti-iPad, in a sense — the productivity-forward powerhouse of a gadget Apple refuses to offer. You want a tablet that can actually act like a computer and give you a desktop-caliber environment for going beyond passive consumption and genuinely getting stuff done? The iPad’s not gonna give it to ya, pal. But hey, we can.

Now, realistically, are throngs of Apple diehards suddenly gonna drop everything and abandon the ecosystem they’re so heavily invested in to pick up an Android tablet? That’s highly unlikely. But if Google can make some noise and win over even some segment of iPad owners — along with professionals who don’t presently rely on tablets for productivity — while simultaneously convincing Android phone owners to stay in its ecosystem and grab an Android tablet for their needs, well, that’d be a pretty significant victory to be able to claim.

And, perhaps just as important, it’d allow Android tablets to carve out a niche of their own beyond just being “iPads, but with Android” — something Google started to do on another front, with its attempt to frame the Pixel Tablet as a souped-up Smart Display last year, but never fully realized due to the ineffective implementation of that admirable-seeing idea.

(And anyway, the productivity angle is a far more powerful point of differentiation to be able to claim — given the door it cracks open into the lucrative and potential-packed world of business computing.)

3. Beyond just tablets, this type of concept could become very interesting for foldable phones, too

The timing of this launch is especially intriguing to me right now because I’m in the midst of spending some quality time getting to know Google’s latest foldable Android device — the awkwardly named but otherwise delightful Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

And as soon as I saw the news about the Android tablet windowing development, I couldn’t help but think: “Oooh. This could have huge implications here.”

Consider:

• Google’s exerting a ton of effort to frame the Pixel 9 Pro Fold as being a best-of-both-worlds, business-ready phone and full-sized 8″ tablet in your pocket.
• The main benefit of the Fold is the fact that you can use it like a regular phone most of the time but then pop it open at a second’s notice to unfold some serious productivity power — with the ability to view and even interact with two full-sized apps on-screen at the same time.
• As I put it previously, this “strips away many of the standard limitations of using a phone-sized device and gives you a more desktop-like computing experience — which, suffice it to say, can be a massive asset when it comes to work-oriented, productivity-centric tasks.”

If a folding Android phone is essentially meant to bring a tablet-like experience into the palm of your hand on demand, then wouldn’t it make sense for this new Android tablet advantage to also be available within that environment?

It builds upon the same basic productivity-minded perks already present on a phone like this latest folding Pixel — with the more desktop-like experience and all the tools for being able to effectively work across different apps and processes without being limited to a simple 1:1 screen-split scenario.

Heck, it even involves the same exact exceptional taskbar already built into that fully unfolded part of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s interface:

srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?quality=50&strip=all 600w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=289%2C300&quality=50&strip=all 289w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=162%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 162w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=81%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 81w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=463%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 463w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=347%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 347w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/google-pixel-9-pro-fold-taskbar.webp?resize=241%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 241w" width="600" height="622" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px">Google’s new Android taskbar, as seen in the inner “tablet” mode of a Pixel 9 Pro Fold phone.

JR Raphael, IDG

All in all, it feels like a no-brainer and like something Google would be crazy not to introduce into that type of device once the testing period is over and the feature actually launches. And that introduction would take a promising type of new mobile technology and make it even more powerful for that same business-minded, productivity-seeking sort of buyer.

Make no mistake about it: From tablets themselves to the foldables around ’em, there’s much more to this move than what we see on the surface. And even in its earliest form, the feature feels like a complete reinvention of the associated devices and what they’re able to accomplish.

If Google manages to implement and then market this effectively — a big “if,” admittedly, given the company’s past slip-ups and notoriously short attention span — this could be huge.

Watch this space.

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OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has stepped away from his role as co-director of an internal commission the company created in May to oversee key safety and security decisions related to OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) model development and deployment.

OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee will become “an independent board oversight committee focused on safety and security” led by its new chair, Zico Kolter, director of the machine learning department of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, the company revealed in a blog post Monday. Kolter replaces the committee’s former chair, Bret Taylor, who also has departed.

Other members of the committee, which is chiefly aimed at overseeing the safety and security processes guiding OpenAI’s model development and deployment, remain: Adam D’Angelo, Quora co-founder and CEO; retired US Army General Paul Nakasone; and Nicole Seligman, former EVP and general counsel at Sony Corporation.

It was this committee, under Kolter’s leadership, that reviewed the safety and security criteria that OpenAI used to assess the “fitness” of OpenAI o1 for launch, as well as the results of safety evaluations for the model, according to the post. OpenAI o1 is the company’s latest family of large language models (LLMs) and introduces advanced reasoning that the company said exceeds that of human PhDs on a benchmark of physics, chemistry, and biology problems, and even ranks highly in math and coding.

More transparency, collaboration and monitoring on tap

OpenAI shared recommendations for the committee’s mission going forward: to establish independent governance for AI safety and security; enhance security measures; foster transparency about OpenAI’s work; collaborate with external organizations; and unify the company’s safety frameworks for model development and monitoring.

“We’re committed to continuously improving our approach to releasing highly capable and safe models, and value the crucial role the Safety and Security Committee will play in shaping OpenAI’s future,” said the post.

Indeed, AI safety, and OpenAI’s management of it in particular, is something that has become of great concern to various industry stakeholders and lawmakers.

Altman became a controversial figure soon after forming OpenAI, and his abrupt ousting from and subsequent return to the company late last year, and the behind-the-scenes deal making and shake-ups that occurred in the aftermath quickly led to infamy for the CEO, who has become a public face of AI.

Highlights in that journey included OpenAI securing a $13 billion investment from Microsoft, which uses OpenAI technology for its generative AI tool, Copilot, and breaking ideologically from Tesla’s Elon Musk, a controversial figure in his own right, who was one of OpenAI’s founding board members and investors. Musk ultimately sued OpenAI and Altman for breaching its founding mission.

The safety of OpenAI’s technology also has been called into question under Altman, after reports surfaced that the company allegedly used illegal non-disclosure agreements and required employees to reveal whether they had been in contact with authorities, as a way for it to cover up any security issues related to AI development.

Effect of the move as yet unknown

It remains to be seen what, if any, impact Altman’s stepping back from OpenAI’s safety board will have on AI governance, which is still in its infancy, noted Abhishek Sengupta, practice director at Everest Group.

However, it appears to be a sign that the company recognizes “the importance of neutrality in AI governance efforts,” and could be willing to be more open about how it is managing AI security and safety risks, he told Computerworld.

“While the need to innovate fast has strained governance for AI, increasing government scrutiny and the risk of public blowback is gradually bringing it back into focus,” Sengupta said. “It is likely that we will increasingly see independent third parties involved in AI governance and audit.”

Business spending to adopt and use AI in existing operations, and to deliver better products and services, is expected to drive 3.5% of global GDP by 2030, adding $19.9 trillion to the world economy, according to a new report from research firm IDC.

AI spending by businesses alone is expected to reach $632 billion by 2028, IDC had estimated in an earlier study.

As a result, AI will affect jobs across every region of the world, affecting industries from contact center operations to translation, accounting, and machinery inspection, according to IDC. Helping to trigger this shift are business leaders, 98% of whom view AI as a priority for their organizations.

David Foote, chief analyst and research officer with IT research firm Foote Partners, believes that 20% to 25% of tech jobs could eventually be taken by AI. “There have been a lot of layoffs,” he said. “Companies are identifying people who may have been solid workers in the past, but they don’t fit into the new world driven by the [emerging] economy and the technology they’re making bets on.”

While AI will reduce or eliminate the need for human input in some areas, it will also enhance productivity, requiring professionals to reskill and adapt to take on more strategic and creative roles, according to a research note by Foote. Along those lines, Goldman Sachs has projected that as many as 29% of computer-related job tasks could be automated by AI, as well as 28% of work by healthcare practitioners and technical tasks in that field. Careers with the highest exposure to AI automation are administrative positions (46%) and tasks in legal (44%) professions.

Nearly half of respondents to IDC’s Future of Work Employees Survey (48%) expect some parts of their work to be automated by AI and other tech over the next two years — and another 15% think most of their jobs will be automated. Only 3% expect their jobs to be fully automated.

Despite that disruption, however, AI will have a “net positive global economic impact,” according to the latest IDC report. In 2030, every new dollar spent on business-related AI solutions and services will generate $4.60 in the global economy in terms of indirect and induced effects.

Those impacts include:

• Increased spending on AI solutions and services driven by accelerated AI adoption;
• Economic stimulus among AI adopters, seeing benefits in terms of increased production and new revenue streams;
• And an increase in revenue across the AI providers supply chain including services providers.

“In 2024, AI entered a phase of accelerated development and deployment defined by widespread integration that’s led to a surge in enterprise investments aimed at significantly optimizing operational costs and timelines,” said Lapo Fioretti, an IDC senior research analyst. “By automating routine tasks and unlocking new efficiencies, AI will have profound economic consequences, reshaping industries, creating new markets, and altering the competitive landscape.”

New job roles to emerge

A survey of CFOs in June by Duke University and the Atlanta and Richmond Federal Reserve banks found that 32% of organizations plan to use AI in the next year to complete tasks once done by humans. And in the first six months of 2024, nearly 60% of companies (and 84% of large companies) said they had deployed software, equipment, or technology to automate tasks previously done by employees\.

While some work is being negatively affected by the rapid proliferation of AI tools and platforms, new positions such as AI ethics specialists and AI prompt engineers will emerge as dedicated roles within global organizations.

IDC’s research also indicates that positions where human social and emotional capabilities are critical, such as nursing and roles where decision-making encompasses ethics and comprehension beyond numbers, will remain robust. “Understandably, we’re all curious to know if AI will replace our jobs,” said Rick Villars, IDC group vice president, for worldwide research.

As one CEO told IDC researchers, “Based on this research it’s clear that we should be asking ourselves how our jobs can be made easier and better by AI. AI will not replace your job but someone who knows how to use AI better than you will,” Villars added.

Has Apple’s love affair with AR cooled? Not on your life, and while it is true that visionOS didn’t get much time during the company’s big reveals at WWDC and last week’s iPhone launch, the company has delivered a handful of valuable improvements to the OS — hinting at future product plans as it did.

Perhaps you missed the hint, but what was interesting about the update wasn’t what’s new as much as what isn’t new, particularly the lack of support for Apple Intelligence. You could argue that this is only because the AI isn’t quite ready yet, but I can’t help but see its absence as a hint of what’s to come.

It’s always useful to cast about for a morsel of what Apple has actually said to support the theory. So, what has the company said? It’s already told us it’s working on a version of Siri with more contextual intelligence it hopes to ship in 2025.

That AI will be able to make contextual generative AI (genAI)-driven decisions in reaction to what it sees you interacting with on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Imagine what it will do if used with Vision Pro as it also looks around where you really are. If I’m right about this direction, it’s possible we’ll see visionOS equipped with a profoundly powerful contextual intelligence perhaps toward the end of next year. 

The Gift of Sound & Vision

Did I call this profound? Think about it: contextual intelligence is essential for an effective/responsive voice-driven interface at the intersection of technology and the everyday world. What you are looking at will change depending on your context, and the data your device surfaces will reflect the complexity of such complex lives. I see this as being Door Detection on steroids.I also think the gap between the idea and the reality will delay complete realization for a while — but it’s a beginning.

I also think that late 2025 time frame hints at Apple’s target release schedule for the slightly more mass market Vision 2.0 devices speculators expect. However, speculation doesn’t mean much these days until Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman’s “little birds” (Game of Thrones reference) begin to whisper. And I don’t think they’ve discussed how AI, voice, and contextual genAI will underpin dramatic new user interfaces across a multitude of consumer devices (plausibly including something designed by Jony Ive).

Let’s move away from speculation based on what didn’t happen to run through what’s actually changed.

Apple

Here’s a run-down on how Apple has expanded Spatial Reality:

The handy gesture

For me, the biggest improvement is around gesture. Apple has made it handy to access Home View and Control Center on Vision devices. To get to Home, you just need to use your hand — stare at your palm, then tap the dot that appears. If you turn your hand around you’ll be presented with time and battery information and can tap in that view to invoke Control Center or adjust volume controls. You can also now change the icon arrangement in Home, and avatar hand movements have been made smoother with new animations

Memories get Spatial

Apple made several tweaks to photos and videos: 

• You can turn existing photos into spatial images, adding depth to create a stereoscopic effect.
• The Photos app on Vision devices has been improved.
• You can share photos, videos, and panoramas during FaceTime calls using SharePlay.
• You get video trimming controls to use from within the headset.

(I’m quite interested to see the extent to which a future version of Apple Intelligence will be able to generate 3D environments from 2D photos you can then explore using Vision Pro. I believe that is inevitable.)

Apple When you need a keyboard

You can use a Mac keyboard with Vision devices. In visionOS 2, the device will recognize your keyboard and display it on screen. This makes it much easier to use the input device. Apple has also introduced support for Bluetooth mice, which means you can navigate your device using a mouse and keyboard. A Messaging improvement means you can now dictate a message by staring at your microphone icon.

The infinite workspace

For work, perhaps one of the better enhancements (coming later this year) is the introduction of a new panoramic screen, equivalent to two 4K displays standing alongside each other. This really is giant real estate and should make complex workflows more possible.

On the web

The Safari browser lets Vision Pro users watch videos on a large display in any environment. Siri will read page content and Tab Group support makes it easier to handle multiple tabs. When you get time off, you get emoji reaction and singalong tools in Apple Music and the capacity to watch up to 5 MLS and MLB games in Multiview mode. (The latter feature is also expected later in the year.) You can also watch video in one window while working in other applications.

Virtuality and immersive environments

Apple expanded the number of immersive environments available in visionOS. It also improved the avatar system, so it captures more accurate skin tones and clothing colors. 

And the rest…

• Guest mode gives guests 30-day access to your device as it saves their eye and hand data.
• Live Captions provide real‑time transcriptions of speech, audio, and video content, including FaceTime calls.
• There’s a new travel mode for trains.

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

A new forecast from the research firm IDC indicates that shipments of headsets for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) will increase by 41.4% in 2025. And along with lower hardware prices, the big draw will be built-in AI functions, according to Reuters.

The new AI headsets are called ER (Extended Reality) and are expected to have a market share of just over 25% in four years.

Combined VR, AR, MR and ER headset sales are expected to rise from 6.4 million units in 2024 to 22.9 million units in 2028.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has announced that the company’s employees will soon have to work from the office five days a week, just as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, workers were only required to be in the office three days a week.

“Looking back over the past five years, we continue to believe that the benefits of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in a message to staff. “In conclusion, we have observed that it is easier for our employees to learn, model, train and strengthen our culture; collaboration, idea generation and invention are easier and more efficient; teaching and learning from each other happens more smoothly; and teams tend to be better connected to each other.”

Employees will still have an opportunity to work remotely if they need to, but the option will no longer be standard for everyone. The new arrangement is set to go into effect on Jan. 2, 2025.

Intel’s foundry business has secured a significant deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for custom AI chip production, potentially bolstering confidence in the struggling chip giant.

In a memo to employees, CEO Pat Gelsinger revealed that Intel Foundry Services will manufacture an AI fabric chip for AWS using its 18A process technology.

“We will also produce a custom Xeon 6 chip on Intel 3 that builds on our existing partnership, under which Intel produces Xeon Scalable processors for AWS,” Gelsinger said. “More broadly, we expect to have deep engagement with AWS on additional designs spanning Intel 18A, Intel 18AP, and Intel 14A.”

The announcement comes after Intel secured up to $3 billion in direct funding under the US CHIPS and Science Act for the US government’s Secure Enclave program.

Gelsinger also announced plans to establish Intel’s foundry business as an independent subsidiary, completing the transition that began earlier this year when it separated Intel Foundry Services’ financials from its core operations.

All eyes on Intel

Intel’s recent moves have come under scrutiny as the chipmaker faces mounting pressure after weak quarterly earnings, aiming to stay relevant in the enterprise sector amid strong competition.

In the memo, Gelsinger acknowledged these challenges, saying that “all eyes have been on Intel since we announced Q2 earnings.”

 “There has been no shortage of rumors and speculation about the company, including last week’s Board of Directors meeting, so I’m writing today to provide some updates and outline what comes next,” Gelsinger added.

The custom chip deal with Amazon couldn’t have come at a better time, according to Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights.

“It is no secret that the existing chip manufacturers are essentially maxed out on their production capacity for the next couple of years when it comes to AI,” Park said. “Any ability that Intel has to further support AI workloads would be welcomed by the market at large. This is especially important because AI is often developed in the cloud due to the unpredictability of the workload, and AWS is potentially a blank check in terms of acquiring AI chips.”

Neil Shah, partner & co-founder at Counterpoint Research, noted that the deal marks a significant milestone for Intel, potentially allowing it to package Amazon’s next-generation Trainium chip — possibly Trainium 3 — which could exceed 1000 watts, putting it on par with Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture.

“However, it remains to be seen how significant this deal is in terms of volume and the mix of front-end (wafer fab) and back-end (packaging) processes,” Shah added. “Additionally, the yield rate of the chips, compared to TSMC, will be a major concern in determining the profitability of the deal for both parties.”

Streamlining for performance

Gelsinger added that Intel Foundry is focused on enhancing capital efficiency while making adjustments to the near-term scope and pace of its manufacturing expansion.

The company has passed the halfway mark toward its goal of reducing its workforce by approximately 15,000 employees by the end of the year. It also plans to sell a stake in its programmable chip unit, Altera, and will delay projects in Poland and Germany for about two years, citing expected market demand.

Meanwhile, Intel reaffirmed its commitment to US manufacturing, moving ahead with projects in Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and Ohio.

Analysts warn that the company’s emphasis on US manufacturing while boosting its chances of securing government contracts and benefiting from reshoring initiatives, could strain relations with European partners and clients.

“Europe has been investing heavily in semiconductor autonomy through its own Chips Act, and Intel’s pause could shift momentum to Asian or European chipmakers eager to fill the gap,” said Manish Rawat, semiconductor analyst at Techinsights. “Intel’s move highlights the delicate balance between national security concerns and the need for a diverse global supply chain, especially when geopolitical instability or trade disruptions with Asia are considered.”

As we navigate the threshold of a bold new era with generative AI, the excitement is palpable – not least for software companies in Europe. From content and code generation (including debugging and testing), personalisation, and back-office task optimisation to virtual assistants, decision-making, and far beyond, generative AI is a revolutionary technology that is beginning to drive considerable value. It is also a strategic imperative for software developers to help power the next stage of their customers’ growth.

McKinsey estimates that 75 percent of the value generative AI could deliver will come from four key areas: customer operations; marketing and sales; software engineering; research and development (R&D). The direct positive impact on software engineering productivity could range from 20 percent to 45 percent annually. This would be achieved through a reduction in the time spent on activities like generating initial code drafts, generating documentation, analysing the root-cause of issues, or creating new systems design.

Leveraging the Cloud to Seize the Generative AI Opportunity

At AWS, we are committed to helping software companies realise the full potential of cloud computing as an enabler for the fast adoption of generative AI. Thousands of software businesses in Europe are using AWS today to accelerate innovation, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce costs while getting the highest levels of security and protection. Cloud technology is crucial to create and power the Foundational Models (FMs), like Large Language Models (LLMs), and augment these models with your data, to build unique generative AI applications at scale. With Amazon Bedrock, we offer our customers the choice to use diverse high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon through a single API, along with a broad set of capabilities for building generative AI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI.

Developers are telling us that they’re spending the majority of their time on repetitive and tedious tasks and cookie-cutter code. To help solve this challenge, we recently announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative AI-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. Amazon Q Developer assists developers and IT professionals with all of their tasks—from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimising AWS resources. This empowers developers to spend less time on repetitive and tedious coding and more time on creating unique experiences for their end users while being able to deploy faster.

Continual Evolution of Use Cases

Generative AI is already making an impact on software companies in Europe. InfoCert, whose Legalmail solution enables businesses to verify the authenticity and legal validity of their email exchanges, is using Amazon Bedrock to streamline access to innovative document and email processing features, and paving the way for more efficient machine learning (ML) integrations. InfoCert expects to reduce financial overhead by 80 percent for startup, development, and configuration costs when onboarding new customers.

Another example is Showpad, a software company recognised for crafting leading sales and marketing enablement solutions. It is leveraging AI services from AWS to analyse vast amounts of data and use the insights to generate personalised content that addresses each buyer’s unique needs and preferences. The results are telling, Showpad’s customers are already seeing a 2.2-times uplift in the return on investment for their marketing content.

AWS Commitment to Europe

Our commitment to democratising access to generative AI builds on our longstanding support of Europe’s digital future through our investments in infrastructure, jobs, skills development, and education in local communities. We recently announced plans to invest €15.7 billion in Spain in the AWS Europe (Spain) Region, which will support an estimated 17,500 full-time equivalent jobs in local businesses on an annual average basis.

For public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries, we are launching the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new independent cloud for Europe, by the end of 2025 with a planned investment of €7.8 billion. To help customers and partners plan their deployments to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, we have published the roadmap of initial services.

AWS local teams work to empower software companies across Europe through various programs aimed at supporting their international expansion, such as AWS Global Passport. We are also focused on accelerating modernisation and fostering SaaS adoption through programs like AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) and the dedicated EMEA SaaS Factory.

To learn more about how software companies can harness generative AI to accelerate growth, download ebook, and listen to this podcast.

Kendall McDaniel felt like a nomad worker, wandering from job to job, never making enough money, never feeling fulfilled. He worked entry-level jobs in construction, in healthcare and at multiple fast-food joints.

In those fast-food jobs, McDaniel said, “You could be bleeding out of your ears and you’d still be expected to come into work.”

With an associate’s degree in theater, McDaniel at the time felt there were no long-term career options ahead for him. Then, two years ago, his cousin — an electrician — told him about a manufacturing company he’d worked at. He liked how they treated him, and that tip convinced McDaniel to apply for another entry-level position; this time, the job led to an apprentice program in the semiconductor industry.

He’s now a machinist at Utica, NY-based Indium Corporation, which makes foundational materials for the production of semiconductors and electronics. “I didn’t know anything about the semiconductor industry,” said McDaniel, 29. “I didn’t know anything tech wise. I was never a STEM person. I had mostly been looking at how I could obtain financial stability. That was my main goal coming into this.”

While McDaniel has found the semiconductor manufacturing challenging, it’s allowed him to take on a myriad number of tasks that jibes with his attention deficit disorder and it’s work that feels important.

Kendall McDaniel, an Machinist apprentice at semiconductor materials maker Indium, checks tolerances of rolled metals.

Indium

As a transgender man, McDaniel said he experienced culture shock. In earlier jobs, he said he didn’t feel safe or supported. And moving toward a manufacturing job conjured up images of “a bunch of tough guys.” In fact, most of his co-workers are women, and his managers took both his ADHD and his transgender identity in stride.

“Here, my managers have always encouraged me. If you have time off, go ahead and use it,” he said. “Or, [they’ll say] ‘You’re looking a little tired, do you need anything for the rest of the week?’ My manager always comes over to me and asks me if I’m all set.”

McDaniel is part of a registered apprenticeship program led by Indium and the National Institute for Industry and Career Advancement (NIICA), under the US Department of Labor (DoL).

Funneling workers into the industry

One of NIICA’s primary focuses is on building the nation’s talent pipeline in semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industries through scholastic partnerships and registered apprenticeships under a program called Growing Apprenticeships in Nanotechnology and Semiconductors (GAINS), which is also funded by the DoL.

Under GAINS are a number of programs aimed at funneling entry-level workers and others into the semiconductor industry at a time when it’s rapidly expanding in the United States.

The efforts come at a time when the industry doesn’t have anywhere near the workforce — including technicians, computer scientists, and engineers — required to support future needs. By some estimates, the US semiconductor industry faces a worker shortfall of between 59,000 and 146,000 workers by 2029. A minimum of 50,000 trained semiconductor engineers will be needed over the next several years in the US to meet the overwhelming and rapidly growing demand, according to a study by Purdue University.

The broader U.S. economy is set to have a gap of 1.4 million such workers, according to a 2023 study from the Semiconductor Industry Association. So the competition will be fierce over those skilled workers. Compounding the problem is an ongoing exodus of existing talent as virtually all Baby Boomers will be retired by 2030. A study from Deloitte found that nearly 90% of technology leaders interviewed cited recruiting as their biggest challenge.

Incentivized by funding under the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, semiconductor companies are expected to invest more than $80 billion in opening new or expanding current fabrication plants (fabs) and other related facilities through 2025, according to White House data. For example, after the world’s largest producer of microchips, TSMC, was promised $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding last spring, the company announced a third new fab in Arizona.

To date, the CHIPS Act has allocated over $32 billion in proposed funding across 17 companies, 16 states, and 26 projects. However, no CHIPS funding has been disbursed to any companies, according to the US Department of Commerce.

The reshoring of the semiconductor industry is important for the US economy and national security. Semiconductors, the silicon-based processors for everything from dishwashers and smartphones to hypersonic guided missiles, keep US infrastructure, the economy and its military systems running.

But, the United States’ share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity has been steadily declining for decades, falling from roughly 40% in 1990 to about 12% in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

McKinsey & Co.

How we got here

Like so many other goods, chip manufacturing is expensive. So, many US semiconductor makers transitioned to a “fabless” model, where they designed the product and offshored manufacturing to East Asia. About 80% of all chip manufacturing takes place in the region, mainly in Taiwan and China, according to The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The largest tech companies in the US, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, have relied on Taiwan’s TSMC alone for nearly 90% of their chip production.

Then in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, exposing an existential threat to the global chip supply. Due to forced lockdowns and remote work, fabs were shuttered and the supply of everything from automobiles to smartphones and computers suffered from the depletion of chip inventories. Add to that the raging US-China trade war, and it became clear reshoring chip production to the US was critical.

In 2022, a report from the US Department of Commerce detailed an “alarming” shortage of computer chips at a time when the median demand for them was as much as 17% higher over a two-year period. “This is a major supply and demand mismatch,” the report said.

The problem with reshoring goes beyond simply building facilities; that’s only a start. The US hasn’t been focused on training engineers and technicians for the semiconductor industry for decades. So, manufacturers have taken on the task themselves, though it’s not likely to be close to meeting staffing needs.

TSMC, for example, is sending employees in the US to Taiwan to learn jobs, according to Taylor Roundtree, associate partner in the semiconductor practice of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. “They’re also bringing some Taiwanese ex-pats in, too,” Roundtree said.

GlobalFoundries, the third-largest chipmaker globally, is casting a wide net to recruit talent. The company has sought out veteran candidates, along with candidates from its own workforce reentry program and an initiative for women in construction.

Micron Technology, Inc., the world’s fourth-largest semiconductor company — and the only U.S. memory and storage manufacturer — plans to invest $100 billion to build the largest semiconductor fabrication facility in the history of the United States in Onondaga County in NY, just two hours from Hudson Valley.

As part of the CHIPS Act, the US Economic Development Administration through its Tech Hubs Program was authorized to receive $10 billion over five years with the main goal of creating additional semiconductor training programs. To date, however, the money isn’t being dispersed as expected.

“If I look at fiscal year 2023, it launched and only had $500 million in funding. So, if I have a five-year program that’s authorized to receive $10 billion, I would have expected $2 billion per year. The first year, it received just a quarter of that,” Roundtree said.

Schools, fabs collaborate on apprenticeships

In response, semiconductor companies have joined with US universities, community colleges and even high schools in states where new fabs are being built or where workers are most needed for existing facilities to create their own joint programs.

“We’ve been working with companies for 10 years,” said Laura Marmolejo, associate dean for the advanced manufacturing programs at Austin Community College (ACC) in Austin, Texas. “Many years ago I worked in the industry. When I went to the faculty side… I basically realized on the non-credit side how much of a disconnect there was between what companies want and what colleges in general want. We’re hung up on, ‘this is credit and this is not credit.'”

“I was part of a corporate training initiative we had back when I worked for a [semiconductor] company. I just saw there was a lot of opportunities for the colleges to do things different, but colleges — education in general — are slow to change,” Marmolejo said.

Ten years ago, ACC began working with Samsung on a grant, which allowed the school to develop a cirriculum, build infrastructure for training, buy equipment, and hire instructors. “At the time, it was me and one other person,” Marmolejo said.

ACC’s semiconductor programs are growing fast. It now has 15 full-time and 30 part-time instructors or staffers. It currently has 300 students enrolled in the program and has trained 2,000, most of whom have remained in the semiconductor industry.

NIICA is currently overseeing 4.900 apprentices working at 79 employers across 17 states. Its focus is on states where fabs and other related facilities are being built or expanded, including Arizona, New York, Texas, Ohio and California.

The greatest demand in the industry today is for engineers and technicians — the people who create the parts for semiconductors and operate and keep the production equipment running, said Clay Nagel, senior director of NIICA’s national center for skills-based learning.

“There’s definitely a dearth of talent,” he said. “Semiconductor manufacturing was moving out of the US for a very long time. Now you’re trying to onshore manufacturing. But there needs to be programs in place to teach people. We need education partners and employers onboard with that.”

That’s where NIICA fits in; the non-profit organization works with K-12 schools, community colleges and universities to help create training programs and apprenticeships with employers.

The apprenticeship programs set the industry apart from others because employees can work full-time jobs and learn skills while getting they’re getting paid.

“There needs to be an awareness campaign,” Nagel said, adding that the number of semiconductor chips needed will roughly triple by 2030. “I wouldn’t call it an emergency yet. I’d call it an urgent issue at this point.”

Data shows that semiconductor industry hiring has been steadily declining for the past two years and job postings are down, a trend Nagel ties to the cyclical nature of the industry. “During the 2021-2022 time frame, you couldn’t make enough computer chips with the shortages and hiring was through roof,” said Nagel, who formerly led technical training at semiconductor maker GlobalFoundries.

McKinsey & Co.

When the economy picks up, people want new cars, televisions and smartphones, which means demand for chips goes up and manufacturers rush to boost inventory. That’s happening now, along with CHIPS Act incentives for semiconductor makers.

“I don’t see it being an issue that hiring is slow now,” said Nagel. “Just in the last 90 days, with companies that received CHIPS Act incentives, we’re now seeing anywhere from 50% hiring increases to 600% increases. They know these fabs are going to go online in late Q4 and through 2025. We predict hiring will continue to accelerate through 2025, 2026. I’d say this is the calm before the storm.

“It’s starting to get gusty,” he said.

ACC is one of the schools NIICA is now collaborating with on training and apprenticeships.

“We have a population that’s unskilled,” Marmolejo said. “There just aren’t a lot of people in the [US] semiconductor industry. Community colleges are really well suited to fill that gap and develop this workforce.

“Five years ago, nobody did apprenticeships,” Marmolejo continued. “Now we have four companies doing apprenticeships this fall. It motivates students to complete their credentials once they’re engaged.”

ACC isn’t trying to compete with the big technical schools such as Texas A&M, Marmolejo said. Community colleges simply don’t have the resources for that. Instead, ACC is focused on entry-level job training in applied technology and manufacturing — skills needed to attain a job as a machine operator or chip assembler.

“There’s a lot of people who need a job first,” Marmolejo said. “I tell students it’s not about starting pay. On average, it’s about $20 an hour, but the growth potential is huge. I have people who come into my program and say, ‘I’ve only gotten a one-dollar a year wage increase in my current job.’ That’s not going to happen in manufacturing. You can see $5 or $6 wage increases by end of year. It’s all performance based.

Dropping out of the funnel

In addition to the lack of semiconductor training programs is another issue: high attrition rates. University students who join engineering programs often change majors before they graduate, the engineers who do graduate often don’t enter engineering jobs — and those who get engineering jobs don’t choose semiconductors.

The state of Oregon, which has tracked semiconductor programs closer than any other state, found that only 8% to 12% of students who graduate from programs go on to work in engineering. “If I look at all undergraduate and graduate degrees awarded, roughly 3.7% of those are what they call core semiconductor degrees,” McKinsey & Co’s Roundtree said. “That’s defined as engineering technician and precision production roles. Of all the courses that people take in the state of Oregon, fewer than 4% are in those core semiconductor roles.

“If we’re facing an engineering shortage, that’s certainly one lever you could pull to get more engineers into the workforce,” Roundtree said. “You lose folks in huge swaths at every step of the funnel.”

More than 60% of executives in a semiconductor industry survey acknowledge it has an image problem in terms of making it an attractive career choice. Semiconductor fabs and development facilities evoke images of workers in white coveralls, filtration masks and cleanrooms where humidity, temperature and pressure conditions must constantly be maintained.

“Folks look at that cleanroom suit, and if I’m trying to choose between stocking shelves at Wal-Mart or putting on a cleanroom suit and moving boxes of wafers around a fab, well, if I’m only getting paid $2 more an hour to move the boxes of wafers around, maybe that’s not something I want to do,” said Bill Wiseman, senior partner and global co-leader of McKinsey & Co’s semiconductors practice.

Said Roundtree: “It’s something that in the US they haven’t had to face for a while, because we’ve not been building a lot of these cutting-edge fabs until now.”

Making the chip industry look cool

In some ways, the semiconductor industry is competing with the Googles and the Metas of the world to attract talent, and those companies can offer remote work — something manufacturing cannot do, said Isaac Hagen, senior vice president of vertical industry development at staffing firm ManpowerGroup.

“The challenging thing these days is making the semiconductor industry look cool,” Hagen said. “The talent largely does not exist. So, there is a need for upskilling, reskilling and what we refer to pre-skilling — so, getting people the skills they need before they even get into the job hunt.”

Most young people simply don’t consider that virtually everything they touch today is powered by a semiconductor chip. “When you start to talk to people about the industry, they realize that it powers the world,” Hagen said.

Peter Bermel, a professor of computer engineering at Purdue University, said one reason students avoid semiconductor engineering degrees is because they have a reputation of being “very hard,” especially in terms of mathematical requirements. “In general, that’s been a huge barrier — to keep people on the path,” Bermel said.

In 2020, Purdue University launched a Department of Defense-funded program called SCALE (Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement); its aim is to train up a semiconductor workforce for the defense sector. Seventy-five percent of SCALE graduates remain in the semiconductor field, according to Bermel, who said the program is more attractive than others because it feels more purposeful.

“Since SCALE, things have changed quite a bit,” Bermel said. “We have more students staying in the program. We’ve been tracking our drop-out rate and it’s been about 4%. The students who join SCALE are highly motivated and find a lot of good opportunities to do things that are exciting.”

Cole Lush, a senior undergraduate student at Purdue in SCALE’s aerospace program, currently helps manufacture chips for updating older US ballistic missiles; it’s a job he got after his father, a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel who worked with defense and data systems, urged him to pursue it.

“For a long time, I wanted to be an astrophysicist because space was my passion,” Lush said, “but then I realized I wanted to work on the systems that go into space. So, I focused more on engineering. Once I got involved with SCALE, I learned more about current events and the opportunities through SCALE.”

As a part of that SCALE, Lush was offered a summer intern program and hired by GRC Integrated Systems, a small consulting firm that works with the US Naval Surface Warfare Centers. During his internship, Lush worked on a project updating the internal electronics in older submarine-launchable ballistic missiles to extend their lifecycle.

“Part of the reason they hired me is because they saw SCALE on my resume at a career fair. Within a month, they told me, ‘you’re in,’” Lush said.

Updating US ballistic missiles is but one of many examples SCALE can offer students through its semiconductor education program. “All the defense systems, and obviously a huge number of commercial systems, are dependent on semiconductors,” Bermel said. “Having students who understand how things work on the inside is vital to preserve and extend these systems and create new and better systems.

NIICA’s Nagel said the bottom line should be that “opportunity is the sexiest part” of the semiconductor field. “A lot of companies are paying off student loans for employees,” Nagel said. “Through tuition reimbursement, you can work your way into engineering or management jobs without college debt.”

Imposter syndrome and the fear of math and sciences

In the past, entry-level positions in the semiconductor industry were rarely noticed by job seekers outside the industry. That changed as would-be workers saw new opportunities for training and advancement.

But new employees who’ve never worked in the semiconductor field can get “imposter syndrome” working in high-tech jobs that often require math and science backgrounds. “I encourage them to not get overwhelmed,” said Joe Rondino, a cleanroom operations manager for NY CREATES, a non-profit semiconductor R&D facility in Albany, NY. “I tell them to trust the training programs we have and the mentors you’re given. As long as they’re hard workers, opportunities will present themselves. Math isn’t even required for a lot of the jobs.”

Rondino himself had been working in customer service at a large electronics retailer 11 years ago when he decided to change careers and attended a job fair. He was offered an entry-level job as a cleanroom operator working nights at NY CREATES; over time, he moved to a daytime shift and advanced as opportunities arose. He now manages 13 employees, and mentors apprentices.

What’s important is soft skills — the desire and ability to learn, and be a reliable and hard worker, Rondino said.

Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) in Troy, NY first collaborated with NIICA when chipmaker GlobalFoundries (GF) initiated an Industrial Maintenance Technician Apprenticeship program. To carry out the program, GF conducts on-the-job training of approximately 2,000 hours per year, while the college partners with GF for the required related instruction. The college began conversations with NY CREATES in the spring of 2024 to explore another apprenticeship program partnership within the semiconductor industry

Through a partnership with HVCC, NY CREATES operates an apprenticeship program that lets people get hands-on training while also taking in courses at the college to advance in their careers.

One of Rondino’s apprentices, 27-year-old Kyle Huffer, has been with NY CREATES for eight months. With only a high school diploma, Huffer learned about the semiconductor R&D firm through a relative who also works there.

Huffer was intrigued. “He described it to me, and it sounded very interesting and a lot more mentally stimulating [than] what I was doing before,” said Huffer, who’d been detailing cars at the time.

Huffer works as a clean room operator in a control center, where silicon wafers — thin discs of semiconductor material used to create microchips — are loaded into and out of machines that process them.

Joe Rodino (L), a cleanroom operations manager, mentors Kyle Huffer (R), a cleanroom operator who has worked for NY CREATES the past eight months.

NY CREATES

Huffer loads plastic containers known as Front Opening Unified Pods, or FOUPs, that are filled with wafers and transfers them safely between machines as they’re processed.

“I wouldn’t say it’s challenging, but it’s definitely enjoyable and mentally stimulating,” said Huffer. “This field is booming. Technology is the future. So there’s plenty of room for advancement. We’re only going to get more technologically advanced and what we do contributes to that.”

Lea Montana, another cleanroom operator, runs machinery that processes the silicon wafers. A part of the apprenticeship program, she’s been working at NY CREATES for four years and hopes to become a certified engineering technician.

Montana had been working as a home healthcare aid in her 20s when her stepfather told her about his job at NY CREATES and the scientific aspect of the work interested her. She’s since obtained an associate’s degree in applied science, and is now training another employee on cleanroom work.

“It’s a really exciting job and there’s always something new to learn,” she said. “If you want to continue to learn and grow in a career, this is great. And there are a lot of other job opportunities you can move into on site.”

For Indium’s McDaniel, working in the semiconductor industry has provided something he’d never had before — a stable career. He and his wife recently purchased a house and he was also able to buy a newer car.

McDaniel credits his newfound career with being able to go to school while also working 40 to 50 hours a week, “and I didn’t feel like I was short-changing myself or the family I was starting to build. I’m at a point in my transition that I can pass [for a man] very well; it’s not something I’m concerned about. …The people around me here see me for my work ethic — they don’t just see me.”

HVCC’s apprenticeship program began in late 2021 and had 42 apprentices in the first year. Currently, HVCC has over 70 active apprentices with 20 employed in the semiconductor industry. The college has approximately 500 students in credit-bearing programs to prepare students for jobs in the semiconductor manufacturing workforce.

Needed now: a ‘Top Gun‘ moment

Because a semiconductor fab plant takes anywhere from three to five years to build and get online, and most of the projects didn’t break ground until 2022, the industry won’t see a boom in hiring until late this year through 2026, according to Hagen. But even by then, the workforce needed to staff those facilities will be far from ready.

TSMC, which is spending $40 billion to build a new plant and expand another in Phoenix, earlier this year announced further completion delays. Previously, the company planned for a 2026 opening; it now expects to go online in 2027 or 2028. TSMC makes 90% of the world’s most advanced chips, supplying them to companies like Apple and Nvidia.

Those kinds of delays could, ironically, give the industry a little more breathing room to find and train all of the workers who’ll be needed to staff them. But skills shortages are still likely.

“We kind of need a ‘Top Gun‘ moment,” Wiseman said. “Top Gun came out in 1986, and everybody wanted to become a naval aviator all of a sudden. Before that, most people didn’t even know the Navy had planes, let alone wanting to go join the Navy to fly them. That’s the kind of moment we need in the semiconductor industry.”

Just as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was preparing to present her new team, there is trouble over the line-up for Commission posts: The European Union’s current Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton, has unexpectedly submitted his resignation.

In his resignation letter, which the Frenchman posted on X, Breton justified his move by saying that von der Leyen had asked the French government a few days ago to remove his name from the list of candidates, allegedly in exchange for another more influential portfolio.

“I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues in the College, Commission services, MEPs, Member States, and my team. Together, we have worked tirelessly to advance an ambitious EU agenda. It has been an honour & privilege to serve the common European interest,” Breton wrote in the tweet accompanying his resignation letter.

Microsoft never sleeps. In addition to its steady releases of major and minor updates to the current version of Windows 10, the company frequently rolls out public preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and even help shape — upcoming features.

Windows Insiders can choose to receive preview builds in one of four channels: the Canary, Dev, Beta, or Release Preview Channel. Insiders in the Canary, Dev, and Beta Channels are now testing Windows 11 builds.

The Release Preview Channel typically doesn’t see action until shortly before a new feature update is rolled out; it’s meant for final testing of an upcoming release and is best for those who want the most stable builds. This is the only Insider channel that is currently receiving Windows 10 builds.

Below you’ll find information about recent Windows 10 preview builds. For each build, we’ve included the date of its release, which Insider channel it was released to, a summary of what’s in the build, and a link to Microsoft’s announcement about it.

Note: If you’re looking for information about updates being rolled out to all Windows 10 users, not previews for Windows Insiders, see “Windows 10: A guide to the updates.”

Releases for Windows 10 version 22H2 Windows 10 22H2 19045.4955 (KB5043131)

Release date: September 16, 2024

Released to: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which playback of some media could have stopped when you used certain surround sound technology, and another in which Windows Server stopped responding when you used apps like File Explorer and the taskbar.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4955.)

Windows 10 22H2 19045.4842 (KB5041582)

Release date: August 22, 2024

Released to: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which when a combo box had input focus, a memory leak sometimes occurred when you closed that window, and another in which some Bluetooth apps stopped responding because of a memory leak in a device.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 19045.4842.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4713 (KB5040525)

Release date: July 11, 2024

Released to: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel

In this build, Insiders in the Beta Channel get a fix in which they will see a search box on their secondary monitors when the setting for search on the taskbar is set to “Search box.”

Insiders in the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel get fixes for a variety of bugs, including one in which the TCP send code often causes a system to stop responding during routine tasks, such as file transfers. This issue leads to an extended send loop.

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 19045.4713.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4593

Release date: June 13, 2024

Released to: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel

In this build, Insiders in the Beta Channel get bug fixes for Windows Backup. Insiders in both the Beta and Release Preview Channels get a new feature for mobile device management in which when you enroll a device, the MDM client sends more details about the device. The MDM service uses those details to identify the device model and the company that made it.

Insiders in the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel also get a variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that could have stopped systems from resuming from hibernation after BitLocker was turned on.

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 19045.4593.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4472 (KB5037849)

Release date: May 20, 2024

Released to: Release Preview ChannelThis build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which TWAIN drivers stopped responding when you used them in a virtual environment, and another in which the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) app stopped responding.

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 19045.4472.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4353 (KB5036979)

Release date: April 15, 2024

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build introduces account-related notifications for Microsoft accounts in Settings > Home. A Microsoft account connects Windows to your Microsoft apps. This feature displays notifications across the Start menu and Settings. You can manage your Settings notifications in Settings > Privacy & security > General.

A wide variety of bugs have been fixed, including one in which when your device resumed from Modern Standby you might have gotten the stop error, “0x9f DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, and another in which the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution’s (LAPS) Post Authentication Actions (PAA) did not happen at the end of the grace period. Instead, they occurred at restart.

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4353.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4233 (KB5035941)

Release date: March 14, 2024

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build adds Windows Spotlight, which displays new images as your desktop wallpaper. If you want to know more about an image, click or tap the Learn More button, which takes you to Bing. To turn on this feature, go to Settings > Personalization > Background > Personalize your background and choose Windows spotlight. The update also adds sports, traffic, and finance content to the lock screen. To turn it on, go to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Note that these two features will roll out to users gradually.

In addition, in Windows Hello for Business IT admins can now use mobile device management (MDM) to turn off the prompt that appears when users sign in to an Entra-joined machine. To do it, turn on the “DisablePostLogonProvisioning” policy setting. After a user signs in, provisioning is off for Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices.

A wide variety of bugs have been fixed, including one in which some applications that depend on COM+ component had stopped responding. Also fixed was a deadlock issue in CloudAP that occurred when different users signed in and signed out at the same time on virtual machines.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4233.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4116 (KB5034843)

Release date: February 15, 2024

Released to: Release Preview Channel

In this build, using Windows share, you can now directly share URLs to apps like WhatsApp, Gmail, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Sharing to X (formerly Twitter) is coming soon.

The build fixes several bugs, including one in which you weren’t able to use Windows Hello for Business to authenticate to Microsoft Entra ID on certain apps when using Web Access Management (WAM).

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.4116.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3992 (KB5034203)

Release date: January 11, 2024

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update adds eye control system settings. You can back up these settings from the former device while you set up a new device. Then those settings will install automatically on the new device so you can use them when you reach the desktop.

The build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which an MDM service such as Microsoft Intune might not get the right data from BitLocker data-only encryption, and another in which some single-function printers are installed as scanners.

(Get more info about  Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3992 (KB5034203).)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3757 (KB5032278)

Release date: November 20, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update begins the rollout of the preview version of AI-powered Copilot in Windows 10. Windows Insiders in Release Preview with eligible devices running Windows 10, version 22H2 who are interested in installing it Windows as soon as possible can  change their settings so that it will automatically install on their PCs. To do it, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, turn on Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available, and then check for updates. It will be a phased launch via controlled feature rollout (CFR) in the coming months.

There are three known issues in this build. In one, if you install Copilot for Windows you may see some instability after clicking the Refresh button in Copilot. Clicking links inside Copilot or closing Microsoft Edge or Copilot may cause Copilot and Edge to crash.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3757.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3754 (KB5032278)

Release date: November 16, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

In this update, you can change your settings so that when the preview version of AI-powered Copilot in Windows is ready for Windows 10, it will automatically install on your PC. To do it go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, turn on Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available and then check for updates. It will be a phased launch via controlled feature rollout (CFR) in the coming months.

The update also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which the cursor’s movement lagged in some screen capture scenarios, and another in which the Windows LAPS PasswordExpirationProtectionEnabled policy failed to turn on the setting.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3754.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3391 (KB5029331)

Release date: August 10, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update improves how Windows detects your location to give you better weather, news, and traffic information. It also expands the rollout of notification badging for Microsoft accounts on the Start menu, which gives you quick access to important account-related notifications. You can also add extra security steps to keep from being locked out of your account.

The update also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which Group Policy Service did not wait for 30 seconds, the default wait time, for the network to be available. Because of this, policies were not correctly processed.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3391.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3269 (KB5028244)

Release date: July 13, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which certain display and audio devices were missing after your system resumed from sleep, another in which some VPN clients were unable to make connections, and one in which Windows failed when you used BitLocker on a storage medium with a large sector size.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3269.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3154 (KB5027293)

Release date: June 22, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update adds many new features and improvements to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. For details, see Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. It also lets you authenticate across Microsoft clouds. This feature satisfies Conditional Access checks if they are needed.

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that stopped the onscreen keyboard from opening after you lock the machine, and another that could have deleted all the registry settings under the Policies paths when you did not rename the local temporary user policy file during Group Policy processing.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3154.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3030 (KB5026435)

Release date: May 11, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This update brings back a redesigned search box on the taskbar. If you have a top, bottom, regular, or small icons taskbar, you will see the search box. It offers access to apps, files, settings, and more from Windows and the web. You will also have access to the latest search updates, such as search highlights. To restore the previous search box, use the taskbar context menu or respond to a dialog that appears when you use search.

The build also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that stopped you from accessing the Server Message Block (SMB) shared folder, and another that did not let you apply signed Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) policies to the Secure Kernel when you enabled Secure Boot.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.3030.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2908 (KB5025297)

Release date: April 13, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build lets you change firewall settings by configuring application group rules and adds the ability to sync language and region settings when you change your Microsoft account display language or regional format.

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Microsoft Edge IE mode in which the Tab Window Manager stopped responding, and another that caused rendering issues that affected the search box gleam (an animated icon). The issue occurred in wide, narrow, or small taskbar mode.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2908.)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2670 (KB5022906)

Release date: March 16, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which lsass.exe stopped responding when it sent a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) query to a domain controller that had a very large LDAP filter, and another in which Windows classified USB printers as multimedia devices even though they are not.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2670 (KB5022906).)

Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2670 (KB5022906)

Release date: February 16, 2023

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that stopped hyperlinks from working in Microsoft Excel, another in which using a provisioning package for bulk provisioning Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) failed, and another in which virtual machines (VMs) stopped responding when you added a new disk to a storage pool in thin provisioning scenarios.

(Get more info about Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045.2670.)

Windows 10 Build 19045.2301 (KB5020030)

Release date: November 10, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

In this build, the search box now appears by default on the taskbar when the taskbar is at the top of your screen or when you turn on small taskbar button mode. The build also fixes a variety of bugs, including one that affected the reliability of app installation on some devices installed by enterprises, and another that caused some applications that run on the Windows Lock Down Policy (WLDP) to stop working.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19045.2301.)

Releases for Windows 10 version 21H2 Windows 10 Insider Build 19044.2192

Release date: October 18, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which applications stopped responding due to input queue overflows, and another in which Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD) Application Proxy connector was unable to retrieve a Kerberos ticket on behalf of the user. It returned the error message, “The handle specified is invalid (0x80090301).”

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Build 19044.2192.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1947

Release date: August 15, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

The build enhances Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s ability to identify and intercept ransomware and advanced attacks, and gives IT admins the ability to remotely add languages and language-related features.

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that generated error 0x1E when shutting down or restarting a device, another that degraded BitLocker performance, and another that prevented virtualized App-V Microsoft Office applications from opening or causes them to stop working.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview 21H2 Build 19044.1947.)

Windows 10 Build 19045.1865 (KB5015878) 

Release date: July 28, 2022 

Released to: Release Preview Channel 

Microsoft has now released Build 19045.1865 (KB5015878) to the Release Preview Channel. The company says it is the first preview build of Windows 10 22H2 and is ready for testing by corporate IT departments. (Note that KB5016878 has been previously released via the regular Windows 10 Update channel, labeled as a Windows 10 Preview.) 

Commercial devices configured for the Release Preview Channel via the Windows Insider Program Settings page or via  Windows Update for Business  policy, whether through Microsoft Intune or through Group Policy, will automatically be offered Windows 10, version 22H2 as an optional update. Windows 10, version 22H2 is also now available via Windows Server Update Service and Azure Marketplace. 

(Get more info about KB5015878.) 

Windows 10 Build 19044.1862 (21H2)

Release date: July 18, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build lets you agree to receive urgent notifications when focus assist is on. It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one that caused certain docking stations to lose internet connectivity when waking from Sleep mode, and another that could have caused Windows to stop working when you enabled Windows Defender Application Control with the Intelligent Security Graph feature turned on.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1862.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1806 (21H2)

Release date: June 24, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build adds IP address auditing for incoming Windows Remote Management (WinRM) connections in security event 4262 and WinRM event 91. This addresses an issue that fails to log the source IP address and machine name for a remote PowerShell connection. The build also introduces a wide variety of Print and Scan features, including IPP over USB support.

The build also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that affected the Cloud Clipboard service and prevented syncing between machines after a period of inactivity.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1806.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1741 (21H2)

Release date: June 2, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

The build fixes one bug, which prevented the file system control code (FSCTL_SET_INTEGRITY_INFORMATION_EX) from handling its input parameter correctly.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1741.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1739 (21H2)

Release date: May 23, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

The build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that failed to display the Application Counters section in the performance reports of the Performance Monitor tool, a memory leak issue that affected Windows systems that are in use 24 hours each day of the week, and one that caused file copying to be slower.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1739.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1679 (21H2)

Release date: April 14, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

The build adds improvements for servicing the Secure Boot component of Windows and fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that caused a remote desktop session to close or a reconnection to stop responding while waiting on the accessibility shortcut handler (sethc.exe); another that caused the news and interest panel to appear when you haven’t clicked, tapped, or moused over it; and another that caused Windows to stop working when you applied a Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) policy that doesn’t require a restart.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1679.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1618 (21H2)

Release date: March 14, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build introduces search highlights, which display notable moments about each day, including holidays, anniversaries, and other events globally and in your region. To see more details at a glance, hover or click on the illustration in the search box.

There are also a variety of small new features, including a new policy that expands an app’s top three notifications by default in the Action Center for apps that send notifications using Windows notifications. It displays multiple notifications that you can interact with simultaneously.

In addition, there are a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that stopped Microsoft Outlook’s offline search from returning recent emails, and another that prevented the User Account Control (UAC) dialog from correctly showing the application that is requesting elevated privileges

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1618.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1499 (21H2)

Release date: January 14, 2022

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that prevented the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) localhost relay from starting when Fast Startup is enabled, another that prevented certain surround sound audio from playing in Microsoft Edge, and another in Microsoft UI Automation that could cause Microsoft Outlook to stop working.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1499.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1381 (21H2)

Release date: November 18, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build includes all the changes in Windows 10 Build 19044.1379 (21H2) and also fixes an additional bug that affected devices that use Windows Hello for Business and are joined to Azure Active Directory (AD). These devices had issues when they accessed on-premises resources, such as file shares or websites.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1381.)

Windows 10 Build 19044.1379 (21H2)

Release date: November 16, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that failed to apply machine Group Policy objects automatically at startup or in the background to devices on a domain that have certain processors, and another that incorrectly renders some variable fonts.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19044.1379.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1320 (21H2)

Release date: October 26, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build includes all the features from Build 19044.1319 and also fixes a bug that prevented the successful installation of printers using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP).

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1320.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1288 (21H2)

Release date: October 21, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel and via ISO

Microsoft says that it believes “Build 19044.1288 is the final build for the November 2021 Update.” Insiders in the Release Preview Channel can go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choose to download and install Windows 10, version 21H2. It can also be downloaded via ISO. Microsoft didn’t announce any new features or bug fixes in this build.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1288.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1319 (21H2)

Release date: October 19, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that prevented subtitles from displaying for certain video apps and streaming video sites, and another in which the use of App-V intermittently caused black screens to appear when signing in on the credentials page.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1319.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1263 (21H2)

Release date: September 23, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes several dozen bugs, including one that caused News and Interests to appear in the context menu even when you have disabled it on a device, and another that caused distortion in the audio that Cortana and other voice assistants capture.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1263.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1202 (21H2)

Release date: August 31, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a bug that caused the Windows Update settings page to stop responding after you download an optional update.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1202.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1200 (21H2)

Release date: August 18, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel (only for Insiders who were moved from the Beta Channel to the Release Preview Channel because their PC did not meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11)

Note: This build is only available for those who seek it out by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choosing to download and install 21H2.

This build adds WPA3 H2E standards support for enhanced Wi-Fi security, and a new deployment method, cloud trust, which supports simplified passwordless deployments for a deploy-to-run state within a few minutes.

It includes a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused an external monitor to display a black screen after hibernation and another in Windows Defender Exploit Protection that prevented some Microsoft Office applications from working on machines that have certain processors.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1200.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1147 (21H2)

Release date: July 15, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel (only for Insiders who were moved from the Beta Channel to the Release Preview Channel because their PC did not meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11)

Note: This build is only available for those who seek it out by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choosing to download and install 21H2.

This build focuses almost solely on a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that caused  File Explorer to stop working after reaching 99% completion when deleting many files on a mapped network drive, and another that caused System Integrity to leak memory.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1147.)

Releases for Windows 10 version 21H1 Windows 10 Build 19043.1381 (21H1)

Release date: November 18, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build includes all the changes in Windows 10 Build 19043.1379 (21H1) and also fixes an additional bug that affected devices that use Windows Hello for Business and are joined to Azure Active Directory (AD). These devices had issues when they accessed on-premises resources, such as file shares or websites.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19043.1381.)

Windows 10 Build 19043.1379 (21H1)

Release date: November 16, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that failed to apply machine Group Policy objects automatically at startup or in the background to devices on a domain that have certain processors, and another that incorrectly renders some variable fonts.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19043.1379.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19044.1320 (21H1)

Release date: October 26, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build includes all the features from Build 19043.1319 and also fixes a bug that prevented the successful installation of printers using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP).

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1320.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1319 (21H1)

Release date: October 19, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that prevented subtitles from displaying for certain video apps and streaming video sites, and another in which the use of App-V intermittently caused black screens to appear when signing in on the credentials page.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1319.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1263 (21H1)

Release date: September 23, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes several dozen bugs, including one that caused News and Interests to appear in the context menu even when you have disabled it on a device, and another that caused distortion in the audio that Cortana and other voice assistants capture.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1263.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1202 (21H1)

Release date: August 31, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build fixes a bug that caused the Windows Update settings page to stop responding after you download an optional update.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1202.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1200 (21H1)

Release date: August 18, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build includes a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused an external monitor to display a black screen after hibernation and another in Windows Defender Exploit Protection that prevented some Microsoft Office applications from working on machines that have certain processors.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.1200.)

Windows 10 Build 19043.1147 (21H1)

Release date: July 15, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

Note: Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel on 21H1 will not receive this update. Microsoft says they will soon receive Windows 11 Insider Preview builds.

This build focuses almost solely on a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that caused  File Explorer to stop working after reaching 99% completion when deleting many files on a mapped network drive, and another that caused System Integrity to leak memory.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Build 19043.1147.)

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0

Release date: June 22, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build has a single change: It fixed a bug that didn’t allow the touch keyboard to be displayed when invoked.

Microsoft is releasing only very minor changes to its Windows Feature Experience Packs for now, because it’s testing the process of distributing them. Over time, more features will be released more frequently. Eventually the packs will be delivered via Windows update the way all other updates are delivered.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0.)

Windows 10 Build 19043.1081 (21H1)

Release date: June 17, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build offers a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused blurry text on the news and interests button on the Windows taskbar for some display configurations, and another in which signing into Windows using a PIN failed.

(Get more info about Build 19043.1081.)

Windows 10 Build 19043.1052 (21H1)

Release date: June 8, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build includes a variety of security updates for the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Management, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Authentication, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Virtualization, Windows Kernel, Windows HTML Platform and Windows Storage and Filesystems.

For more details, see Microsoft’s Security Update Guide.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about 21H1 Build 19043.1052.)

Windows 10 Build 19043.1023 (21H1)

Release date: May 21, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel

This build includes a wide variety of small bug fixes, including one that displayed items on the desktop after they have been deleted from the desktop, and another that caused configuration problems with devices configured using mobile device management (MDM) RestrictedGroups, LocalUsersAndGroups, or UserRights policies.

(Get more info about 21H1 Build 19043.1023.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.985 (21H1)

Release date: May 11, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build includes a variety of security updates for Windows App Platform and Frameworks, the Windows Kernel, Windows Media, the Microsoft Scripting Engine, and the Windows Silicon Platform. For more details, see Microsoft’s Security Update Guide.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.985.)

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0

Release date: April 28, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build has a single change: It removes nonfunctional hyperlinks from being displayed in the Input Method Editor (IME) candidate window.

Microsoft is releasing only very minor changes to its Windows Feature Experience Packs for now, because it’s testing the process of distributing them. Over time, more features will be released more frequently. Eventually the packs will be delivered via Windows update the way all other updates are delivered.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.962 (21H1)

Release date: April 19, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build offers new personalization options for news and interests on the taskbar. A new button links to a page that lets you choose specific topics that you’re interested in. You can search for topics or publishers you want to follow, and also browse through more than a dozen categories, including different types of news, entertainment, and sports.

There are also a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused blank tiles to appear on the Start menu with names such as “ms-resource:AppName” or “ms-resource:appDisplayName,” and another that caused Azure Active Directory authentication to fail after signing in on Windows Virtual Desktop machines.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.962.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.928 (21H1)

Release date: April 13, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build includes a variety of security updates for Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Apps, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Office Media, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Cryptography, the Windows AI Platform, Windows Kernel, Windows Virtualization, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media. For more details, see Microsoft’s Security Update Guide website.

There are several security updates in addition to those, including fixing a potential elevation of privilege vulnerability in the way Azure Active Directory web sign-in allows arbitrary browsing from the third-party endpoints used for federated authentication.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.928.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.899 (21H1)

Release date: March 15, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

This update fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that caused Remote Desktop sessions to end unexpectedly, another that caused systems to stop working when no Trusted Platform Module (TPM) was present, and another that froze devices if files or folders that OneDrive syncs were deleted.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.899.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.867 (21H1)

Release date: March 9, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

This update includes a wide variety of security updates for the Windows Shell, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Management, Windows Apps, Windows User Account Control (UAC), Windows Virtualization, the Windows Kernel, the Microsoft Graphics Component, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge Legacy, and Windows Media. For details, see the Microsoft Security Update Guide.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.867.)

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3030.0

Release date: February 23, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

This build has a single change: It improves the reliability of the handwriting input panel.

Windows Feature Experience Pack updates are delivered to Insiders in the Beta Channel via Windows Update just like builds and cumulative updates. If you want to install one, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and check for updates. You’ll have to reboot to enable it. To check your Windows Feature Experience Pack version, go to Settings > System > About.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3030.0.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19043.844 (21H1)

Release date: February 17, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

This build is the first version of the next Windows 10 feature update, version 21H1. In order to get it, Insiders in the Beta Channel need to go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choose to download and install 21H1. Once you’ve installed 21H1, you’ll receive preview builds for 21H1 moving forward; those who don’t install it will continue to receive 20H2 builds for the time being.

The build includes all the fixes in Insider Build 19042.844 for version 20H2 as well as several minor bug fixes and tweaks. Bug fixes include resolving an issue that caused a one-minute or more delay when you opened a Microsoft Defender Application Guard (WDAG) Office document. Feature tweaks include having Windows Hello multicamera support set the default as the external camera when both external and internal Windows Hello cameras are present.

For more details about 21H1, see this blog post from John Cable, Vice President, Program Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19043.844.)

Releases for Windows 10 version 20H2 Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0

Release date: June 22, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build has a single change: It fixed a bug that didn’t allow the touch keyboard to be displayed when invoked.

Microsoft is releasing only very minor changes to its Windows Feature Experience Packs for now, because it’s testing the process of distributing them. Over time, more features will be released more frequently. Eventually the packs will be delivered via Windows update the way all other updates are delivered.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3740.0.)

Windows 10 Build 19042.1081 (20H2)

Release date: June 17, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build offers a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused blurry text on the news and interests button on the Windows taskbar for some display configurations, and another in which signing into Windows using a PIN failed.

(Get more info about Build 19042.1081.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build (20H2) Build 19042.1023

Release date: May 21, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build, for Insiders on 20H2, includes a wide variety of small bug fixes, including one that displayed items on the desktop after they have been deleted from the desktop, and another that caused configuration problems with devices that were configured using mobile device management (MDM) RestrictedGroups, LocalUsersAndGroups, or UserRights policies.

(Get more info about (20H2) Build 19043.1023 (KB5003214).

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.962 (20H2)

Release date: April 19, 2021

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build offers new personalization options for news and interests on the taskbar. A new button links to a page that lets you choose specific topics that you’re interested in. You can search for topics or publishers you want to follow, and also browse through more than a dozen categories, including different types of news, entertainment, and sports.

There are also a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused blank tiles to appear on the Start menu with names such as “ms-resource:AppName” or “ms-resource:appDisplayName,” and another that caused Azure Active Directory authentication to fail after signing in on Windows Virtual Desktop machines.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.962.)

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3030.0

Release date: February 23, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

This build has a single change: It improves the reliability of the handwriting input panel.

Windows Feature Experience Pack updates are delivered to Insiders in the Beta Channel via Windows Update just like builds and cumulative updates. If you want to install one, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and check for updates. You’ll have to reboot to enable it. To check your Windows Feature Experience Pack version, go to Settings > System > About.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3030.0.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.844 (20H2)

Release date: February 17, 2021

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This update fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that caused video playback to flicker when rendering on certain low-latency capable monitors, and another that prevented certain Win32 apps from opening as a different user when you use the runas command.

There are also a few minor feature tweaks, including enabling Windows to retrieve updated printer capabilities to ensure that users have the proper set of selectable print options.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.844.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.804 (20H2)

Release date: February 9, 2021

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This release fixes a bug and includes a variety of security updates. The bug fixed could damage the file system of some devices and prevent them from starting up after running chkdsk /f.

Security updates are provided for Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Apps, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Management, Windows Authentication, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Cryptography, Windows Virtualization, Windows Core Networking, and Windows Hybrid Cloud Networking. For details, see the Microsoft Security Update Guide.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.804.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.789 (20H2)

Release date: February 2, 2021

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This update includes all the fixes in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.782 (20H2), plus three additional ones:

• One fixes an issue with Microsoft Exchange accounts and some Surface Hub devices that occurred after updating to Windows 10 version 20H2. The message “Something went wrong” appeared, with error code 0x80131500.
• Another fixes an issue with Windows Update scans that occurred when an authenticated proxy was used as a fallback for the sync service after the previous proxy setting fails.
• The third fixes an issue that caused an update from Windows 10, version 1703 to Windows 10, version 20H2 to fail on a Surface Hub device. The message “Getting ready…” remained on the screen indefinitely.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.789.)

Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.2020.0

Release date: January 26, 2021

Released to: Beta Channel

Microsoft says this build improves the reliability of screen snipping, particularly for apps that often access the clipboard. It also removes the ability to copy and paste a screen snip directly into a folder in File Explorer. That feature was removed because of a bug. Microsoft plans to turn the feature back on in a future update.

Windows Feature Experience Pack updates are delivered to Insiders via Windows Update just like builds and cumulative updates. If you want to install one, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and check for updates. Note that Insiders in the Beta Channel will need to have 20H2 Build 19042.662 or higher installed if they want to get it. You’ll have to reboot to enable it. To check your Windows Feature Experience Pack version, go to Settings > System > About.

This Experience Pack build contains barely any new features because Microsoft is still testing out the process of delivering new features outside of major Windows 10 feature updates. Microsoft expects to expand the scope and the frequency of releases in the future. Eventually, Windows Feature Experience Pack updates will be folded into the existing servicing process for Windows 10 and delivered through Windows Update.

(Get more info about Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.2020.0.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.782 (20H2)

Release date: January 21, 2021

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This update includes fixes for a wide variety of bugs, including one that prevented you from opening a document on the Windows desktop and generates the error “The directory name is invalid,” another that sometimes caused Alt-Tab to switch to the wrong window, and another that caused the upload of diagnostic logs to a management service, such as Microsoft Intune, to fail.

It also includes a few minor new features, including one that allows administrators to disable standalone Internet Explorer using a Group Policy while continuing to use Microsoft Edge’s IE Mode, and another that lets you configure certain policies that support Microsoft Edge IE Mode using mobile device management (MDM).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.782.)

Windows 10 Build 19042.746 (20H2)

Release date: January 12, 2021

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build fixes a variety of security vulnerabilities, including one with HTTPS-based intranet servers, and a security bypass vulnerability in the way the Printer Remote Procedure Call (RPC) binding handles authentication for the remote Winspool interface.

There are also security updates to Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Media, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Kernel, Windows Cryptography, Windows Virtualization, Windows Peripherals, and Windows Hybrid Storage Services. For details, see the Microsoft Security Update Guide.

There are two known issues in this update, including one in which system and user certificates might be lost when updating a device from Windows 10 version 1809.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Build 19042.746.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.685 (20H2)

Release date: December 8, 2020

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This build fixes a security vulnerability by preventing applications that run as a SYSTEM account from printing to “FILE:” ports. It also has security updates for the legacy version of Microsoft Edge, the Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Media, Windows Fundamentals, and Windows Virtualization. For details, see the Microsoft Security Update Guide.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.685.)

Windows 10 Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.1070.0

Release date: November 30, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

This is the first build of a Microsoft Experience Pack, which offers a set of new features to Windows users outside the normal twice-yearly Windows 10 feature updates. This first early build was done more to test the process of releasing experience packs than to add any significant new features. Microsoft notes, “By testing this process first with Windows Insiders, we hope to expand the scope and the frequency of releases in the future.”

There are only two, minor new features in the build:

• You can now use Windows 10’s built-in screen snipping tool (press Windows key + Shift + S) to create a screenshot and save it in the folder you choose in File Explorer.
• Split keyboard mode is now supported when you use the touch keyboard in portrait orientation on a 2-in-1 touch device.

To receive this update, Insiders in the Beta Channel must have 20H2 Build 19042.662 installed. To get the update, they’ll have to go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and check for updates. Once they’ve installed the update, they’ll have to reboot to turn on the new features. They can check their Windows Feature Experience Pack version by going to Settings > System > About.

(Get more info about Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.1070.0.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.662 (20H2)

Release date: November 23, 2020

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This build has a wide variety of minor bug fixes and updates, including fixing an issue that caused a system to stop working during startup when the CrashOnAuditFail policy is set to 1 and command-line argument auditing is turned on, and fixing another issue that caused the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Group Policy application to stop working when you are editing the Group Policy Security settings.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.662.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.630 (20H2)

Release date: November 10, 2020

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This build updates the 2020 DST start date for the Fiji Islands to December 20, 2020 and includes security updates to the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows Input and Composition, Microsoft Graphics Component, the Windows Wallet Service, Windows Fundamentals, and the Windows Kernel. For details see the release notes for November 2020 Security Updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.630.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.610 (20H2)

Release date: October 29, 2020

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This update for insiders on the 20H2 Windows 10 October 2020 Update includes all the fixes in the 20H2 Build 19042.608 build, plus one minor additional fix. It fixes a bug that caused the Docker pull operation to fail due to a Code Integrity (CI) Policy that blocks the import of a Windows container image.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.610.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.608 (20H2)

Release date: October 22, 2020

Released to: Release Preview and Beta Channels

This update makes it easier to connect to others in Skype, using Meet Now from the taskbar. In addition, there are a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that displayed the incorrect CPU frequency for certain processors, and another that displayed nothing on the screen for five minutes or more during a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.608.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.572 (20H2)

Release date: October 13, 2020

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build for Insiders who are on version 20H2 (the October 2020 Update) fixes a few minor bugs and includes a variety of security updates. Among the items fixed are an issue with creating null ports using the user interface, and another issue with a possible elevation of privilege in win32k.

Security updates were issued for Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Media, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Authentication, Windows Virtualization, and Windows Kernel. For details, see the Release Notes for October 2020 Security Updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.572.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.546 (20H2)

Release date: September 30, 2020

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build for Insiders who are on version 20H2 (the Windows 10 October 2020 Update) includes all of the fixes included as part of 20H2 Build 19042.541, plus two minor bug fixes, one that had prevented a device from entering Modern Standby, and the other a reliability issue in Microsoft Edge that occurs when you open multiple windows or tabs.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.546.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.541 (20H2)

Release date: September 22, 2020

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channels

This build for Insiders who are on Windows 10 20H2 (the October 2020 Update) fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) failed to start with an “Element not found” error, another that caused random line breaks when you redirected PowerShell console error output, and another that prevented Microsoft Intune from syncing on a device using the virtual private network version 2 (VPNv2) configuration service provider (CSP).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.541.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.508 (20H2)

Release date: September 18, 2020

Released to: Release Preview Channel

Microsoft says this build, previously released to the Beta Channel on Sept. 8., will be the final build for the Windows 10 October 2020 Update, barring unforeseen consequences. To get it, Insiders in the Release Preview Channel need to go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choose to download and install 20H2.

(Get more info about Build 19042.508.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.508 (20H2)

Release date: September 8, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

This build includes security updates for Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Management, Windows Kernel, Windows Virtualization, Windows Storage and Filesystems, the Microsoft Scripting Engine, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine.

For details, see the Release Notes for September 2020 Security Updates.

The build also fixes a security vulnerability issue with user proxies and HTTP-based intranet servers, and addresses an issue with a possible elevation of privileges in windowmanagement.dll.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Note: Microsoft is releasing 20H2 to commercial customers in the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel for pre-release validation. Get details in this blog post.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.508.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.487 (20H2)

Release date: August 26, 2020

Released to: Beta and Release Preview Channel (commercial customers)

The build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which add-ins caused Microsoft Outlook to become unresponsive, another in which a black screen was displayed to Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) users when they attempted to sign in, and another in which Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) caused a memory leak when multiple clients connected to the same server.

Note: Microsoft is releasing this build to commercial customers in the Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel for pre-release validation. Get details in this blog post.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.487.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.450 (20H2)

Release date: August 11, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

This build includes security updates for the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Internet Explorer, Windows Graphics, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Kernel, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, the Windows Wallet Service, Microsoft Edge Legacy, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Authentication, the Windows AI Platform, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Storage and Filesystems, Windows Update Stack, Windows File Server and Clustering, Windows Hybrid Storage Services, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, the Microsoft JET Database Engine, and Windows SQL components.

For details, see the Release Notes for August 2020 Security Updates.

The build also fixes an issue in Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that allows single sign-on authentication when an app does not have the Enterprise Authentication capability.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.450.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.423 (20H2)

Release date: August 5, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

This build is a re-release of 20H2 19042.421 (see below), released on July 24 to the Beta Channel. It was released in order to bring it to parity with the KB4568831 update for Windows 10 version 2004.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.423.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.421 (20H2)

Release date: July 24, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

The update includes a minor change to the look of the Start menu, removing the solid color backplates behind the logos in the apps list and giving a partially transparent background to the tiles. In addition, all of your open tabs in Microsoft Edge will appear when you use Alt-Tab, not just the active one in each browser window.

The update also includes a new feature for Microsoft Edge, in which when you pin a web site to the taskbar, when you click it, all the open tabs for the site will display in Edge. Note that existing sites on your taskbar will not use this new behavior until you remove and re-pin them.

New users of Windows will also get a more personalized, less cluttered taskbar. The taskbar will automatically adjust itself to the way in which you use Windows. You can also now more easily dismiss notifications, by clicking the X at the upper right of their screens.

More settings information has been moved from Control Panel into the Settings app. Links that used to open the System page in Control Panel now direct you to About in Settings.

There are also many bug fixes, including one that could cause Microsoft browsers to incorrectly bypass proxy servers, and another that caused the Settings page to close unexpectedly, preventing default applications from being set up properly.

There are no known issues in this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.421.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.388 (20H2)

Release date: July 14, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel

This update offers a few minor bug fixes and multiple security updates. It fixes an issue that can cause certain games and applications to have visual distortions when resizing in windowed mode or switching from full screen to window mode, and another that might prevent some older devices with older apps and legacy file system drivers from connecting to OneDrive using the OneDrive app.

This build has security updates for Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, the Microsoft Store, Windows Graphics, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Management, Windows Kernel, Windows Hybrid Cloud Networking, Windows Storage and Filesystems, Windows Update Stack, Windows MSXML, Windows File Server and Clustering, Windows Remote Desktop, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge Legacy, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine. For details, see this page about the July 2020 Security Updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.388.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.330 for 20H2

Release date: June 16, 2020

Released to: Beta Channel (formerly called the Slow ring)

This is the first Windows Insider Preview build for the next Windows 10 upgrade, code-named 20H2. It includes fixes from the KB4557957 (OS Build 19041.329) build for the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, as well as the new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium.

In order to get the build, you’ll have to go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and choose to download and install 20H2. Once you’ve updated your PC to 20H2, you will continue to receive 20H2 updates through Windows Update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19042.330.)

Preview builds for the Dev Channel Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21390

Release date: May 26, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build primarily fixes a number of minor issues, including one in which when using dark mode, the text in the File Explorer search box was black on a black background, and another in which Task Manager showed the incorrect icon for some processes.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which the Windows Camera App does not respect the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page, and another in which search results are no longer following the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21390.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21387

Release date: May 21, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build has more than a dozen bug fixes, including one that caused the Windows Update page becoming unresponsive after Pause Updates was clicked, and two that caused problems when printing to USB printers.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in whichthe  Windows Camera App does not use the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page, and another in which elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21387.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21382

Release date: May 14, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build includes a feature that lets creative and artistic apps that use International Color Consortium (ICC) display color profiles, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic, and CorelDraw, get accurate color and access the full gamut of HDR displays.

There are more than a dozen fixes, including one that caused pixilation when a colored mouse pointer was set to be a large size, and another that caused some devices to be listed twice on the Printers and Scanners page in Settings.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which Windows Camera App does not use the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page, and another in which elements of search (including the search box in File Explorer) no longer display correctly in the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21382.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21376

Release date: May 6, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build makes several small updates to improve the drag-and-drop default cursor design in scenarios like dragging and dropping into Outlook, among other minor tweaks.

There are more than two dozen fixes, including for a bug in which the Windows Update icon would not display in the notification area when an update was pending reboot, and another that could result in apps hanging after the user pressed Alt-Shift.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which Windows Camera App does not use the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page, and another in which elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21376.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21370

Release date: April 29, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build makes Bluetooth audio streaming easier, tweaks icons in File Explorer’s address bar, and improves the touch keyboard launch animation to make it smoother.

There are more than a dozen fixes, including for a bug in which broken characters appeared in text across Settings, and another in which Cortana didn’t launch from the taskbar after its icon was clicked.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21370.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21364

Release date: April 21, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build offers the first preview of support for GUI applications in the Windows Subsystem for Linux. You’ll be able to run GUI editors, tools, and applications in order to develop, test, build, and run Linux apps.

Task Manager now supports process classification to identify resource consumption under Microsoft Edge. Task Manager also gets a new, experimental Eco mode that lets you throttle apps that use high system resources so you can give priority to other apps, leading to faster foreground responsiveness and better energy efficiency.

There are more than two dozen fixes, including for a bug in which the About page in Settings sometimes appeared blank, and another in which Windows Firewall unexpectedly reported an error when updating existing rules to Block.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) no longer display correctly in the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21364.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21359

Release date: April 14, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build has a new option under the Start menu’s Power menu to restart apps after signing in when you reboot your device.

There are more than two dozen bug fixes, including one in which Windows Update Settings might unexpectedly display two separate strings saying that updates are managed by your organization, and another in which after upgrading to recent builds you couldn’t connect using remote desktop until you rebooted your PC.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which the Windows Camera App does not use the default brightness setting set via the new Camera Settings page.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21359.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21354

Release date: April 7, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build offers new personalization options for news and interests on the taskbar. A new button links to a page that lets you choose specific topics that you’re interested in. You can search for topics or publishers you want to follow, and also browse through more than a dozen categories, including different types of news, entertainment, and sports.

In addition, you can now turn off content adaptive brightness control (CABC), which improves battery performance but decreases image quality. There’s also a new camera settings page so you can easily add and remove cameras and configure the default image settings of each one.

There are also more than two dozen bug fixes, including for one in which all folders pinned to Quick Access in File Explorer disappeared, and another in which the tooltip text for items in Start’s Power button menu wasn’t displaying correctly.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which elements of Search (including the search box in File Explorer) are no longer displaying correctly in the dark theme.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21354.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21343

Release date: March 24, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build introduces colorful new icons for File Explorer and improves Windows Sandbox and Microsoft Defender Application Guard (MDAG).

There are also a half dozen bug fixes, including for an issue that caused some devices with Realtek network adapters running driver version 1.0.0.4 to experience an intermittent loss of network connectivity, and another that caused a memory leak when interacting with the Recycle Bin.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which all folders pinned to Quick Access in File Explorer disappear.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21343.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21337

Release date: March 17, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build includes new capabilities for controlling virtual desktops, including reordering and customizing the backgrounds for each virtual desktop. File Explorer also gets some minor design changes.

There are also nearly two dozen bug fixes, including for one that caused the Windows Security icon in the taskbar to become unresponsive, and another in which Search didn’t open after clicking the search box in the taskbar.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some devices with Realtek network adapters running driver version 1.0.0.4 may experience intermittent loss of network connectivity.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21337.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21332

Release date: March 10, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build has nearly two dozen bug fixes, including fixing an issue in which clipboard history did not update to display the latest entries, and another in which some Settings search results were missing.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some devices with Realtek network adapters running driver version 1.0.0.4 may experience intermittent loss of network connectivity.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21332.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21327

Release date: March 3, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

With this build, the news and interest feature on the taskbar gets a new design. It includes more color and more frequent updates, as well as “cards” that let you see article text at a glance.

There are more than a dozen bug fixes, including fixing an issue that made Start and certain apps less reliable, and another that caused some upgrades to get stuck at 88%.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which “up to date” status is not displayed under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21327.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21322

Release date: February 24, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build has only a few minor changes, including one in which the 3D Objects folder will no longer be shown as a special folder in File Explorer. If you need to access this folder, you can do so by typing %userprofile% in File Explorer or through the navigation pane option Show all folders.

There are ten bug fixes, including for a bug that caused your PC to bug check when switching between users, and another that caused deleted files to unexpectedly remain visible on the desktop until the desktop was refreshed.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which the Start menu layout may reset.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21322.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21318

Release date: February 19, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

With this build, you can copy text-based entries in your clipboard history in plain text, without formatting such as font, color, or size. That will allow an entry to match the formatting of the destination document.

In addition, the notification when pairing supported Bluetooth devices will now stay on the screen a little longer, giving you the chance to interact with it before it goes away.

There are also a wide range of bug fixes, including for one in which the right side of the quick actions area of the Action Center was truncated, and another in which Reset my PC with the “Keep my files” option selected was failing.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which domain networks appear with the wrong firewall profile, which may block some local network services.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21318.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21313

Release date: February 12, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge replaces the previous version of the browser (which Microsoft calls Microsoft Edge Legacy). All future Windows 10 Insider builds will come with the Chromium version of Edge rather than Microsoft Edge Legacy. Those who are interested in trying out new features in the Chromium version of Edge before they are officially released can sign up for it in the Microsoft Edge Insider website.

The build includes a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one in which some Insiders experienced an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL bug check when attempting to upgrade to a newer build, and another in which the text on the taskbar button could look pixelated on high-resolution screens.

The build has a number of known issues, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which Domain networks appear with the wrong firewall profile, which may block some local network services.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21313.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21301

Release date: January 27, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build improves the touch keyboard in several minor ways. When the keyboard is undocked, it now switches to the Small keyboard layout, making it easier to move the keyboard around using the gripper region at the top of the keyboard. Small and split layouts now feature an updated symbol’s view based on the default layout. And the settings menu now has a nested structure for improved clarity and less clutter.

Note that this feature is being rolled out initially only to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel, to test it for performance and reliability. Eventually, it will be rolled out to all Insiders in the Dev channel.

In addition, there are several small overall changes, including one in which when you right-click locally saved files displayed in jump lists, you now have an Open File Location option, in addition to Open.

There are also more than a dozen bug fixes, including for one that could result in VPN repeatedly connecting and disconnecting in a loop, and another that caused Task Manager to crash when switching to the Details tab.

There are more than a dozen known issues, including one in which Miracast users may experience very low frame rates, and another in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21301.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21296

Release date: January 21, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build rolls out changes to clipboard history first detailed in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20206 and the ability to manage and create Storage Spaces from Settings described in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21286.

In addition, there are nine bug fixes, including for a bug that caused the Program Compatibility Assistant to unexpectedly use up a large amount of CPU resources, and another in which the Windows Security app showed both a “check for updates” button and link at the same time.

The build has more than a dozen known issues, including the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build and another in which some 32-bit systems may lose network connection after installing the build. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows, Microsoft says you may wish to pause updates until the issue is resolved.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21296.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21292 (RS_PRERELEASE)

Release date: January 13, 2021

Released to: Dev Channel

This build adds fixes a wide variety of bugs in a feature introduced in Build 21286 that lets you get a customizable feed of news, weather and other updates via the taskbar.

In addition, there are several other bug fixes, including for an issue in which explorer.exe was hanging and or crashing, particularly after interacting with audio/video, and another in which it wasn’t possible to sort processes in Task Manager by status.

The build has nearly two dozen known issues, including rendering and graphic issues after resizing certain app windows, and the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21292.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21286 (RS_PRERELEASE)

Release date: January 6, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This build introduces a feature that lets you get a customizable feed of news, weather, and other updates via the taskbar. In addition, you can now manage all of your storage locations via the Settings app. There’s also a new tool named DiskUsage that lets you get information about your disk usage via the command line.

The build has a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that caused some printers to get stuck when connecting via Settings, and another that could unexpectedly sign you out of apps and websites after rebooting your PC.

The build has more than two dozen known issues, including rendering and graphic issues after resizing certain app windows, as well as the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21286.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20279 (FE_RELEASE)

Release date: December 14, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This build is, in the words of Microsoft, is “largely the same as Build 20277” (see below). Microsoft released it in order to test its ability to quickly follow one build with another. Windows Insiders who updated to Build 21277 (RS_PRERELEASE) are not being offered this build because they are on a newer build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20279.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21277 (RS_PRERELEASE)

Release date: December 10, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

For now, Microsoft is automatically pushing FE_RELEASE builds to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel. Build 20277 (see below) is an FE_RELEASE. All Dev Channel Insiders will be moved to the RS_PRERELEASE branch sometime after the holidays.

If you want to move to the RS_PRERELEASE branch now, however, you can choose to install Build 21277, which is being offered as an optional update through the “seeker” experience in Windows Update. Once you install Build 21277, you will continue to receive RS_PRERELEASE builds.

Note that once you to install a RS_PRERELEASE build, you cannot move back to the FE_RELEASE branch. However, you will still have the option to roll back to a previous version for up to 10 days or until you take another build.

Build 21277 introduces x64 emulation in preview for Windows 10 on ARM PCs and adds support for Unicode Emoji 12.1 and 13.0. There are also a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug that caused Microsoft Edge windows to be unexpectedly grouped with File Explorer in the taskbar, and another in which limiting a search in File Explorer to a specific folder was unexpectedly returning results from the subfolders.

There are also a number of minor changes and improvements, including a smoother animation when opening or closing a window and the ability to uninstall the Snipping Tool.

There are five known issues in the build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks using the classic Disk Management tool.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 21277.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20277 (FE_RELEASE)

Release date: December 10, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

Build 20277 is being offered to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel as part of the FE_RELEASE branch. You may alternatively seek out and install Build 21277 (see above), which is from the RS_PRERELEASE branch. If you do, you will continue to receive RS_PRERELEASE builds. If you choose to remain in the FE_RELEASE branch, you will continue to receive automatic FE_RELEASE updates until sometime after the holidays, when all Dev Channel Insiders will be moved to the RS_PRERELEASE branch.

The build fixes two issues, one that could result in the WinRE volume label being lost after multiple upgrades and another that could result in apps failing to update with error code 0x80073D02.

There are five known issues in the build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks using the classic Disk Management tool.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20277.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20270

Release date: December 3, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This build lets those who sign into Cortana with their corporate credentials use Cortana to open and search for files by natural-language spoken and typed queries, such as “Hey Cortana, find my recent PDFs.”

The build also fixes several minor issues, including one in which some dialog boxes, such as Properties, displayed black text on dark backgrounds, and another in which certain apps unexpectedly closed when clicking the Maximize button.

There are five known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks using the classic Disk Management tool.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20270.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20262

Release date: November 18, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This build has 10 minor bug fixes, including for a bug in which certain apps unexpectedly launched transparently, with no content visible, and another in which Settings could crash when navigating to Storage Sense.

There are six known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks using the classic Disk Management tool.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20262.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20257

Release date: November 11, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This build makes changes to the Your Phone app, which now lets you run multiple Android mobile apps side by side on your Windows 10 PC on supported Samsung devices. Apps launch in separate windows, allowing you to interact with multiple apps at the same time even if the Your Phone app is not open. You can pin your apps to Favorites, the Windows 10 taskbar, or the Start menu for easy access to them. You can also search for your previously pinned apps via Windows search from within your Start app list.

There are also a variety of minor bug fixes, including for a bug in which the windows.old folder was not completely deleted when performing disk cleanup, and another in which apps wouldn’t launch from browser links.

There are six known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks using the classic Disk Management tool.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20257.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20251

Release date: November 4, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update has nine minor bug fixes, including for one that caused the background of some dialogs to unexpectedly appear gray instead of white, another that could cause the Settings app to hang when checking for updates right after an upgrade, and another that sometimes caused the Settings app to send a notification that just said “new notification.”

There are eight known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which Arm PCs such as the Surface Pro X won’t allow Windows PowerShell to launch. As a workaround, you can use “Windows PowerShell (x86)” or “Windows PowerShell ISE (x86)” from the Start menu, or else download the new PowerShell 7, which runs natively on Arm.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20251.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20246

Release date: October 29, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update temporarily removes several features that debuted in earlier Dev Channel builds, including an emoji picker, a redesigned touch keyboard, and voice typing. The update adds a new automatic Linux distro installation to the wsl.exe –install command; typing wsl.exe –install into the command line now installs a fully set-up Windows Subsystem for Linux instance ready to go, including a Linux distro of choice.

The build includes a variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused Settings to crash sometimes when clicking the Update and Security category, another that caused Storage Settings to unexpectedly show incorrect category sizes (a higher number than what was visible in File Explorer), and another in which some devices experienced a KMODE_EXCEPTION bugcheck when using certain virtualization technologies.

There are seven known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another that could cause a crash when disconnecting certain audio devices while playing audio.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20246.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20241

Release date: October 21, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update introduces theme-aware splash screens for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. When an app is launched, the splash screen color will match your default app mode. So if you have the light theme turned on, you’ll see a light theme splash screen, and if you have the dark theme turned on, you’ll see a dark theme splash screen.

In addition, when you defragment your hard drives (Settings > System > Storage > Optimize Drives), there are several new options, including the ability to see all volumes, including hidden ones.  

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for one in which robocopy wouldn’t preserve the directory dates when using the move command, and another in which the System Information window (msinfo32) crashed on launch.

There are 10 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some devices experience a KMODE_EXCEPTION bug check when using certain virtualization technologies.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20241.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20236

Release date: October 14, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update lets you change the refresh rate of your display, via Settings > System > Display > Advanced display settings. It also tweaks the Windows Search Box in several ways, including showing the last four items that you’ve searched for and opened, including apps, files, settings, and direct-nav URLs (for example, “computerworld.com”).

There are also many bug fixes, including for an issue in which some Office applications were crashing or missing after updating to a new build, and another in which File Explorer sometimes crashed when renaming a file.

There are 11 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some devices experience a KMODE_EXCEPTION bug check when using certain virtualization technologies.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20236.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20231

Release date: October 7, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update gives enterprise customers the ability to modify file associations on a per-user or per-device basis. That means IT administrators can use Group Policy to set which apps will automatically open various file types or links. The feature is first being rolled out to a subset of Insiders in the Dev Channel, to help Microsoft identify issues that may impact performance and reliability. It will gradually roll out to everyone in the Dev Channel.

The update also has a wide variety of fixes, including for a bug that caused Action Center and notification buttons to vanish after switching between High Contrast Black and High Contrast White, and another in which Settings hung at launch for some Insiders.

There are 10 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crashed or were missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20231.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226

Release date: September 30, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update adds a new feature, Storage health monitoring, which is designed to detect hardware abnormalities for NVMe SSDs and notify users with enough time for them to act on them. Click the notification or go to the drive properties page in Storage Settings (Settings > System > Storage > Manage disks and volumes > Properties) for more details about any issue.

There is also a new settings page for the Your Phone app that lets you link a new device, remove an old device, and switch between active devices.

There are also a variety of small changes, including one in which in File Explorer if you right-click on a zipped OneDrive file set to online-only, you’ll now see an Extract All option, the same as if the file was available locally on the PC. In addition, there are several bug fixes, including for one that impacted taskbar performance and reliability on 2-in-1 convertible devices.

There are eight known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crash or go missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20226.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20221

Release date: September 23, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update adds a “Meet Now” feature to the taskbar, allowing you to quickly connect to others via Skype. The Your Phone app also lets you pin notifications from your phone to Windows 10.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for one in which the new Manage Disks and Volumes section in Settings wasn’t blocking the ability to change the drive letter of the system volume, and another in which the Start menu and Action Center became transparent when certain apps were open in the background.

There are eight known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crashed or were missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20221.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20215

Release date: September 16, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update adds dark theme search results to Windows 10 search. It also has a small number of bug fixes, including for one that could cause the Windows Security app to hang, and another that impacted voice typing reliability.

There are 10 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crash or are missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20215.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20211

Release date: September 10, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update allows you to search the lists of file types, protocols, and apps when setting a default app for a certain task — a feature that was previously made available to some Windows Insiders and is now rolling out to all Insiders in the Dev Channel.

The update also allows users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to attach and mount a physical disk inside of a WSL 2 distro. This enables them to access file systems that aren’t natively supported by Windows (such as ext4). And the update also lets the Your Phone app to drag and drop files between your PC and Samsung smartphones that include the smart screen feature.

The build fixes several bugs, including one that could result in Start menu tiles continuing to display an “app update in progress” progress bar after an app had already finished updating, and another that could result in the lock screen hanging.

There are 11 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crashed or were missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20211.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20206

Release date: September 2, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update makes changes to the Windows Emoji Picker by introducing an updated design in keeping with Fluent Design principles, improving searching for emojis, and offering animated GIF support.

The update also introduces voice typing, an enhanced version of Windows dictation. It’s optimized for touch keyboards and has an updated back end that Microsoft says will improve accuracy. Some people will also get a new design of Windows’ touch keyboard with new animations and sounds, more labels and an easy way to use voice typing.

The build also fixes several bugs, including one that sometimes resulted in the Narrator Home crashing when using the back button, and another that could cause Task Manager to erroneously indicate that a non-UWP app had been suspended.

There are seven known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Office applications crashed or were missing after updating to a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20206.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20201

Release date: August 26, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This minor update has several bug fixes, including for a bug in which the min/max/close buttons were stuck in their original positions after resizing a UWP app, and another in which HDR monitors appeared black when HDR was enabled.

There are 10 known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which pinned sites don’t show all open tabs for a domain.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20201.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20197

Release date: August 21, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

With this update, you can now manage your hard disks in the Settings app. You’ll be able to view disk information, create and format volumes, and assign drive letters. To do it, go to Settings > System > Storage and click Manage Disks and Volumes.

There are also a variety of very small changes, including the way Alt + Tab works with Microsoft Edge tabs. It now has a default of displaying at most five tabs. You can change that by going to Settings > System > Multitasking.

There are also a number of bug fixes, including one in which pinned File Explorer folders in Start appeared with a darker background than other tiles in light mode, and another in which Font Settings and Themes Settings were displaying the old style of Microsoft Store icon.

There are seven known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which pinned sites don’t show all open tabs for a domain.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20197.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20190

Release date: August 12, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update tweaks the Graphics section of Settings to let you specify a default high-performance GPU and to pick a specific GPU on a per-application basis.

In addition, there are eight bug fixes, including for one that could result in explorer.exe being unresponsive on touch-capable devices after resuming from hibernation, and another in which when Narrator was enabled it could result in the on-screen PIN pad unexpectedly appearing when focus was set to the login screen.

There are nine known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which some Microsoft Store games protected with Easy Anti-Cheat may fail to launch.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20190.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20185

Release date: August 5, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

The build makes several changes to the Network section in Settings, including making DNS settings more accessible and letting you configure encrypting DNS controls in Settings. In addition, the Your Phone app can now run your Android applications on your PC from your phone.

The build also includes a wide variety of bug fixes, including for one in which the “close all windows” action in the taskbar didn’t always close all of the open tabs for pinned sites, and another in which dragging and dropping an app from Start menu’s “all apps” list over to the tile grid to pin it wasn’t working for certain apps.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which some Microsoft Store games protected with Easy Anti-Cheat may fail to launch, and another in which Alt + Tabbing to a browser tab sometimes moves the previously active browser tab to the front of the Alt + Tab list.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20185.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20180

Release date: July 29, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update turns on new features first announced in the 20161 Insider build on July 1, including theme-aware tiles on the Start menu. Until now, only a small subset of Insiders have received those features.

Aside from that, the build it has only a few fixes and changes, including one that shrinks the new folder icon in the Start menu’s “All apps” list so it better aligns with the size of the other icons, another that fixes issues that could cause crashes when using Alt-Tab to switch to browser tabs.

There are ten known issues in this build, including one in which some Microsoft Store games protected with Easy Anti-Cheat may fail to launch, and another in which Alt-Tabbing to a browser tab sometimes moves the previously active browser tab to the front of the Alt-Tab list.

Note: Insider Preview Builds 20161 and below will expire on July 31st. To avoid the expiration, update to Insider Preview Build 20170 or newer.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20180.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20175

Release date: July 22, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update includes a new feature for Microsoft Edge, in which when you pin a web site to the taskbar, clicking it displays all the open tabs for the site in Edge. Note that existing sites pinned to your taskbar will not use this new behavior until you remove and re-pin them. The build also includes new icons for Sticky Notes and Snip & Sketch.

There are also a number of bug fixes, including for one in which tiles sometimes flashed unexpectedly in the Start menu when animating, and another in which Search didn’t close after selecting certain items in the search results.

There are ten known issues in this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which live preview doesn’t work for pinned site tabs.

Note: Insider Preview Build 20161 and earlier builds will expire on July 31st. To avoid the expiration, update to Insider Preview Build 20170 or newer.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20175.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20170

Release date: July 15, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update makes changes to the Windows search bar. There’s a new two-column layout that lets you do searches more quickly and offers easier access to Quick Searches, which display local weather, top news, and other information.

In addition, you can now manage your sound devices in Settings, rather than in Control Panel. Go to Settings > System > Sound > Manage sound devices to see which sound device is the default and to set up a new default device or default communication device.

There are also a number of bug fixes, including for one in which the master volume slider in Sound Settings wouldn’t work after removing and re-pairing certain Bluetooth devices, and another in which modifier keys like Shift and Ctrl sometimes were dropped over a remote desktop connection.

There are six known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which Task Manager reports 0.00 GHz CPU usage in the Performance tab.

The notes about the build also include a link to the just-released Microsoft Launcher v6, a launcher app for Android phones. Download it here.

Note: Windows Insiders with PCs that have AMD processors are not being offered this build because of a bug that affects the overall usability of these PCs. Microsoft expects the issue will be resolved by the time the next build is released.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20170.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20161

Release date: July 1, 2020

Released to: Dev Channel

This update offers a variety of new features, including what Microsoft calls “freshening up the Start menu.” The colors behind app logos in the apps list have been removed, and tiles now have partially transparent backgrounds. In addition, in Microsoft Edge all open tabs will now appear when you use Alt + Tab. Microsoft is also taking information previously shown only in the Control Panel and displaying it in System > Settings > About.

There are a variety of bug fixes, including for one that caused some games and applications to crash at launch or fail to install, and another that caused some Bluetooth devices to no longer show their battery level in Settings.

There are seven known issues with this build, including one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which Task Manager reports 0.00 GHz CPU usage in the Performance tab.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 20161.)

Preview builds prior to June 2020 Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19645

Release date: June 10, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor update fixes seven very minor bugs, including one in which some devices booting from eMMC storage bug checked when resuming from hibernate, another in which taskbar preview thumbnails weren’t rendering consistently (showing a blank area), and another in which Windows Hello Setup would crash if facial recognition was already set up and you chose the Improve Recognition button.

There are two known issues with this build, one in which the update process may hang for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and the other in which under Settings > Privacy, the Documents and Downloads sections show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19645.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19640

Release date: June 3, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This extremely minor update disables the option to have Storage Sense automatically clear out your Downloads folder on a cycle if your Downloads folder is synced to a cloud provider. It also updates Windows’ login logic, so if your PC is set up so you need to type in your username when logging in, accidentally starting your username with a space will no longer result in an error.

There are several known issues with this build, including one in some devices booting from eMMC storage may bug check when resuming from hibernate, and another in which under Settings > Privacy the Documents and Downloads sections show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19640.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19635

Release date: May 28, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This extremely minor update fixes several issues, including one that caused constant display flashing on certain devices, and another that caused Settings to crash when changing the display orientation or resolution.

There are several known issues with this build, including one in which some devices booting from eMMC storage may bug check when resuming from hibernate, and another in which under Settings > Privacy, the Documents and Downloads sections show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19635.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19631

Release date: May 21, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This extremely minor update fixes several issues, including one that caused a device’s IIS configuration to be set to default after installing a new build, and another that made Remote Desktop less reliable.

There are several known issues with this build, including one in which some devices booting from eMMC storage may bug check when resuming from hibernate, and another in which in Settings > Privacy, the Documents and Downloads sections show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19631.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19628

Release date: May 13, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This extremely minor update adds a new feature that lets you opt in to have Windows use encryption when making DNS queries. It also fixed an issue that caused some devices to fail to update with error code 0xc0000409.

There are several known issues with this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which the update process may hang when a new build is installed.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19628.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19624

Release date: May 6, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build offers a variety of small changes and bug fixes, including fixing an issue that caused unexpected flickering across Windows shell surfaces and apps in the last two builds, and another that resulted in certain Bluetooth mice being very slow to reconnect to devices after they have been asleep.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which Windows Security’s Core Isolation doesn’t work on some devices.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19624.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19619

Release date: April 29, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build lets you control your music and audio from inside the Your Phone app and makes it easy to keep up with the latest news about the coronavirus pandemic using Windows Search. To do keep updated, select “View interactive map” or “See headlines” to get local, national and international news about the pandemic.

The build also offers a variety of fixes, including for a bug that had caused Insiders to have bug checks with the error DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION, and another that resulted in some unexpected characters showing up in the text strings of intl.cpl’s Additional Settings > Currency.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which the Documents and Downloads sections under Privacy show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19619.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19613

Release date: April 22, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build turns on Bing Answers in Cortana for a wide variety of regions and languages. It also has nine fixes, including for a bug that caused app icons in the taskbar to display incorrectly, including defaulting to the .exe icon. This issue also caused some Insiders to have more reliability issues with explorer.exe.

There are six known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which Settings crashes when installing a font.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19613.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19608

Release date: April 15, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes a new feature for the Your Phone app that lets your drag and drop files between a PC and a phone. For now, it only works on certain Samsung smartphones.

In addition, when you’re setting default apps for your PC, you can now search by file types, protocols, and apps.

There are half a dozen bug fixes in the build, including for one in which Sticky Notes windows couldn’t be moved, and another that caused the Snip & Sketch App to launch in the background instead of the foreground (and be on top of all windows) when the app was invoked via pen click.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which the Documents and Downloads sections under Privacy show a broken icon next to their page name.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19608.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19603

Release date: April 8, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build integrates File Explorer with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). When you launch File Explorer, you’ll see a Linux folder, which you can browse. There’s also a new feature in Storage Settings that displays your unused files and apps, so you can more easily clean your hard disk.

The build also introduces the beta of a new Windows 10 app, Microsoft News Bar, which displays the latest news and stock information. Eventually, weather and sports information will be added as well.

A wide variety of bugs were fixed, including one in which some devices experienced a bug check (GSOD) during the reboot to install an update, and another in which files could not be dragged and dropped onto the root of a network share folder.

There are nine known issue in this build, including one in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon and another in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19603.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19592

Release date: March 25, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

The primary improvement in this build gives people with 2-in-1 convertibles a tweaked desktop interface, primarily designed for touch. It includes these changes:

• The taskbar icons are spaced out
• The Search box on the taskbar is collapsed into icon-only mode
• The touch keyboard auto invokes when you tap a text field
• File Explorer elements have a little more padding, to make them comfortable to interact with using touch

There are also eight bug fixes in the release, including for one that could have resulted in the Optional Features page in Settings appearing blank, and another in which the corruption repair (DISM) process stopped at 84.9%.

There are several known issue in this build, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, another in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon, and another in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19592.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19587

Release date: March 18, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build has a small number of minor bug fixes and changes. Your PC’s volume now won’t unmute when using the hardware keyboard volume keys until you raise the volume (or manually unmute). Among the bugs fixed are one in which the new icon next to “Scan with Microsoft Defender” in File Explorer’s context menu didn’t have a transparent background, and another that could result in the search box being missing from some apps.

There are several known issue in this build, including one in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build, and another in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19587.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19582

Release date: March 12, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build has new settings pages for Eye Control, which lets you control Windows with eye movements. In addition, a variety of features have been added to the Your Phone app for Samsung Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Z Flip, including Rich Communication Service messaging and copying and pasting text and images between devices.

There are also a variety of fixes, including for an issue caused some attempts to update to a build to result in error 0x8007042, and another that caused Task Manager to show “Unavailable” DPI Awareness for all processes.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users who use the Chromium version Microsoft Edge may experience difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19582.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19577

Release date: March 5, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build makes a minor change to how commercial customers can customize any diagnostic Windows data they opt to send Microsoft. They now have more granular controls over the data they can choose to share. The build also includes an updated version of PowerToys with minor changes, including almost 300 additional unit tests to increase stability and prevent regressions.

There are also a wide variety of fixes, including for an issue in which input stopped working in some places if clipboard history was dismissed without pasting anything, and another in which when using Storage Sense to clean up Windows.old, not all of the data was removed.

There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users that use the Chromium version Microsoft Edge may experience difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content, and another in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19577.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19569

Release date: February 20, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build updates the icons for built-in apps including Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Mail, and Calendar, an initial step toward updating all Windows icons. For more details, see this post from the Microsoft Design Team.

The build also fixes several issues and bugs, including one that affected Start menu reliability, and another that stopped OneDrive from working and also using an unexpectedly high amount of CPU for some users.

There are a number of known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator and NVDA users may experience difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content in the new Chromium version of Microsoft Edge, and another in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19569.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19564

Release date: February 12, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build offers a preview of a new version of the Windows 10 Calendar app. The app has more than 30 new themes; adds an agenda pane to the month view, letting you see a day’s events at a glance; a simpler way to create a new event; and a smaller account navigation pane, so there’s more room to see a day’s events. To see the new app preview, go to the Calendar app and toggle it on. You can toggle it off when you want to go back to the old version of the app.

The build also has an updated Graphics settings page, giving you more control over which GPU apps run on.

There are also nearly two dozen bug fixes, including for one that caused some devices to not sleep on idle and another that could result in a deadlock (in which everything freezes) when using your PC.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon (just a rectangle), and another in which the update process hangs for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19564.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19559

Release date: February 5, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build has only small bug fixes, including for one that resulted in explorer.exe crashing when backing out of folders containing .heic or RAW files, and another that caused some people to get a green screen with the error message KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED.

There are 10 known issues in this build, including one in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon (just a rectangle), and another in which some devices are no longer sleeping on idle.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19559.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19555

Release date: January 30, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build has only small bug fixes, including for one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stopped responding with Start Code 10, and another that resulted in the Start menu and apps not opening until explorer.exe had been restarted after locking and then unlocking a computer while listening to music.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon and another in which some devices are no longer sleeping on idle.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19555.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19551

Release date: January 23, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build has only small bug fixes, including for one in which snipping was not working on secondary monitors, one in which Remote Desktop Connection was crashing when attempting to connect to multiple sessions, and another in which the Optimize Drives Control Panel was incorrectly showing that optimization hadn’t run on some devices.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10, and another in which the Documents section under Privacy has a broken icon (just a rectangle).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19551.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19546

Release date: January 16, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces graphing mode for Windows Calculator. Previously, the calculator didn’t have the ability to create graphs. Graphing mode allows one or more equations to be plotted on a graph, lets you add equations with secondary variables, and allows you to analyze graphs.

There are also four minor bug fixes in the build, including for a bug that had resulted in Timeline not showing any activities, and another in which Outlook wasn’t working for some people.

There are nearly a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10, and another in which Remote Desktop Connection crashes when attempting to connect to multiple sessions.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19546.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19541

Release date: January 8, 2020

Released to: Fast ring

This build lets you set timers with Cortana and adds Bing’s Instant Answers capabilities to Cortana; for instance, you can ask when Seattle’s Space Needle was built and receive an answer instantly in Cortana without being taken to a web search. In addition, an icon now appears in the Notification Area when an app is using your location.

The build also fixes a number of problems, including one that made Systems Settings less reliable and another that could cause the update speed in Task Manager to unexpectedly be set to Paused.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10, and another that doesn’t allow Timeline to show any activities.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19541.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19536

Release date: December 16, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build lets those with Android phones see all of their phone’s pictures on their Windows 10 PCs. You can now also more easily find new hardware drivers and update them. Instead of having to go the Device Manager, you can ask Windows Update to keep your drivers up to date.

The build also introduces a consumer-oriented feature called “People in my family” that makes it easier to set up devices that can be used by multiple family members. Not everyone who gets the build will have the feature enabled.

The build also offers a variety of bug fixes, changes and improvements. It fixed an issue that resulted in Task Manager’s icon not appearing in the notification area of the taskbar even though if it had been enabled in Settings. In addition, an issue was fixed that caused the Bluetooth battery level displayed in Settings to get stuck, reducing its accuracy.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19536.)

Preview builds for Windows 10 May 2020 Update (20H1, version 2004) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.264

Release date: May 12, 2020

Released to: Slow and Release Preview rings

This cumulative update fixes several minor bugs and includes many security updates. It fixes a performance issue in Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) that prevented it from working correctly for many users, and another issue that prevented cleaning tools, such as Disk Cleanup, from removing previously installed updates.

The security updates are for Internet Explorer, the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Edge, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Cryptography, Windows Authentication, Windows Kernel, Windows Virtualization, Windows Update Stack, Windows Core Networking, Internet Information Services, Windows Network Security and Containers, Windows Active Directory, Windows Server, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine. For details, see the Release Notes for May 2020 Security Updates.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.264.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.208

Release date: April 30, 2020

Released to: Release Preview ring

This is the same build that Microsoft released to the Slow ring last week; the company expects it will be the final build of the Windows 10 May 2020 Update. Previously, Microsoft had thought that 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.207 would be the final, but it decided to make one more fix. The only change from the previous build is the fix of an issue that failed to send NPLogonNotify API notifications from the credential provider framework.

There are several known issue in this build, including one in which Windows Mixed Reality may not work correctly for many users. Because of that, Microsoft recommends that people who regularly use Mixed Reality should hold off installing this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.208.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.208

Release date: April 22, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This cumulative update includes all the fixes from Build 19041.207, plus one additional fix, an issue that failed to send NPLogonNotify API notifications from the credential provider framework.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.208.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.20

Release date: April 17, 2020

Released to: Release Preview ring

This build is likely the final one for the Windows 10 May 2020 Update. The cumulative update includes all the new features in that update, as well as a variety of small fixes and security updates, including fixing an issue that caused the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service (rpcss.exe) to close unexpectedly and stop the device from working, and an issue that might prevent the rear camera flash from functioning as expected on devices that have a rear camera.

There are also security updates for the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows Kernel, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Windows Management, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Authentication, Windows Virtualization, Windows Core Networking, Windows Storage and Filesystems, Windows Update Stack, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine. For details, see the Release Notes for April 2020 Security Updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.20.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.207

Release date: April 14, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This cumulative update includes several small bug fixes and security updates, including for a bug that caused the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service (rpcss.exe) to close unexpectedly and stopped your device from working, and another that could prevent the rear camera flash from functioning as expected.

The security updates are for the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows Kernel, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Windows Management, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Authentication, Windows Virtualization, Windows Core Networking, Windows Storage and Filesystems, Windows Update Stack, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine. For more details, see the April 2020 Security Updates Release Notes.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.207.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.173

Release date: April 9, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This build includes the fix previously released in Build 19041.172 (see below) plus several other fixes, including for a bug that failed to allocate resources during device initialization, which caused some USB mass storage devices to stop working, and another that prevented the mute button from working on certain devices with the Your Phone app.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.173.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.172

Release date: March 26, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This build fixes a single issue that prevented the Windows logo key + J keyboard shortcut from giving focus to certain Windows tips.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users who seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.172.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.153

Release date: March 13, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This Cumulative Update includes a variety of minor bug fixes and fixes security holes throughout Windows. Among the issues fixed are one that can cause Microsoft browsers to bypass proxy servers and another that might prevent ActiveX content from loading.

The build includes security updates for Windows Server, the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Graphics, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Silicon Platform, Microsoft Edge, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Authentication, Windows Cryptography, Windows Kernel, Windows Core Networking, Windows Storage and Filesystems, Windows Peripherals, Windows Network Security and Containers, and Windows Update Stack. For details, see the March 2020 Security Updates Release Notes.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users that seek the latest release of Microsoft Edge based on Chromium may experience some difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.153.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.113

Release date: February 27, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This build has a variety of minor updates and bug fixes, including fixing an issue that prevented some users from signing out because the user session stops responding, and another issue that caused some systems to stop responding at sign-in because several background services were being hosted in the same service host process.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.113.)

On February 26, Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.84, detailed below, to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). The build includes all updated features, fixes, and security updates previously announced for 20H1 and is designed to help organizations prepare for releasing Windows 10 version 2004 in their organizations. See below for more information on Build 19041.84.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.84

Release date: February 11, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This cumulative update includes security updates for Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, the Microsoft Scripting Engine, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Management, Windows Virtualization, Windows Peripherals, Windows Network Security and Containers, Windows Storage and Filesystems, and Windows Server. For details, see the February 2020 Security Updates Release Notes.

The build also fixes an issue an issue in which in certain cases, after Windows runs a scheduled task during a maintenance window, a PC may get into an unbootable state after installing Build 19041.21.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator and NVDA users that use the Chromium version Microsoft Edge may experience difficulty when navigating and reading certain web content.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.84.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041.21

Release date: January 14, 2020

Released to: Slow ring

This build includes security updates to Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Graphics, Microsoft Scripting Engine, .NET Framework, Windows Cryptography, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Peripherals, Windows Storage and Filesystems, and Windows Server. For details, see the January 2020 Security Updates Release Notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.21.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19041 for 20H1

Release date: December 10, 2019

Released to: Fast and Slow rings

This minor build brings the Fast Search feature from Build 19018 to multiple countries (not just the U.S.), including Australia, China, India and others. It also includes a handful of minor bug fixes, including fixing an issue that caused some win32 apps to cause an unexpected increase in CPU usage if left idle after having opened the Common File Dialog.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19041.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19037 for 20H1

Release date: December 6, 2019

Released to: Fast and Slow rings

This minor build includes only one change — Windows PowerShell ISE is now a Feature on Demand and installed by default.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19037.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19035 for 20H1

Release date: December 4, 2019

Released to: Fast and Slow rings

This minor build fixes a variety of issues, including one that prevented some apps from starting the first time you tried to launch them after resetting the app via Settings, and another that prevented Fingerprint from being offered as a sign-in option after waking a fingerprint-enabled device from sleep.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19035.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19033 for 20H1

Release date: November 27, 2019

Released to: Fast and Slow rings

This minor build fixes a variety of minor issues, including one that caused the Start menu to crash on launch if a Windows update was pending restart, and another in which some paired Bluetooth audio devices unexpectedly displayed a cellphone icon in Bluetooth Settings.

In the notes for this build, Microsoft confirmed that the 20H1 Windows update will be officially known as version 2004.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19033.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19030 for 20H1

Release date: November 22, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces several changes to Cortana. The beta of the Cortana app has now been undocked from the taskbar and can be moved or resized like any other app, and has several new skills, including better ways to create and query about meetings. Go here for more details about the Cortana beta.

There are also a handful of small changes and fixes, including fixing an issue that caused certain apps to not fully fill the screen.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10 or 38.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19030.)

Editor’s note: On Nov. 20, Microsoft released Insider Preview Build 19025 for 20H1 to Insiders in the Slow ring; it had previously released the same build to the Fast ring. See our writeup below for more information on Build 19025.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19028 for 20H1

Release date: November 19, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build includes only a handful of small bug fixes, including for a bug in which Settings crashed when docking or undocking a device and another in which Windows Update history in Settings reported a Cumulative Update required a reboot, despite it already being installed.

There are five known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10 or 38.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19028.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19025 for 20H1

Release date: November 15, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build was also released to the Slow ring on Nov. 20, 2019.

This build improves search by cut down on its disk and CPU usage and speeding it up. The build also has a variety of minor bug fixes, including for one that could cause could cause VPN Settings to hang and another that caused certain modern UI components (including notifications and the network flyout) to scale either too large or too small after attaching an external monitor or remoting into the machine from a monitor with a different DPI.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which when certain external USB 3.0 drives are attached, they stop responding with Start Code 10 or 38.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19025.)

Editor’s note: On Nov. 11, Microsoft released Insider Preview Build 19013 for 20H1 to Insiders in the Slow ring; it had previously released the same build to the Fast ring. See our writeup below for more information on Build 19013.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19018 for 20H1

Release date: November 5, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces four pre-built, quick searches into Windows Search: Weather, Top News, Today in History, and New Movies, which shows movies playing near your location. Search also gets a slightly tweaked web preview in search results.

The build also has a variety of bug fixes, including for one in which Cortana didn’t respond to “Hey, Cortana,” another in which the Settings app was hanging or crashing when accessing the System or Ease of Access sections, and another in which if a new account profile picture synced from the cloud, your old one might not be listed in the picture history in Accounts Settings.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which Settings isn’t available outside of being launched via the URI (ms-settings:) for some Insiders, and another in which after some people successfully install printer drivers from the Optional Updates section, the same driver is still showing as being available for installation.

Note that with this build, Windows Insiders who have opted into Skip Ahead are being migrated back into the Fast ring. So Skip Ahead will no longer be reflected under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program. Going forward, Microsoft will not for the time being offer Skip Ahead as an option for Insiders.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19018.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19013 for 20H1

Release date: October 29, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build was also released to the Slow ring on Nov. 11, 2019.

This build introduces more kaomoji and special characters, which you can get to by pressing either the Windows key + . or Windows key + ; keyboard shortcuts. It also tweaks the Your Phone app for Android phones by removing the dependency the Phone screen has on Bluetooth connectivity.

The build also has a variety of minor bug fixes, including for an issue in which some Bluetooth devices didn’t reconnect after closing and then reopening their lids, and another in which Wi-Fi Settings got stuck saying “Connecting,” even though the network flyout (correctly) indicated that the user was connected.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which if you use the remote desktop connection and the target PC is on this build, within about an hour or sooner, DWM may start crashing and the session window will go black or experience black flashes, or you may get signed out of the remote desktop session altogether.

Microsoft also announced that PowerToys v0.12 is now available on GitHub.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19013.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19008 for 20H1

Release date: October 22, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build fixes several minor bugs, including one in which when optional updates were available, Insiders with the Settings header might see the Windows Update indicator in a warning state, even though the main page of Windows Update Settings showed that everything was up to date.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which Bluetooth devices may not reconnect as expected after closing the device lid for certain devices, and another in which initiating “Reset this PC” with the cloud download option isn’t working on this build or the previous one when started from Windows RE.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19008.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19002 for 20H1

Release date: October 17, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build has only small changes, improvements and bug fixes, including fixing an issue that could result in the brightness getting stuck at 0% or 100% and requiring a reboot before it can be changed, and another that could result in upgrades failing with error 0x8007042b.

There seven known issues in this build, including one in which older versions of anti-cheat software used with games may crash some PCs after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview build, and another in which when using the dark theme, the hardware keyboard text prediction candidate window is unreadable due to black text on a dark gray background.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 19002.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18999 for 20H1

Release date: October 8, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces the new Calls feature to the Your Phone app for Android phones. Calls lets you answer incoming calls on your PC, initiate calls on your PC, decline calls on your PC, access your recent call history on your PC and transfer calls between your phone and PC.

There are two dozen bug fixes and minor changes in the build, including improving the reliability of the VPN, fixing an issue in the Search bar in either Control Panel or File Explorer where the box becomes grey and prevents input, and fixing another in which the text cursor indicator did not adjust to show in the correct location after content was scrolled.

There is one known issue in this build, in which older versions of anti-cheat software used with games may crash some PCs after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview build.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18999.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18995 for 20H1

Release date: October 3, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build adds Windows Hello PIN sign-in support to Safe mode, so that you no longer have to use a password when troubleshooting your device. It also includes several minor improvements to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). And it introduces several new features to users of some Samsung Galaxy phones and Samsung Fold devices, including Link to Windows, which lets you easily send messages, manage notifications, sync photos, and mirror your phone on your PC.

There are several dozen bug fixes and minor changes, including for an issue in which some users frequently saw a notification saying their account needed to be fixed, but the Settings page that opened showed no action was necessary, and another in which calendar events created from the taskbar clock and calendar flyout didn’t have a default 15-minute reminder set.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, 3D Viewer) are incorrectly being treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality, and another in which when using the Search bar in either Control Panel or File Explorer, its box becomes gray and prevents input.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18995.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18990 for 20H1

Release date: September 24, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build allows you to have Universal Windows Platform apps (a.k.a. Metro apps) automatically restart from the previous session when you log into Windows. Minor improvements have also been made to the Xbox Game Bar and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

There are also several dozen bug fixes and minor changes, including fixing an issue in which right-clicking on File Explorer’s search box didn’t bring up a context menu that could be used to paste clipboard contents, and a change that improves the legibility of Magnifier’s reading highlighting rectangle.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, and 3D Viewer) are incorrectly treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality, and another in which when you view optional drivers in the new section on the Windows Update page, older drivers show as being available for download. If you choose to update to them, they will attempt to install and fail to do so.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18990.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18985 for 20H1

Release date: September 19, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build makes Bluetooth pairing simpler and faster by cutting down on the number of notifications during the pairing process and eliminating the need to go to the Settings app to finish pairing. You can now also see all of your Windows 10 updates, including driver updates, in one place. Previously, in order to see driver updates, you had to browse the Device Manager.

In addition, there are a nine bug fixes, including one in which the Reset this PC cloud download option did not calculate the correct amount of space you needed to free up if you did not have enough disk space to proceed, and another in which Task Manger unexpectedly showed 0% CPU usage in the Performance tab.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, 3D Viewer) are incorrectly being treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality, and another in which when you view optional drivers in the new section on the Windows Update page, older drivers show as being available for download. If you choose to update to them, they will attempt to install and fail to do so.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18985.)

Also note: Separately from Build 18985, version 10.1907 of the Snip & Sketch app is being rolled out to Insiders in the Release Preview ring. It lets you zoom in on screenshots so you can annotate them and closes the previous snip when you click New.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18980 for 20H1

Release date: September 11, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build introduces a new Cortana icon and adds small changes to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In addition, there are a wide variety of bug fixes, including fixing an issue that could result in certain app thumbnails going unexpectedly blank when you right-clicked them in Task View, and another fix that helps improve performance of the Apps & Features page in Settings when searching.

There are seven known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly, and another in which the Reset this PC cloud download option doesn’t calculate the correct amount of space you need to free up if you do not have enough disk space to proceed. To work around it until a fix is available, Microsoft says you should free up an extra 5GB beyond what is prompted.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18980.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18975 for 20H1

Release date: September 6, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces PowerToys for Windows 10, a version of the utility suite that was popular with power users of Windows 95 through Windows XP. In this early version, there are only two utilities, one that gives you a set of new keyboard shortcuts that are suited for open windows and the desktop, and another called FancyZones that makes it easy to arrange open windows into pre-set layouts, and snap them into place — for example, arranging multiple windows into columns, rows, grids and so on. Get more details about PowerToys here.

The build also lets you move the Cortana window wherever you’d like (previously, it was only in one specific location). You can also now rename virtual desktops. And there are a variety of reliability improvements for the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

The build also has a long list of bug fixes and minor changes, including fixing an issue that caused the minimize, maximize, and close title bar buttons to not work for certain apps, and another in which the “Bluetooth and Other Devices” and “Printers and Scanners” didn’t render correctly in the last two builds.

There are nine known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly, and another in which the Reset this PC cloud download option doesn’t calculate the correct amount of space you need to free up if you do not have enough disk space to proceed. To work around it until a fix is available, Microsoft says you should free up an extra 5GB beyond what is prompted.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18975.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18970 for 20H1

Release date: August 29, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces some changes in the tablet interface for 2-in-1 convertible PCs. In the new interface, the Search box on the taskbar has been collapsed into an icon, there is greater spacing between taskbar icons, File Explorer switches to a touch-optimized layout, and when you tap a text field, the touch keyboard launches. Also, when you fold back your keyboard, the device automatically launches into tablet mode.

There’s also a new option for resetting your PC. You can now choose to speed up the reset process by downloading Windows from the cloud and installing it that way, rather than using a compressed backup Windows copy in a hidden partition on your PC.

The build also has a number of bug fixes and minor changes, including fixing two issues that could result in Settings crashing when interacting with options on the Search page, and fixing a DWM memory leak that affected the previous two builds.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly, and another in which text on Devices pages in Settings for “Bluetooth and Other Devices” and “Printers and Scanners” isn’t rendering correctly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18970.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18965 for 20H1

Release date: August 21, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This minor build lets you control which apps will be automatically restarted every time you sign into Windows 10. There are also a handful of bug fixes, including for one in which the taskbar sometimes unexpectedly hid when you launched the touch keyboard, and another that caused background tasks to stop working in certain apps.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly, and another in which text on Devices pages in Settings for “Bluetooth and Other Devices” and “Printers and Scanners” isn’t rendering correctly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18965.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18963 for 20H1

Release date: August 16, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces several new features, including giving Task Manager the ability to monitor and display the temperature of a dedicated GPU card. Other new features include letting you rename virtual desktops, and minor improvements to the Optional Features page in Settings.

You can also now set your mouse cursor speed from inside Settings. The spell checker in Windows Search can now detect and fix more typing errors when you type in a search —

for example, “powerpiont” or “exce.”

There are also more than a dozen bug fixes, including one in which the Network status would show that some users connected via cellular or ethernet were not connected, even though they were.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18963.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18956 for 20H1

Release date: August 7, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces a new Network Status page in Settings, which offers more information at a glance about your device’s connectivity in a single location rather than being spread out over several pages. All available connections are shown on the page. It shows how much data is being used by a network, and other important details.

In addition, the Calculator app has been updated, notably with a new ability to put the calculator in Always on Top mode.

There are also a variety of minor fixes, changes and improvements, including fixing an issue that caused the taskbar search to crash right after login for some users. Also, Tamper Protection is being turned on by default for all Insiders. This change will take several weeks to roll out for everyone.

There are four known issues with the build, including one in which Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18956.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18950 for 20H1

Release date: July 31, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes minor improvements to the Snip & Sketch screen capture and markup program. When you retake snips multiple times to get the right one, you can now save them in your current window, instead of opening each in its own separate window, making it easier to manage them. You still have the choice to have each snip in its own window. And you can also now zoom in on snips. Note that these features won’t be immediately available to everyone; they’re being implemented in a phased rollout.

There are also a few minor bug fixes, including for one that that caused the OneNote app to intermittently act as if the Ctrl key was pressed when it wasn’t. There are several known issues, including one in which Tamper Protection may be turned off for some people in Windows Security after updating to this build. It can be turned back on.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18950.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18945 for 20H1

Release date: July 26, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes a beta of a new Cortana chat-based interface that lets you speak or type natural language when asking Cortana questions. Cortana now also has both light and dark themes, and sports a smaller, less-intrusive screen than previously. Microsoft also claims that Cortana’s new speech and language models have improved their performance and reliability.

Also in the build are accessibility improvements, including one that makes it easier for Narrator to read newsletters and marketing content. File Explorer gets a new search interface in which a drop-down box appears with suggestions as you type.

There are also more than a dozen bug fixes, including for one in which the Performance tab of Task Manager wouldn’t expand from a collapsed state if you double-clicked on the text, and another that could cause Windows to hang after resuming from hibernation.

There are several known issues in the build, including one in which Tamper Protection may be turned off for some people in Windows Security after updating to this build. It can be turned back on.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18945.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18941 for 20H1

Release date: July 18, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This extremely minor build updates the Korean and Chinese Input Method Editors (IMEs), and has only few minor bug fixes, including one in which explorer.exe crashed if you started a File Explorer search while in a OneDrive folder, and another in which some users experienced a great deal of lag when using the previous build.

There are five known issues in the build, including one in which people experience installation failures with the error code c1900101 when trying to install Build 18936 or Build 18941, and another in which Tamper Protection may be turned off for some people in Windows Security after updating to this build. It can be turned back on.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18941.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18936 for 20H1

Release date: July 10, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

With this build, you can turn on passwordless sign-in on your Microsoft accounts, using Windows Hello face, fingerprint, or PIN. (Note that this feature is being rolled out slowly to Insiders, so may not be available yet on your PC.)

You can also now create an event quickly from the taskbar. Clicking the date in the taskbar brings up a form that lets you create the event.

And this build makes the phone screen feature of the Your Phone app, in which a PC mirrors the display of an Android phone, available to more PCs via a driver update. The feature is now available for Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 5, Surface Pro 6, Surface Book, and Surface Book 2.

There are a variety of bug fixes, including for an issue that caused failures when installing games via the Xbox app, and another in which the emoji panel crashed when high contrast was enabled.

There are several known issues in the build, including one in which older versions of anti-cheat software used with games may cause some PCs to crash, and another in which some Realtek SD card readers do not function properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18936.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18932 for 20H1

Release date: July 3, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build has a variety of minor improvements and new features, including for Eye Control accessibility capabilities. You can now perform drag-and-drop operations using Eye Control, and the Pause feature has been improved. New settings let you customize more Eye Control features.

In addition, the build makes it easier to turn off and fine-tune Windows notifications. Also, the Your Phone app now lets you interact with your phone using a single tap and a long press if you have a touch-enabled Windows 10 device. Windows notifications now also integrate with Your Phone.

The build also has a wide variety of fixes and small changes, including fixing an issue that caused Task Manager to show 0% CPU usage in the Performance tab, and another that could result in a black remote desktop window for a few seconds when disconnecting from a remote desktop session.

There are four known issues in the build, including one in which older versions of anti-cheat software used with games may cause some PCs to crash, and another in which some Realtek SD card readers do not function properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18932.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18922 for 20H1

Release date: June 19, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes only minor changes and bug fixes. Changes to Language Settings makes it easier to see the state of your language settings in a single glance. The interface of Windows Ink Workspace also gets tweaked slightly.

There are also a variety of bug fixes and small improvements, including fixing an issue in which the Action Center background was unexpectedly opaque in the quick action section, and another in which some Insiders received Windows Update error 0x80010105 when updating to recent builds.

There are half-a-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which in the Home edition, some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. In addition, some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly, and there’s also a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes. In addition, you may get an error code when you download this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18922.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18917 for 20H1

Release date: June 12, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes several new features, notably new control over download throttling options for delivery optimization, which allows you to control the bandwidth used to download Windows builds in order to reduce the impact on a network. The throttling options are already available for IT Pros who use Group Policies or MDM policies to configure Delivery Optimization. Now, though, they can be more easily set, using Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options.

A new version of the architecture that powers the Windows Subsystem for Linux has been released, Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. And Windows Ink Workspaces has been slightly revamped to take up less screen real estate, and to have a direct link to the Microsoft Whiteboard app.

There are also a variety of bug fixes and small improvements, including fixing an issue where some users experienced a 0x8007000E error code while downloading the build due to high RAM consumption, and updating the new File Explorer search to be dark when used in dark theme.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which in the Home edition, some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. In addition, some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly, and there’s also a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes. In addition, you may get an error code when you download this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18917.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18912 for 20H1

Release date: June 5, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes only one extremely minor improvement: The Narrator can now read out the title of the page to which a hyperlink goes, so that you can know the page’s title before deciding whether to visit it.

In addition, there are a dozen Windows bug fixes, including for a bug in which the Settings application crashed when you navigate to the Graphics Setting page, and another in which double-clicking the update icon in the taskbar launched Settings, which would then immediately crash.

There are eight known issues in this build, including one in which in the Home edition, some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. In addition, some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly and there’s also a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes. In addition, you may get an error code when you download this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18912.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18908 for 20H1

Release date: May 29, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build brings a variety of new features to the Your Phone app. Included are new accessibility capabilities for screen reading and keyboard and mouse input. You can now also send and receive MMS messages, as well as sync mobile data with your PC – including photos, messages, and notifications – without having to connect your Android phone to your Wi-Fi network.

There are also several Windows bug fixes, including one in which certain devices with fast startup enabled color profiles/gamma wouldn’t turn on until after a restart, and another in which Microsoft Paint selection moved in unexpectedly large steps per keypress when using the arrow keys.

There are 11 known issues in this build, including one in which in the Home edition some devices might not be able to see the “download progress %” change on the Windows Update page. In addition, some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly, and there’s also a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18908.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18898 for 20H1

Release date: May 15, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes a minor new feature: You can now see the disk type (SSD, for example) for each disk listed in Task Manager’s performance tab. In addition, there are several minor bug fixes, including one in which a pcshell.dll issue in recent builds resulted in explorer.exe crashing.

There are ten known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly and another in which there’s a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18898.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18895 for 20H1

Release date: May 10, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes only one minor fix: The Your Phone app now works. There are nearly a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers don’t work properly and another in which there’s a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18895.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18894 for 20H1

Release date: May 8, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build introduces improvements to File Explorer, including integrating it with Windows Search and OneDrive online files. When you type into File Explorer’s search box, you’ll see a drop-down list with files you might be looking for. Click any to open it.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for one in which Narrator read at a low volume that could not be increased, and another in which the mouse wheel and touchpad were not working reliably.

There are more than half a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which the Your Phone app won’t work, and another in which there’s a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18894.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18890 for 20H1

Release date: May 1, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build has only minor bug fixes, including one that could cause the desktop to refresh slowly, and another in which you would not be able to access network shares if you booted into Safe Mode with Networking.

There are more than half a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which scrolling with the mouse wheel or touchpad may stop working in certain places, and another in which on certain devices with fast startup enabled, night light doesn’t turn on until after a restart.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18890.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18885 for 20H1

Release date: April 26, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

This build includes changes to the Your Phone app that links Windows 10 to Android devices. A new Notifications feature has been added to it that will allow Android notifications to appear on Windows devices. Additionally, the dictation feature has been expanded to support more languages and regions.

There are also a variety of changes, improvements and bug fixes, including for a bug in which USBs and SD cards were assigned a different drive letter after upgrading. There are more than half a dozen known issues with this build, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers don’t function properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18885.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18875 for 20H1

Release date: April 10, 2019

Released to: Fast ring

With this build, Microsoft merged the Skip Ahead group back in with the Fast ring and began releasing 20H1 previews to Insiders in the Fast ring.

This build only has minor changes and bug fixes, including fixing an issue that could result in a freeze on the lock screen if you interacted with the touch keyboard and then switched keyboard layouts, and another in which Settings sporadically crashed. There are more than half a dozen known issues, including one in which some Realtek SD card readers don’t function properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18875.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18865 for 20H1

Release date: March 27, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build only has minor changes and bug fixes, including for an issue in which duplicate empty copies of certain folders were created for some users, and another in which Narrator read “has finished loading” multiple times when loading a new page in Chrome. There are three known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18865.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18860 for 20H1

Release date: March 20, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build expands support for SwiftKey to 39 languages. It also has a variety of minor changes and bug fixes, including one in which Microsoft Edge crashed when interacting with combo boxes in PDF forms, and another in which night light was skipping the fade transition when it was turned off.

It has four known issues, including one in which when performing Reset this PC and selecting Keep my files on a device that has Reserved Storage enabled, you will need to initiate an extra reboot to ensure Reserved Storage is again working properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18860.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18855 for 20H1

Release date: March 13, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build only has a handful of minor changes and bug fixes, including enabling the microphone in Windows Sandbox and fixing an issue that caused Explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders when Jump list content was updated. It has half a dozen known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18855.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18850 for 20H1

Release date: March 6, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build tweaks and fixes bugs in the Snip & Sketch screen capture and markup app, including fixing an issue that could result in snips being blurry after saving or copying to the clipboard, and adding Narrator (screen reader) confirmations when a snip is copied to the clipboard.

The build also fixes more than dozen bugs, including one in which Microsoft Edge sometimes crashed when editing or tabbing through PDFs. The build has more than half a dozen known issues, including one in which the mouse pointer color was switched to white after signing out and signing back in.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18850.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18845 for 20H1

Release date: February 28, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build hooks up keywords to Emoji 12.0 emoji. It also fixes more than dozen bugs, including one that caused the Bluetooth Hands-Free audio driver to hang, and another that caused DWM to crash after enabling high contrast. The build also has more than half a dozen known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18845.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18836 for 20H1

Release date: February 14, 2019

Released to: Skip Ahead group

The build fixes than dozen bugs, including one in which turning off Location from the Action Center might take multiple clicks to react, and another in which newly installed apps might not show up in search results.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18836.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 November 2019 Update (19H2, version 1909) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18363.418 for 19H2

Release date: October 8, 2019

Released to: Release Preview ring  

Microsoft says in an announcement that this is the final build for the upcoming November 2019 Update (version 1909) for Windows 10. The build combines the security updates in KB4517389 (OS Build 18362.418) for the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) with the changes that have already been released to Insiders for the November 2019 Update.

Microsoft notes that if you are in the Insider Slow ring, you will soon start receiving builds for 20H1 instead of 19H2. If you’d like to remain on 19H2, switch to the Release Preview ring now, and you will be moved to Build 18363.418 “in the coming weeks.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18363.418.)

Windows 10 Preview Build 18362.10022 for 19H2

Release date: September 25, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

This build has the improvements and fixes from KB4515384 (OS Build 18362.356), which was released to users of Windows 10, version 1903 (also called 19H1). It also has, in Microsoft’s words, “general improvements to the overall quality of 19H2.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.10022.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.385 for 19H1 and 18363.385 for 19H2

Release date: September 23, 2019

Released to: Release Preview ring

This build is being used to test Microsoft’s throttled approach for rolling out 19H2 once it’s ready; it contains no new features. It will be automatically installed on 10% of PCs in the Release Preview ring. Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring who are on 19H1 Build 18362.329 will get 19H1 Build 18362.385, and Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring who are on 19H2 Build 18363.329 will get 19H2 Build 18363.385.

Those in the Release Preview ring who do not get it automatically installed can go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and see if the update is available for them to install.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.385 and 18363.385.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10019 for 19H2

Release date: September 5, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

This build contains a variety of minor features, including allowing third-party digital assistants to voice activate above the Lock screen, the ability to create an event straight from the Calendar flyout on the taskbar, and a new “Manage notifications” button at the top of the Action Center that launches the main “Notifications & actions” Settings page.

Those who received Build 18362.10014 with 19H2 features turned off by default will receive Build 18362.10019 with all 19H2 features turned on. Those who received Build 18362.10015 with 19H2 features turned on by default will also receive Build 18362.10019 with all 19H2 features turned on. And those on the Windows 10 May 2019 Update just joining their PCs into the Slow ring to take 19H2 updates will also receive Build 18362.10019 with all 19H2 features turned on.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.10019.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18363.327 for 19H2

Release date: August 26, 2019

Released to: Release Preview ring

This build is available only for about 10% of the Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring, and is being used only to test out Microsoft’s throttled approach for rolling out 19H2 once it’s ready. Insiders in the Release Preview ring can go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update to see if there is a Windows 10, version 1909 update available. They can then choose to install it or ignore it. If they install it, they will be on 19H2 Build 18363.327.

19H2 Build 18363.327 contains no new features, and in fact has fewer features than the current latest version of 19H2 in the Slow ring.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18363.327.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds 18362.10014 & 18362.10015 for 19H2

Release date: August 19, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

These two builds are nearly identical, except that 18362.10014 has new features turned off and 18362.10015 has them turned on. Microsoft did that because it’s testing its ability to turn on features via a controlled feature rollout. So over time, users who download 18362.10014 will eventually see the new features. Whether you’ll download 18362.10014 or 18362.10015 depends on your current build. Those on 19H2 Build 18362.10012 will receive 18362.10014 (which has the features turned off) and those on 19H2 Build 18362.100013 will get 18362.10015, which has them turned on.

There are only a few very minor changes in these builds. The search box in File Explorer is now powered by Windows Search. Enterprises can supplement the Windows 10 in S Mode policy to allow traditional Win32 (desktop) apps from Microsoft Intune. Windows Defender Credential Guard for ARM64 devices now has additional protection against credential theft for enterprises deploying ARM64 devices in their organizations.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Builds 18362.10014 and 18362.10015.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds 18362.10012 and 18362.10013 for 19H2

Release date: August 8, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

These two builds are nearly identical, except that 18362.10012 has new features turned off and 18362.10013 has them turned on. Microsoft did that because it’s testing its ability to turn on features via a controlled feature rollout. So over time, users who download 18362.10012 will eventually see the new features. Whether you’ll download 18362.10012 or 18362.10013 depends on your current build. Those on 19H2 Build 18362.10005 will receive 18362.10012 (which has the features turned off) and those on 19H2 Build 18362.10006 will get 18362.10013, which has them turned on.

The primary new feature is the ability to create an event straight from the Calendar flyout on the taskbar.  There are other minor changes as well, including that the navigation pane on the Start menu now expands when you hover over it with your mouse, so you can better see where clicking goes. In addition, general battery life and power efficiency improvements have been made for PCs with certain processors.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Builds 18362.10012 and 18362.10013.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10005 for 19H2

Release date: July 15, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

This build includes all the fixes released in KB4507453 for the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) as well as a handful of very minor changes, including a new feature called Key-rolling or Key-rotation for MDM-managed AAD devices that will help prevent accidental recovery password disclosures as part of manual BitLocker drive unlocks done by users. There is also a change that will let third-party digital assistants voice-activate above the lock screen.

Note that the changes in this build are turned off by default, so users will not see them immediately. Microsoft will turn them on in controlled rollouts at some point.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.10005.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10000 for 19H2

Release date: July 1, 2019

Released to: Slow ring

This first build for the 19H2 version of Windows 10, the update due sometime this fall, is being released only to the Insider Slow ring. (Those in the Fast ring will continue to get builds for 20H1, due the first half of 2020.)

Insiders will see no changes in this build. Instead, the update contains what Microsoft calls “two behind-the-scenes changes designed for OEMs.” It is being used, according to Microsoft, “to test our process and servicing pipeline for delivering these updates to customers.”

Although Insiders won’t see changes, there is significant news in the Microsoft announcement. Reading between the lines of the Microsoft description of the build and a blog post about 19H2 in general, it appears that the upcoming fall update will contain very few new features, and will be more like what Microsoft used to call a Service Pack — a rollup of multiple changes, delivered in a single build rather than in multiple ones.

In addition, the update won’t be delivered as the company’s twice-annual feature updates have been up until now. Instead, it will be delivered in the same way as a Windows 10 monthly update.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.10000.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (19H1, version 1903) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362

Release date: March 20, 2019

This minor build has a single fix, for an issue in which the Connect app crashed on launch for some Insiders.

There are fewer than a half-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which Creative X-Fi sound cards do not work properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18362.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18358

Release date: March 15, 2019

This minor build has only minor fixes. Among the bugs fixed are one in which Game Mode degraded game streaming and recording quality, and another in which some Insiders had green screens with the error KERNEL_SECURITY_VIOLATION.

There are fewer than a half-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which Creative X-Fi sound cards do not work properly.

Separate from this build, Microsoft also is releasing Windows Defender Application Guard extensions for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Get the Google Chrome extension here,  and the Mozilla Firefox extension here.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18358.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18356

Release date: March 12, 2019

This minor build adds a new feature to Windows 10’s Your Phone app: the ability to mirror your Android phone’s screen directly to your PC. You’ll get access to your phone apps from your PC, such as for getting rides, checking social updates and so on. Note that it may take a few days for every Insider to get this feature.

There are also a variety of minor fixes and small improvements. Among the fixes is for a bug in which Microsoft Edge crashed when interacting with combo boxes in PDF forms, and another in which using the slider to adjust the night light strength could result in the night light getting stuck on.

There are fewer than a half-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which Creative X-Fi sound cards do not work properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18356.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18353

Release date: March 8, 2019

This minor build includes only small fixes and improvements. One fix is for an issue in which bug checks were launched when a laptop lid was closed or a monitor was plugged into a PC or unplugged from it. The small improvements are all related to Windows Sandbox, including one that turns on the Ctrl + Alt + Break key sequence in Windows Sandbox to allow a PC to enter or exit full-screen mode.

There are fewer than a half-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which Creative X-Fi sound cards do not work properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18353.)

Windows Insider Preview Build 18348

Release date: March 1, 2019

This minor build has only one new feature, a first look at Emoji 12.0 emoji. Press WIN+(period) or WIN+(semicolon), all and you’ll be able to search keywords to find the emoji you want. Keywords include otter, sloth, waffle, ballet shoes and many other.

In addition, there are a variety of fixes, including for a bug in which in Microsoft Edge sometimes crashed when users edited or tabbed through PDFs, and another in which if high contrast mode was enabled during Windows setup, that state wouldn’t persist after the first logon.

There are fewer than a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which the mouse pointer color might be incorrectly switched to white after signing out and signing back in.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18348.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18346

Release date: February 26, 2019

This extremely minor build offers only small fixes, including one for a bug in which the Bluetooth hands-free audio driver would hang and another in which the taskbar search box text became a black background.

There are fewer than a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which navigating to the Narrator settings in Windows Sandbox crashes the Settings app.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18346.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18343

Release date: February 22, 2019

This extremely minor build has only one notable feature: It allows PCs with Intel64 Family 6 Model 142 and Intel64 Family 6 Model 158 processors to get insider builds. PCs with those processors could not download the previous build, 18342.

The build also fixes an issue that required an additional reboot when performing Reset this PC and selecting Keep my files on a device that has Reserved Storage enabled.

There are fewer than a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which in which if you try to navigate to the Narrator settings In Windows Sandbox, the Settings app crashes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18343.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18342

Release date: February 20, 2019

This build fixes a variety of bugs in Windows gaming technology and offers fixes and workarounds for the game State of Decay. In addition, the build also lets people access Linux files in a WSL distro from Windows. The files can be accessed through the command line. Windows apps including File Explorer, VSCode and others can also interact with the Linux files.

The build includes an assortment of fixes and small changes, including fixing an issue in which Windows Sandbox would not start on localized builds, and another in which right-clicking the desktop would bring up a light-colored context menu in dark theme.

The build has fewer than a dozen known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check (GSOD), and another in which if you try to navigate to the Narrator settings in Windows Sandbox, the Settings app crashes.

Microsoft also says that the features for what it calls inbox apps — the Windows 10 apps that ship with the next Windows 10 upgrade — are now set and will not change any further. So you may notice some differences in those apps compared to previous versions, notably that some features have disappeared.

Note that PCs with certain processor model numbers (Intel64 Family 6 Model 142 and Intel64 Family 6 Model 158) will not receive this build because of an issue with Connected Standby. To check the model number of your processor, take the following steps:

1. Open Device Manager by right-clicking on the Start button on your taskbar.
2. Open the Processors group and right-click on one of the processors listed. (You will see “multiple” for each core of the processor in your PC.)
3. Click Properties and go to the Details tab.
4. Choose “Hardware Ids” in the property drop-down. This will give you the model number of your processor.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18342.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18329

Release date: February 1, 2019

This minor build allows desktop (Win32) applications run in Windows Mixed Reality in the same way that Microsoft Store apps can, although the feature is likely to be buggy. Also included are small changes to Mail and Calendar, including the ability to run in dark mode. And when you open Search Home on the Start screen, you’ll find icons for the apps you run most frequently.

There are also an assortment of fixes and small changes and improvements, including fixing an issue in which video playback went black after rotating a device from landscape to portrait, and fixing another issue in which Win32 apps had unexpectedly long launch times.

The build has more than a dozen known issues, including one in which the Windows Security app shows an unknown status for the “Virus & threat protection” area or doesn’t refresh properly and others in which Windows Sandbox may launch to a black screen and in which launching games that use anti-cheat software may trigger a bug check.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18329.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18323

Release date: January 24, 2019

This minor build improves Windows 10’s support for the RAW image format used by digital cameras. You’ll now be able to view RAW image thumbnails, previews and camera metadata of previously unsupported RAW files from inside File Explorer. You can also view your RAW images at full resolution in any Windows app that uses Windows Imaging Component framework to decode raw images, such as the built-in Photo app.

Windows 10’s Light Theme gets a variety of fixes and small tweaks, including solving an issue in which the text in the battery flyout can become unreadable in the Light Theme because the text is white.

There’s also the usual assortment of fixes and small changes and improvements, including fixing an issue in which closing an open Excel window from the taskbar might cause Excel to become non-responsive, and another in which the quick actions section of Action Center was sometimes missing.

The build has more than a dozen known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheating software may trigger a bug check, another in which the Windows Security app shows an unknown status for the “Virus & threat protection” area, or doesn’t refresh properly, and another in which Windows Sandbox may launch to a black screen.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18323.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18317

Release date: January 16, 2019

This build makes one major change to Windows 10 — Cortana and Windows’ search capabilities have now been separated. When you do a search by typing into the search box, it no longer activates and uses Cortana. Instead, it uses Windows’ basic search. If you want to use Cortana, you instead click a new Cortana button to the right of the search bar.

The build also improves font handling with new options in Settings, including the ability to drag and drop font files from File Explorer to Settings > Fonts in order to install them. Microsoft also claims it has improved Start reliability. And Windows Console has received a variety of small fixes, including fixing an issue in which consoles grow in height if scroll-forward is disabled.

There are also a variety of other fixes, including for a bug in which Windows Sandbox wouldn’t launch on PCs with multiple GPUs, and another in which File Explorer locked USB drives when trying to safely eject them.

The build has more than a dozen known issues, including one in which the quick actions section may be missing from Action Center, another in which launching games that use anti-cheating software may trigger a bug check, and another in which the Windows Security app shows an unknown status for the “Virus & threat protection” area, or doesn’t refresh properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18317.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18312

Release date: January 9, 2019

This build makes a significant change in how Windows 10 manages disk space — a move Microsoft says it’s making to improve Windows performance and reliability. With this build, Windows sets aside reserved storage space to be exclusively used by updates, apps, temporary files, and system caches. Without enough disk space, when a PC’s storage is used up, applications and Windows itself can be unreliable. (For more information about PC performance and disk space, see the Microsoft blog post, “Reserving disk space to keep Windows 10 up to date.”)

Note that this feature will only be turned automatically on in PCs that come with the next version of Windows 10 (which Microsoft refers to as 19H1) pre-installed or on PCs in which 19H1 was clean installed. However, Windows Insiders can go here and follow the instructions, and reserved storage will be turned on in the next insider preview build.

Apart from that, there are only very minor changes in this build, including improvements to the Windows Subsystem for Linux command line such as importing a distribution for easy sideloading including to non-system drives.

There are also a variety of fixes, including for a bug that made the Edge browser unreliable and another in which the Network shares page in File Explorer used black text in dark theme.

The build has more than a dozen known issues, including one in which launching games that use anti-cheating software may trigger a bug check, and another in which the Windows Security app shows an unknown status for the Virus & threat protection area or doesn’t refresh properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18312.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18309

Release date: January 3, 2019

This minor build has only a few new features. It’s now easier to reset your Windows Hello PIN, and you can sign into Windows with a phone number rather than a password. Both of these features were in the previous build for Windows 10 Home users only, but now work with all Windows 10 editions. In addition, the Narrator has gotten a few small improvements, including additional voices.

There are also a variety of small improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue that caused explorer.exe to crash when right-clicking a network printer, and fixing another in which changes to Mouse Keys settings in Settings would not persist.

Known issues in this build include the Windows Security app showing an unknown status for the Virus & threat protection area, or not refreshing properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18309.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18305

Release date: December 19, 2018

This build includes a wide variety of new features and changes. The biggest change to the interface is a new, simplified default Start layout for new devices, new user accounts, and clean installs. It’s now a one-column design with fewer top-level tiles and is sleeker-looking than the existing layout. Note that the new layout won’t immediately appear when updating to this build. Instead, it will default to whatever you’ve already been using.

Windows Clipboard also gets a facelift, notably making it far more compact than the version introduced in the October 2018 Windows 10 Update.

This build also introduces a new security feature, Windows Sandbox, which can run desktop applications in isolation so they can’t harm your PC if they’re malicious or have been infected with malware. Microsoft describes it as “an isolated desktop environment where you can run untrusted software without the fear of lasting impact to your device. Any software installed in Windows Sandbox stays only in the sandbox and cannot affect your host. Once Windows Sandbox is closed, all the software with all of its files and state are permanently deleted.”

The Windows Security app has also gotten a tweak, mainly by revamping its protection history listings, offering more details about each action, as well as new information such as controlled folder access blocks.

Windows will now automatically recommend troubleshooting to keep your PC running more smoothly, for example by recommending turning off a setting than can cause an app to crash. And symbols and Kaomoji (faces created with only text characters) can now be inserted with a hotkey.

With this build, Microsoft continues to work on eliminating passwords and using other means of account verification. In this build, if your Microsoft account has a phone number, you’ll be able to use an SMS code to sign in and set up your Windows 10 account. You can then use a variety of ways to sign into Windows 10, including using Windows Hello facial recognition, a fingerprint, or a PIN.

For enterprises, Microsoft introduces Automatic Restart and Sign On (ARSO), which automatically signs in a user after an update to finish setting up and then locks the PC. It’s only available on PCs that have these security requirements:

• BitLocker enabled and is not suspended during the upgrade
• TPM 2.0
• SecureBoot

Cortana also gets a little bit smarter in this build: It can add your reminders and tasks to your Microsoft To-Do lists. All lists and reminders in Microsoft To-Do, Cortana, and tasks in Outlook are now available in the Microsoft To-Do app. The app can be accessed on Android phones, iPhones, Cortana, the web and your PC.

The build also introduces a new Office app that lets you see all of your Microsoft Office files and launch any Office application. Check out this Office 365 blog post for more details.

There are also a wide variety of small improvements and fixes, including adding shadows throughout the user interface following Microsoft’s Fluent Design guidelines, a slightly revamped Settings homepage, and a new default date format in Windows Explorer.

Known issues in this build include Windows Security showing an unknown status for the Virus & threat protection area, or not refreshing properly, and USB printers appearing twice in the Devices and Printers under Control Panel. Reinstalling the printer resolves the issue.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18305.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18298

Release date: December 10, 2018

This build includes a variety of minor additions throughout Windows. You can now set up a security key for signing into Windows in the Settings app, and the default sorting display for downloaded files has been changed to the most recently downloaded. There’s also a new context menu choice for unpinning groups and folders on the Start menu.

The touch keyboard received several improvements, including one that those with errant fingers will appreciate: The “hit target” of each key (where the key is typically pressed) will change based on prediction of what letter will most likely be typed next. This is expected to result in more accurate typing.

The Notepad gets several small changes, including one in which it shows an asterisk in the title bar in front of the document’s name to indicate that the document has unsaved changes. The Narrator has also seen several improvements, including the new Narrator Home, a one-stop shop for Narrator instructions, tips and settings. Users are sent to Narrator Home every time Narrator is started. And Snip & Sketch gets several bug fixes and reliability improvements, including fixing an issue in which the bottom of a snip gets truncated.

There are also a wide variety of small improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue in which Settings crashed when clicking “Check for Updates,” and another in which the handwriting panel might crash when a pen was used for input into win32 apps.

Known issues in this build include the Settings page crashing when users click on the “View storage usage on other drives” option under System > Storage, and another in which USB printers may appear twice in the Devices and Printers under Control Panel. Reinstalling the printer resolves the issue.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18298.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18290

Release date: November 28, 2018

This build includes only relatively minor additions, such as incorporating Microsoft’s Fluent design guidelines into the Start menu with the use of new icons. You can now also tell which app is using your microphone by hovering your mouse over the microphone icon in the taskbar. There’s also a new landing page for when you perform searches. Microsoft To-Do has also been added to Mail & Calendar.

There are also a wide variety of small improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue in which PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge did not display correctly, and making Narrator more compatible with Chrome.

Known issues in this build include the Settings page crashing after the account password or PIN is changed. Settings will also crash when opening Speech Settings or clicking on the “View storage usage on other drives” option under System > Storage.

Note that the builds previous to this one have a built-in expiration date that Microsoft calls a “timebomb.” The timebomb is set to go off on December 14, after which those builds will no longer work. Insiders need to update to Build 18290 or later before then to avoid that.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18290.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18282

Release date: November 14, 2018

This build adds a new light theme, created to provide more contrast to the Windows dark theme. In the new light theme, the taskbar, Start menu, Action Center, touch keyboard and other interface elements are light instead of dark. Additionally, the OneDrive flyout now supports the Windows dark theme.

There are also new features added to the Snip & Sketch screen capture tool, including a delayed mode and the ability to capture individual windows. Windows Update has received minor improvements, including making it easier to pause updates and having Windows detect the best hours to perform updates. And Narrator has gotten a variety of additions, including making read-by-sentence commands available via a braille display.

There are also a variety of small improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue that caused File Explorer to freeze when interacting with video files, and another in which x86 apps and games had blurry text rendering.

Known issues in this build include the Settings page crashing after changing the account password or PIN, and PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge not displaying correctly – they’re too small, instead of using the entire space.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18282.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18277

Release date: November 7, 2018

This build includes only minor changes, including the ability to customize the way Action Center works from directly within it instead of having to go through Settings, and the ability to use Focus Assist, which lets you turn off alerts, while you’re in full screen mode. The build also shows off the emoji Microsoft has designed so far in preparation for the release of Emoji 12.

There are also a variety of small improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue that resulted in Timeline crashing explorer.exe if you pressed Alt-F4 while it was visible, and another that affected Emoji Panel reliability.

Known issues in this build include the Settings page crashing after changing the account password or PIN, and PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge not displaying correctly — they’re too small, instead of using the entire space.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18277.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18272

Release date: October 31, 2018

This build will please fans of Windows Hello, a feature that lets people sign into Windows using a fingerprint, facial recognition or a PIN instead of a password. Microsoft admits in its note on the build that the sign-in screen for Windows Hello had been cluttered and confusing. So it’s redesigned it, by condensing sign-in options into a list that explains what each option does, and its next step for setup.

The Snip & Sketch screen capture and markup tool has been improved in a variety of ways, including an option to add borders to a screenshot so that it stands out when copied into a document. You can also now print screenshots, and you can save screenshots in .jpg and .gif formats.

There are also several small improvements and fixes, including for an issue that could result in Settings crashing when navigating to Data Usage, and one in which enhancements selected under Speaker Properties > Enhancements wouldn’t persist on upgrade.

Known issues in this build include Task View failing to show the + button under New Desktop after creating two Virtual Desktops, and PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge not displaying correctly — they’re too small instead of using the entire space.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18272.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18267

Release date: October 24, 2018

This minor build adds a new enhanced mode for the search indexer. You can now tell Windows to search all your folders and drives, instead of limiting the search to Documents, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop by default. Beyond that, there are a few small accessibility improvements, including Narrator working better with Chrome. In addition, there are several small improvements and fixes, including for an issue that caused Settings to crash when invoking actions in certain places, including under Windows Security.

There are a handful of known issues in this build, including one in which when you change Task Manager settings, the next time Task Manager is opened it will revert to the default.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18267.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18262

Release date: October 17, 2018

This minor build adds a new optional column to the Details tab of Task Manager so you can find out the DPI awareness per process. DPI awareness properly displays fonts and applications when the resolution of a monitor changes. The build also allows users to easily uninstall some preinstalled Windows applications such as Calendar, Mail and Calculator via the context menu.

There are a variety of other changes, improvements and fixes, including a fix for a bug in which Task Manager’s icon in the notification area of the taskbar did not stay visible while Task Manager was open. There are several known issues with the build, including one in which Settings crashes when taking actions on certain pages.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18262.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18252

Release date: October 3, 2018

This minor build has only a few small changes. For instance, you can now configure advanced Ethernet IP settings in the Settings app, including support for a static IP address and configuring a preferred DNS server. Previously, you could only make these changes in Control Panel. It’s part of Microsoft’s ongoing effort to consolidate settings in one location rather than several.

There’s also the usual variety of fixes, including for a bug that caused Task Manager to report inaccurate CPU usage, and another where the arrows to expand “Background processes” in Task Manager used to “blink constantly and weirdly,” in Microsoft’s words.

In its description of the build, Microsoft warned, “As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some…If this makes you uncomfortable, you may want to consider switching to the Slow ring.”

Among the known issues with this build are one in which Settings crashes when invoking actions on certain pages.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18252.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18247

Release date: September 26, 2018

This build has only a handful of small fixes, including one for a bug in which app icons sometimes became invisible in the taskbar and another in which WebView controls did not respond to the keyboard.

There are also several known issues, including one in which File Explorer’s context menu has an unexpectedly thick white border. The problem in the previous build with arrows that expand “Background processes” in Task Manager “blinking constantly and weirdly” remains in this build as well.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18247.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18242

Release date: September 18, 2018

This build has only small fixes, including for a bug in which the back button in Settings and other apps became white text on a white background if you hovered over it, and another that caused some apps to crash when you tried to save a file from the app.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which Task Manager is not reporting accurate CPU usage, and another in which the arrows used to expand “Background processes” in Task Manager “are blinking constantly and weirdly,” in Microsoft’s words.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18242.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18237

Release date: September 12, 2018

This build adds the acrylic translucent texture from Microsoft’s Fluent Design to the Windows sign-in screen. There’s also a wide variety of fixes, including for an issue where Task Manager couldn’t be resized, and another where if you opened one of the taskbar flyouts (like network or volume), and then quickly tried to open another, it wouldn’t work.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which Narrator sometimes does not read in the Settings app when you navigate using Tab and arrow keys.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18237.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18234

Release date: September 6, 2018

This build adds support for handwritten input into the Microsoft To-Do app. There’s also an update to the Sticky Notes app, which syncs notes across devices, among other improvements. The Snip & Sketch screen capture and annotation tool gets new options, including the ability to delay screen capture a certain amount of time.

Aside from that, there are several dozen fixes and changes, including for an issue in which logging out of your user profile or shutting down your PC would cause the PC to perform a bug check (GSOD), and another that caused Start to be unreliable.

There are half-a-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which the background of notifications and the Action Center lose color and become transparent, and another in which when you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18234.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18219

Release date: August 16, 2018

This build includes improvements to the Narrator, including increased reliability and improved Braille usage. There’s also a variety of changes and fixes, including for an issue in which the icons in the Microsoft Edge extension pane were drawing unexpectedly close to the toggles and one in which minimized apps had squished thumbnails in Task View.

There are 11 known issues in this build, including one in which the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc.) no longer have an acrylic background.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18219.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18214

Release date: August 10, 2018

This build includes the Your Phone app introduced with the Windows 10 October 2018 update. Aside from that, it only has minor fixes, such as fixing an issue in which Timeline’s scrollbar didn’t work with touch and one in which the Windows Security icon in the taskbar system tray would become a little bit blurrier every time there was a resolution change.

There are more than a dozen known issues in this build, including one in which in Narrator’s automatic dialog reading the title of the dialog is spoken more than once.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18214.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18204

Release date: July 25, 2018

This is the first preview for 19H1. It includes no new features — it’s the same as the Preview Build 17723 for Redstone 5.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 18204.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (Redstone 5, version 1809) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17763

Release date: September 18, 2018

This minor build has no new features and offers fixes for a half-dozen small issues. Among them are one in which touching a Flash element in Microsoft Edge with two or more fingers may result in the tab crashing, and another where thumbnails and icons might not be rendered if there were any video files saved to the desktop.

There are two known issues in this build: Task Manager does not report accurate CPU usage, and the arrows that expand “Background processes” in Task Manager are, in Microsoft’s words, “blinking constantly and weirdly.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17763.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17760

Release date: September 14, 2018

This minor build has no new features and offers fixes for a half-dozen small issues. Among them are rendering issues in certain types of PDFs in Microsoft Edge, crashes that occurred when using swipe to navigate back in Microsoft Edge, and apps that use .NET 4.7.1 not working correctly.

There are no known issues in this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17760.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17758

Release date: September 11, 2018

This minor build has no new features; it offers fixes for a handful of small issues. Among them are an issue that caused the back button in Settings and other apps to become white text on a white background if you hovered over it, and another in which certain apps crashed when you tried to save a file from the app.

In the description of this build, Microsoft announced that starting with Build 17720, it updated the Storage Sense feature by letting it automatically free up disk space by turning older, unused, locally available files in OneDrive into online-only files. The “What’s new in Storage Sense?” blog post has more details.

There is one known issue in this build, in which Narrator sometimes does not read in the Settings app when you navigate using Tab and arrow keys.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider 17758.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17755

Release date: September 7, 2018

This minor build has no new features and only three fixes for problems: One that had resulted in slower resume from hibernation on some devices, another that had caused HDR video being unexpectedly clipped in certain situations, and a third in which Windows Hello spent more time in the “Getting Ready” state in recent builds.

There are two known issues in this build, including one in which when you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere. The two issues are the same as in the previous build, 17754.

(Get more info about Insider Preview 17755.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17754

Release date: September 5, 2018

This minor build has a variety of fixes for small problems, another sign that the Windows 10 October 2018 Update is close to being done. Among the issues fixed are one that caused the Action Center to work with reduced reliability, another in which clicking on web links in progressive web apps such as Twitter didn’t open the browser, and a third in which using the pen to ink in Microsoft Edge’s web notes caused crashes.

There are two known issues in this build, including one in which when you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17754.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17751

Release date: August 31, 2018

This build is a minor one and shows that Microsoft is coming closer to finalizing the code for the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, as the upcoming release is now officially named. The main thing you’ll notice is that there’s no longer a watermark on the lower right-hand corner of the desktop. That doesn’t mean it’s the final build, but it does mean that Microsoft is “beginning the phase of checking in final code to prepare for the final release,” in Microsoft’s words.

Apart from that, the build has only minor fixes and changes. Among the issues fixed are one in which you would get an error saying no supported app is installed after clicking some activities in Timeline, even though a supported app was installed, and another in which explorer.exe crashed if you were in Tablet Mode and opened Task View while in portrait orientation.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which clicking on web links in progressive web apps such as Twitter doesn’t open the browser.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17751.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17746

Release date: August 24, 2018

This build, as is the case with the last several builds, is a very minor one with only a handful of small changes, improvements and fixes. Expect it to be that way for most, if not all, of the remaining builds before final release of Redstone 5. There are only five small changes and fixes in this build, including for a bug in which Narrator would incorrectly report some standard combo boxes as “editable combo box” instead of “combo box,” and another in which Windows Mixed Reality caused motion controllers to need to be re-paired after the initial setup before appearing in the headset.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which you may experience a bug check (GSOD) when logging out of your user profile or shutting down your PC.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17746.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17744

Release date: August 21, 2018

This very minor build includes only a handful of small changes, improvements and fixes, including resolving an issue in which the contents of the Microsoft Edge window became offset from its window frame, and another in which certain apps crashed when they sent their Timeline activities.

There are four known issues in this build, including one in which you may experience a bug check (GSOD) when logging out of your user profile or shutting down your PC, and another in which after setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be paired a second time before appearing in the headset.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17744.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17741

Release date: August 17, 2018

This very minor build includes a new desktop icon that, when clicked, launches the Your Phone app for Android phones, which lets people see and copy photos from Android phones to their PCs. The app was introduced back in build 17730; only the desktop icon for launching it is new in this build.

Apart from that, there are more than a dozen minor changes, improvements and bug fixes, including fixing an issue which caused PCs to bug check (GSOD) when deleting a local folder that was synced to OneDrive, and another issue in which when Settings was open to “Bluetooth & Other Devices” and then minimized to the taskbar, when you tried to resume the app, Settings would crash.

There are three known issues in this build, including one in which after setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be re-paired before appearing in the headset.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17741.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17738

Release date: August 14, 2018

This very minor build introduces no new features. It has more than a dozen bug fixes and minor changes and improvements, including fixing an issue that hurt the Start menu’s performance and reliability, and another in which Microsoft Edge’s Settings and More menu became truncated when the option to increase text size was enabled in Settings.

There are a half-dozen known issues in this build, including one in which a PC will perform a bug check (GSOD) when deleting a local folder that is synced to OneDrive, and another in which after setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be paired a second time before appearing in the headset.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17738.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17735

Release date: Aug. 10, 2018

This very minor build introduces no new features, and has fewer than a dozen bug fixes and minor changes and improvements, including fixing an issue in which links that launched one app from another app were not working, and another in which in Windows Mixed Reality the voice command, “Flashlight on,” would fail to activate the flashlight feature.

There are a number of known issues in this build, including your PC performing a bugcheck (GSOD) when deleting a local folder that is synced to OneDrive, and another in which the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc.) no longer have an acrylic background.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17735.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17733

Release date: Aug. 8, 2018

This very minor build introduces only one very small feature, a dark theme in File Explorer. In addition, Narrator received more than a dozen fixes, including one in which Narrator couldn’t access all the emoji in the Touch Keyboard’s emoji panel, and another in which Narrator couldn’t read the label of the Word document recovery dialog.  A few overall fixes were also made for Windows 10 itself, including one in which the touch keyboard became invisible on the screen, and another in which – if you reset certain devices and chose to keep files – the Sound Settings page would be unresponsive after logging back into Windows.

There are a number of known issues in this build, including potential Start reliability and performance issues, and one in which after setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be re-paired a second time before appearing in the headset.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17733.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17730

Release date: Aug. 3, 2018

This build introduces the new Your Phone App that will let people with Android phones see and copy photos from those phones to their PCs. To install it, click the Your Phone app icon, and you’ll then get an app that has to be installed on the phone. The iOS version links an iPhone to a PC, so that when you surf the web on your phone, you’ll be able to send the webpage to your PC and pick up where you left off on the phone.

The build also lets the Edge browser take advantage of HTTP/2 as supported in Windows Server 2019. For details, see Top 10 Networking Features in Windows Server 2019: #8 A Faster, Safer Internet.

In addition, there are the usual small changes and fixes, including resolving an issue that caused the volume slider in certain apps to perform poorly with touch, and another in which in certain apps, including Twitter, stopped rendering content when navigating after a while.

There are a number of known issues in this build, including one in which clicking a link to launch one app from another app may not work, and potential Start reliability and performance issues.

(Get more info about Insider Preview 17730.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17728

Release date: July 31, 2018

This minor build makes a number of changes to the Narrator, including better reading and navigating in Scan mode, improved reliability, and better use of Braille commanding when using the Narrator key from the Braille display.

Microsoft also announced that in the next few weeks, Windows Insiders will be able to use the new Your Phone App to let people with Android devices see content from those devices on their PCs. It will do things such as let someone take pictures on an Android phone and then view the photos on a PC. The app will let users with iOS devices link their phones to their PCs to do things such as surf the web on their phones, then send the webpage to their PCs so they can pick up where they left off.

In addition, there are the usual small changes and fixes, including an issue in which the Clock & Calendar flyout sometimes did not appear until the Start or the Action Center was clicked, and another in which Find on Page in Microsoft Edge would stop working for open PDFs once the PDF was refreshed.

There are a number of known issues in this build, including one that affects WDAG, Remote Desktop and Hyper-V. In it, Remote Desktop Client (mstsc.exe) users will see a misleading error dialog warning about low virtual memory when a connection is being established.

(Get more info about Insider Preview 17728.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds 17723 and 18204

Release date: July 25, 2018

This build serves double-duty. It’s both a preview (17723) for Redstone 5 as well as the first build for testers (18204) who have opted into Skip Ahead for Redstone 6.

Emoji fans will be pleased to see that there are now 157 new emoji, including superheroes, redheads, a softball, a pirate flag and a llama. That’s because Unicode 11 has been incorporated into the build. Access them via the Emoji Panel (WIN + .) or the touch keyboard.

Also new is what Microsoft is calling a mixed reality flashlight, which lets you easily bypass the mixed reality world when you’re wearing a mixed reality headset, and instead look at the real world. So no longer will you have to remove your headset when you want to peek at something nearby or reach for a drink or phone, for example. You’ll be able to do it via the Start menu, a button shortcut or a voice command.

Microsoft Edge has gotten a few tweaks, including new Group Policies and MDM settings for IT administrators to manage it. There’s also an easier way for device administrators to set up their PCs as a kiosk or digital sign.

In addition, there are a variety of small changes and fixes, including one in which some laptops underwent a CRITICAL PROCESS DIED bug check when the PC was put to sleep by closing the lid and the connected power disconnected. There are also a variety of known issues, including one in which the clock & calendar flyout may not appear until bringing up Start or Action Center, and they will then both appear at the same time. The same issue may result in notifications not appearing until Start or Action Center is opened.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17723 and 18204.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17711

Release date: July 6, 2018

No big news in this build. Microsoft Edge gets a few minor additions, including new themes and a new consent box for saving autofill data. Microsoft also continues to add new Fluent design elements throughout Windows, including shadows for popup controls. There’s also a new Windows HD Color page, available under Display Settings. The Registry Editor has been improved with more useful input tools.

There is also a wide variety of very small fixes, including for a bug in which attempting to pin Settings categories to the Start menu would either crash Settings or do nothing, and another in which creating a system image from backup and restore in the control panel would fail on x86 machines.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17711.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17704

Release date: June 27, 2018

The big news in this build is that the Sets feature, which lets you group documents, web pages, files and apps in tabs, and then work with them, has been pulled — with no word about when it might be reinstated. This means that it may not ship with Redstone 5.

Sets was originally scheduled to be released as part of the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (Redstone 4), but Microsoft pulled it due to a variety of problems. The company included Sets in Redstone 5 builds starting with Build 17618 on March 7, 2018 — even before the Windows 10 April 2018 Update was released. And now, in Build 17704, Microsoft has pulled it again.

Microsoft explained the decision this way in its description of this latest build: “Starting with this build, we’re taking Sets offline to continue making it great. Based on your feedback, some of the things we’re focusing on include improvements to the visual design and continuing to better integrate Office and Microsoft Edge into Sets to enhance workflow. If you have been testing Sets, you will no longer see it as of today’s build, however, Sets will return in a future WIP flight.”

No date was set for the feature’s return, so there’s no guarantee it will be included in Redstone 5, due this fall. If you’ve been following the build notes for Redstone 5, you might not be that surprised about what Microsoft has done, because Microsoft has continually reported issues with the feature in its notes about each build.

Aside from pulling Sets, Microsoft has done a fair amount of work on Microsoft Edge in this build, including incorporating more Fluent Design elements into it, adding redesigned settings and the ability to customize the toolbar, as well as giving users control over whether media should automatically play on web pages.

The Skype for Windows 10 app gets a serious update with a variety of new features, including easier screen sharing, a new layout making it easier to find contacts, customizable themes and more. Check here for more details from Microsoft.

The Diagnostic Data Viewer, available as a separate download, has gotten tweaks, including the ability to view problem reports that have been or will be sent to Microsoft. However, it remains an extremely difficult-to-use tool that even programmers will struggle to understand.

There have also been a several improvements to Windows Security, including new protections and settings such as to block suspicious behaviors and to manage the various types of anti-malware, firewall and other security software running on your PC.

Other changes include allowing non-admin users to install fonts, and new columns for Task Manager that show power usage and power trends. There is also a long list of fixes, including for a bug that caused the lock screen to crash in a loop when Picture Password was selected, and another in which when Cortana search results were clicked, nothing would happen.

And there are a small number of known issues, including one in which Windows Mixed Reality might get stuck after going to sleep and display an error message in Mixed Reality Portal or a “Wake up” button that doesn’t work.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17704.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17692

Release date: June 14, 2018

This build introduces an easier way to use the Windows 10 touchscreen keyboard with the addition of SwiftKey, which lets you enter text by dragging your fingers. SwiftKey, previously available only for iOS and Android, also improves the accuracy of autocorrections and text-input predictions.

In addition, there have been improvements to a number of Windows features. You can now search for text using Narrator’s new Find feature, and Narrator will also automatically read the contents of a dialog box when brought to the foreground, among other additions. New audio controls have been added to the Game Bar that let you change your default audio output device and mute or adjust the volume of games and apps running. Windows Mixed Reality has gotten several improvements, including the ability to stream audio to both a headset and PC speakers simultaneously.

There are the usual variety of minor changes and fixes, including for a bug that resulted in audio glitching on systems with lots of firewall rules, and another in Microsoft Edge where if both images and text were selected, right-clicking on the image and selecting copy wouldn’t work.

There is a long list of known issues with this release, including one in which launching Start causes reliability and performance issues, and another in which some settings in Settings may be unexpectedly missing and/or missing their labels. The Game Bar may also crash on x86 machines.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17692.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17686

Release date: June 6, 2018

This minor build makes several minor improvements to Windows Mixed Reality, including adjustments to the mixed reality video capture experience to make it easier to stop videos from the Start menu. Also, the Windows Settings app gets a new Region page that lets you override default regional format settings such as Calendar, First day of the week, Dates, Times, and Currency. To use it, go to Settings > Time & Language > Region.

There are the usual variety of minor changes and fixes, including one in which Paint and WordPad settings and recent files weren’t migrated during upgrades, and another in which taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc.) didn’t have a shadow. There are also a number of known issues that haven’t been fixed, including increased reliability and performance issues when launching Start. The new Sets feature continues to have problems working with Microsoft Office; for instance, there’s a bug in which tiling and cascading windows, including features like “View Side by Side” in Word, will not work for inactive tabs.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17686.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17682

Release date: May 31, 2018

This build includes several minor changes, notably to the new Sets feature. Microsoft has tweaked Sets’ tab page to make it more obvious that apps can be launched from it. Now, when you click the plus button in a Sets window, apps will be included in the frequent destinations list. The “all apps” list has also been integrated into the page so you can browse your apps, instead of having to use the search box.

Microsoft Edge now includes a preview of the new Web Authentication API for developers, which  provides an open, scalable and interoperable solution for authentication, and replaces passwords.

Wireless projection gets some tweaks designed to help you know when you’re wirelessly projecting and how to disconnect, particularly if your session was begun in File Explorer or an app. A new control banner at the top of the screen tells you the state of your connection and allows you to quickly disconnect or reconnect. You can also use it to tune the connection based on what you are doing.

There’s the usual variety of minor changes and fixes, including fixing an issue that resulted in some apps missing pinned and recent items when you right-clicked their icons in the taskbar. There are also a number of known issues that have yet to be fixed, including reliability and performance issues when launching Start. The new Sets feature continues to have a variety of problems working with Microsoft Office, many of which have also been present in past builds, including one in which the top of some Win32 desktop app windows may appear slightly underneath the tab bar when maximized. To work around the issue, restore and re-maximize the window.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17682.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17677

Release date: May 24, 2018

This build includes a variety of minor changes. Microsoft Edge’s “Settings and more” menu has been reorganized into groups to make options easier to find, and with icons placed next to each menu option. You can now also see your most visited sites on the Windows taskbar or Start menu. Right-click the Microsoft Edge icon to see a list of most visited sites and pin any you want. Right-click on an entry to remove it from the list. You can also more easily organize groups of tabs. In addition, new options (“Show in folder” and “Copy link”) have been added to the right-click menu for downloads in the “Downloads” pane.

The Windows Narrator has been improved and supports selecting content in Edge, Word, Outlook, Mail and most text applications. Mobile Broadband (LTE) connectivity on Windows gets a makeover in this build, and includes a new, more reliable network driver model. In addition, Task Manager’s memory reporting has been improved, and the Windows kernel now has support for IPv6 to KDNET.

There are several minor fixes, including for a bug in which the Home and End keys did not work in Edge. The build also has a variety of known issues, including one in which if you right-click apps in the taskbar, you might find that the jump list is missing pinned and recent items. And the new Sets feature has a variety of problems working with Microsoft Office, including one in which the top of some Win32 desktop app windows may appear slightly underneath the tab bar when maximized. To work around the issue, restore and re-maximize the window.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17677.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17672

Release date: May 16, 2018

This build has only very minor changes and fixes. In it, the Windows Security Center (WSC) service now requires that third-party antivirus programs run as protected processes, or else they won’t show up in the Windows Security interface, and Windows Defender Antivirus will run side by side with them. You can, however, disable the behavior by creating the following registry key and rebooting:

HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftSecurity CenterFeature DisableAvCheck (DWORD) = 1

Note that the key won’t work when the next version of Windows 10 is closer to being released.

There’s also a variety of minor changes and fixes, including one in which PCs appeared to be stuck at “Preparing to install…” between 80% and 100% in Windows Update when attempting to install a new build.

The build has a variety of known issues, including one in which Narrator reads extra text when Alt + Tab is pressed. And the new Sets feature has a variety of problems working with Microsoft Office, including one in which tiling and cascading windows will not work for inactive tabs.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17672.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17666

Release date: May 9, 2018

This build adds a variety of new features, including additions to the Sets feature. Sets now uses more Fluent Design standards, including an acrylic title bar. You can also mute web pages in Sets that play audio. And using Alt -Tab will show all recent Edge tabs when you switch between apps, not just the active one.

Windows Clipboard has been powered up. You can now paste previous items from the Clipboard’s history. And your Clipboard will roam across all of your devices, so you can clip items from a device other than the one you’re currently using.

There are a variety of other improvements, including the addition of a dark theme to File Explorer and improved search. A variety of bugs have been fixed, including one in which the VPN wasn’t working, and another in which a .dll would cause explorer.exe to crash every few minutes. There are, however, a number of known issues, including one in which your PC appears to be stuck on “Preparing to install” when it gets to 80% to 100% of updating. It will take 30 minutes or more to complete the installation from that point.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17666.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17661

Release date: May 3, 2018

This build adds a variety of new features, including tweaks to screen capture in Windows 10. Screen Sketch, which lets you annotate screen captures and was originally part of Windows Ink, is now its own app. In addition, pressing WIN + Shift + S brings up a toolbar that lets you capture a rectangle, free-form snip or the entire screen. (In the current version of Windows, that key combination only lets you capture a rectangle.) You’ll also get a notification that, when clicked on, lets you open the snip in Screen Sketch for annotation and sharing.

There are a number of other minor improvements, including one in which Microsoft’s Fluent Design is being extended to Task View, whose background gets a new soft blur look. This build also adds to support for the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF), introduced in Build 17623, and lets you do things such as rotate HEIF images.

There’s also the usual assortment of changes and fixes, including fixing an issue in which using arrow and Page Up / Page Down keys didn’t work to scroll webpages in Microsoft Edge. There are a number of known issues with this build, including one in which some notifications from Action Center may cause regular Explorer.exe crashes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17661.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17655

Release date: April 25, 2018

This extremely minor build has only one new feature: Mobile Broadband (LTE) connectivity on Windows is getting a makeover. Microsoft says that its new Net Adapter framework “introduces a new, more reliable, network driver model that inherits the goodness of the Windows driver framework while bringing an accelerated data path.” Only PCs that support Mobile Broadband — that is, use cellular networks — will use the new framework.

Aside from that, there are only two changes and fixes. The brightness toggle in the Battery flyout in the Notification Area of the taskbar has been removed. Microsoft says that will make for an improved user experience. The build also fixes in issue in which Microsoft Edge didn’t work when dragging a favorite from one folder to another.

There are a variety of known issues in this build, including one in which the mouse cursor may disappear when hovering over certain user interface elements and text fields, and another in which the arrow and Page Up / Page Down keys don’t work to scroll web pages in Microsoft Edge. There are also a variety of issues with the new Sets feature, and with Microsoft Office working properly with this build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17655.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17650

Release date: April 19, 2018

This very minor build gives the Windows Defender Security Center a design refresh using Microsoft’s Fluent Design elements, including adjusting the spacing and padding around it and dynamically sizing the categories on the main page if more room is needed for extra info. In addition, the Windows Defender Firewall now supports Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) processes.

There’s also the usual assortment of changes and fixes, including an issue in which File Explorer would always open with the Ribbon minimized, rather than remembering how you’d left it. There are a number of known issues with this build, including one in which when a PC resumes from sleep, the desktop may be momentarily visible before the lock screen displays as expected.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17650.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17643

Release date: April 12, 2018

This minor build introduces integration between the Microsoft Office and the new Sets feature that lets you group documents, web pages, files and apps in tabs, and then work with them. In addition, if you use a SIM on a mobile device, it will tell you how much data you use while you’re roaming. There are also the usual improvements and fixes, including fixing an issue in which Reveal would sometimes not appear if you moved your mouse over and off an element repeatedly, and another in which there was noticeable screen flicker when the screen adjusts after a device is rotated.

There are number of known issues with this build, including one in which if you open Settings and click on any links to the Microsoft Store or links in tips, Settings will crash, and another in which when a computer resumes from sleep, the desktop may be momentarily visible before the Lock screen displays as expected.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17643.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17639

Release date: April 4, 2018

The big news in this build is the new features added to the Sets tool that let you group documents, web pages, files and apps in tabs, and then work with them. You can now drag and drop apps between tabs and use Alt + Tab to switch between tabs. Sets also gets its own section in Settings, available via Settings > System > Multitasking. There are also new context menu options when you right-click on a tab set, including “close other tabs,” “move to new window” and “close tabs to the right.”

Beyond that there’s an assortment of changes, improvements and fixes, including a fix for an issue that caused duplicate entries in Disk Management, and one in which some Windows apps silently terminated when minimized.

There are several known issues with this build, including one in which if you open the Settings app and click any links to the Microsoft Store or links in tips, Settings will crash.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17639.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17634

Release date: March 29, 2018

In this build, search is now available in the Windows 10 calendar. You can search by name, location, people included, or words in the event body. It works for Outlook, Hotmail, Live and Office 365 accounts, but not yet Exchange Server, Gmail, Yahoo or other IMAP calendars. In the build, Cortana Show Me supports voice commands, such as for updating Windows, uninstalling an app, discovering Bluetooth devices and more. There is also an assortment of minor fixes and improvements, including for a bug in which Microsoft Edge could crash when certain extensions were turned off, and another in which typing in the Microsoft Edge URL bar immediately after opening a new tab sometimes resulted in the letters appearing out of order.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17634.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17627

Release date: March 21, 2018

This very minor build includes only small bug fixes, including for one in which an emoji panel wasn’t working, and another where if you tried to open an online-only file from OneDrive that hadn’t been previously downloaded to your PC, your PC might perform a bug check.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17627.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17623

Release date: March 16, 2018

This build rolls out the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF), a container that uses modern codecs like HEVC to improve image quality, compression and capabilities compared to earlier formats like JPEG, GIF and PNG. In addition to single images, HEIF supports encoding image sequences, image collections, auxiliary images like alpha or depth maps, live images and video, audio, and HDR. The Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) also gets performance improvements.

There are also the usual minor changes and fixes, including for an issue that crashed the touch keyboard when focus was moved to certain password fields, and another in which touch couldn’t be used to interact with the Timeline scrollbar.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17623.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17618

Release date: March 7, 2018

This preview reintroduces a major new Windows 10 feature, Sets, that lets you group webpages, documents, files and applications on individual tabs in Windows Explorer. (Sets made a brief appearance in the preview builds for the April 2018 Update but was pulled because it wasn’t ready for general release.) Apps such as Mail, Calendar, OneNote, MSN News, Windows and Microsoft Edge can be grouped. Microsoft says support for more apps will come in the future.

Windows Mixed Reality is buggy in this build. Microsoft notes that it “runs at a very low frame rate (8-10fps) that could result in some physical discomfort. And there are multiple crashes at startup that will cause Windows Mixed Reality to not work.”

There are also the usual minor changes, improvements and fixes, including for a bug in which three- and four-finger gestures on the touchpad were unresponsive, and another in which navigating to Themes Settings crashed Settings.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17618.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17604

Release date: February 14, 2018

This is the first preview for Redstone 5, and includes no new features — it’s essentially the same as the Preview Build 17101 for Redstone 4. However, Microsoft warns that this and other early Redstone 5 builds may be buggy, and adds, “So, things will likely be a little rough as they normally are at the beginning of the development cycle for a new Windows 10 release. If this concerns you or makes you uncomfortable, you may want to consider opting out of Skip Ahead.”

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17604.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (Redstone 4, version 1803) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17134

Release date: April 16, 2018

This build fixes problems Microsoft discovered just prior to its planned rollout of Redstone 4. According to Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider Program, the company discovered reliablity issues that could have led to Blue Screens of Death in some cases. “Instead of creating a Cumulative Update package to service these issues, we decided to create a new build with the fixes included,” Sarkar wrote in a blog post.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17134.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17133

Release date: March 27, 2018; updated April 10, 2018

Note: The final version of Redstone 4 was expected to begin rolling out to the public on April 10, but that didn’t happen. Industry watchers believe the company discovered a bug severe enough to prevent the release.

Instead, Microsoft on April 10 released an update to 17133, called Insider Preview Build 17133.73, to Insiders in the Fast, Slow, and Release Preview rings. The build issues security updates to Internet Explorer, Edge, Microsoft scripting engine, Windows kernel, Microsoft graphics component, Windows Server, Windows cryptography, and Windows datacenter networking and squashes a final few bugs, including a PDF security issue in Edge and a glitch in IE’s identification of custom controls, before the spring feature update is released.

The scarcity of changes in this latest build shows that the release of Redstone 4 is likely very close. It has fixes for only three small issues: One in which certain devices with BitLocker enabled unexpectedly booted into BitLocker recovery; another in which the display resolution couldn’t be changed when there were four or more monitors connected; and another in which clicking suggested search terms when typing in the Microsoft Edge URL bar didn’t do anything. There are no known issues in this build. Microsoft notes: “We are in the phase of checking in final code to prepare for the final release.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17133.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17128

Release date: March 23, 2018

With this build, Microsoft seems to be getting exceedingly close to the final version of the next major update to Windows 10. The only difference between it and the previous build, 17127, is that the watermark at the lower right-hand corner of the desktop has disappeared. This is frequently a sign that a build is the final one, but Microsoft says that’s not the case this time, noting that “This does not mean this is the final build as we are not done yet…we’ve got more fixes being checked in for the next flight.” However, Microsoft also writes that “We’re just now beginning the phase of checking in final code to prepare for the final release.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17128.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17127

Release date: March 20, 2018

The main additions in this build are some minor changes to Cortana. It now has a profile page where you can add and edit your favorite places. When you add a place, you’ll get traffic updates for your commutes, and be able to quickly set reminders for when you arrive at or leave places. Microsoft also claims that Cortana’s notebook feature has been sped up. Also, when you want to add new skills to Cortana, you’ll get suggested questions on the best ways to add them.

There are also the usual variety of changes, improvements and fixes, although this time around it’s a small list. Included is fixing a problem that caused Microsoft Edge to crash when turning off certain extensions, and another in which the page up and page down keys weren’t working when using Microsoft Edge in Reading View.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17127.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17123

Release date: March 16, 2018

Little has changed with this latest build, as the release of the next major update to Windows 10 gets closer. The Windows 10 Photos app now supports the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF), which uses new codecs such as HEVC and which Microsoft says offers superior compression and features than older formats such as JPEG, GIF and PNG. To see it in action, you’ll have to join the Windows App Preview Program for the Photos app and be running the March release of the Photos app (Version 2018.18022.13740.0 or newer).

Microsoft continues to squash bugs with Windows Mixed Reality, including making sure that launching the Microsoft Store from Movies & TV no longer crashes either app. It’s also trying to fix other problems with Windows Mixed Reality, including looking into whether it experiences a performance regression on hybrid laptops.

In addition, there are a few very minor changes and fixes, including for a bug in which some older drives didn’t load properly.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17123.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17120

Release date: March 13, 2018

The march towards the release of the Windows 10 Spring Creators Update (the likely name for the next big Windows 10 upgrade) continues with another minor build. It includes some small changes to Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG). Microsoft says its performance has been significantly improved, including faster loading times. It also now allows enterprise users to download files when using the Edge browser in a WDAG browsing session.

The notes for the release also point out that new Windows Mixed Reality features added in the previous build, 17115, have a variety of bugs, including poor performance on hybrid laptops and the 360 viewer failing to launch from the Store app when you click on the “Launch” button after installing the 360 Viewer Edge extension.

In addition, there are a variety of very minor changes and bug fixes, including for one in which the UAC dialog did not render correctly in the last several builds, and another in which the touch keyboard crashed when focus was moved to certain password fields.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17120.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17115

Release date: March 6, 2018

This minor build includes a redesign of the privacy settings screen, including two new settings for Inking & Typing and Find my device. For details about the changes, see the blog post “Windows Insiders get first look at new privacy screen settings layout coming to Windows 10.”

In addition, there are a variety of very minor changes and bug fixes, including for one in which the Microsoft Store might be completely broken or gone after upgrading, and another in which at the first user-prompted reboot or shut-down after installation, in a small number of devices Windows 10 didn’t load properly and entered a reboot loop state.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17115.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17112

Release date: March 2, 2018

This build is another in Microsoft’s sprint towards the final release of the next major Windows update. It includes no new features, only a variety of minor bug fixes, including for one in which you got a permanently black window if you dragged a tab out of a Microsoft Edge window, pulled it to the top edge of the screen, moved it back down and then released it.

Be warned, however: The build introduces serious problems with running Windows Mixed Reality. Microsoft reports that in this build, “Windows Mixed Reality runs at a very low frame rate (8-10fps) that could result in some physical discomfort. And there are multiple crashes at startup that will cause Windows Mixed Reality to not work.” Microsoft suggests that those who want to pause Insider Builds until the issues are fixed should go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program, click the “Stop Insider Preview builds” button and choose “Pause updates for a bit.”

Other known issues with this build include one in which the Microsoft Store may disappear or be completely broken. Microsoft has posted a workaround to fix the problem.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17112.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17110

Release date: February 27, 2018

This build focuses primarily on minor improvements for enterprise customers. In it, enterprises can now run custom actions during Windows 10 feature updates, allowing them to customize installations. Setup allows the actions to be run during the pre-install phase, which happens before all the system and device compatibility scans run, and also during the pre-commit phase, just before the system reboots into the offline phase. Setup will also migrate the scripts for future updates.

In addition, in this build /postrollback scripts can be run in an admin context or a system context. This is useful because in some enterprises most employees don’t have admin privileges. So users can now run /postrollback scripts, even if they don’t have admin privileges.

There are also the usual minor changes, improvements and fixes, including one in which pressing and holding on a card in the new Timeline feature would open the corresponding app, rather than bringing up a context menu.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17110.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17107

Release date: February 23, 2018

As Microsoft continues its sprint to release the next big Windows upgrade, it has stopped introducing new features, and new builds include mainly bug fixes. So this update is a minor one. It tweaks Windows Update behavior so that when an update is being installed on a PC with AC power, it stops the PC from going to sleep when not being used actively for up to 2 hours when receiving an update, so that the update proceeds more smoothly.

Beyond that are a variety of minor changes, improvements and fixes, including for a bug in which Settings crashed when users tried to open Themes, and another in which the Windows Defender offline scan had stopped working in recent builds. This update has a number of known issues, including the buttons on the Game bar not being properly centered.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17107.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17101

Release date: February 14, 2018

The big news with this build is that it marks that the next upgrade to Windows 10 is likely now largely feature-complete. As Microsoft explains in its announcement about the build: “Right now our focus is on stabilization … we intend to release new RS4 builds [previews of the next upgrade to Windows, code-named Redstone 4] to Insiders more quickly to both the Fast and Slow rings as these builds include mostly bug fixes.”

Microsoft is also “forking” its Windows Insider builds with this release — one fork is the one for the next upgrade to Windows 10, due to be released this spring, and the other fork is for what Microsoft calls “Skip Ahead” builds, previews of the Windows upgrade that will be released approximately six months after that, codenamed Redstone 5. This 17101 build serves double duty — it’s both for previews of Redstone 4 and the first Skip Ahead build for Redstone 5. However, the Skip Ahead build gets the build number 17604 instead of 17101.

Note that the Skip Ahead queue for accepting users is closed. People who signed up for the Skip Ahead RS4 builds starting in July 2017 and have remained in the Skip Ahead ring will get the Skip Ahead builds. But no new signups will get them at this point.

As for what’s in the build, it’s a relatively minor one. Some emojis have been updated and some Windows apps are being given broad file access permissions, although you’ll be able to turn that off if you want. In addition, the new edition of Windows called Windows 10 Pro for Workstations that in Microsoft’s words is “designed for demanding mission-critical scenarios targeting advanced users,” gets a few new features. The most important is a new power scheme called Ultimate Performance that gives as much power to PCs as possible but uses more power than other power schemes. Because of that, it’s not yet available on battery-powered PCs.

There’s also the usual assortment of tweaks, improvements and bug fixes, including an issue in which three- and four-finger touchpad gestures were unresponsive, and another in which Start didn’t work for Insiders who had added HomeGroup as a folder to appear on Start.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17101.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17093

Release date: February 7, 2018

This build offers a wide variety of relatively minor new features. If you have a multi-GPU PC, you’ll be able to fine-tune how the GPUs are used, for example, to assign “power saving” GPUs to simple tasks like running your browser and using high-performance processing to run games. To do it, go to Settings > System > Display and scroll down to the “Advanced graphics settings” link. The build also lets more PCs play HDR video.

The build also tweaks the Diagnostic Data Viewer released in the previous build — Microsoft says it will now allow you to delete all the diagnostic data associated with a device. However, if you read closely enough, you’ll find that’s not the case. You’ll be able to navigate to a Delete button, but Microsoft notes that, “The backend cloud system is currently under development and will be available to complete the Delete requests prior to public release of RS4.” In other words, click all you want, but for now, the data won’t actually be deleted.

The “eye control” feature released in the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update gets some tweaks, so you’ll be able to use it more easily to scroll through content, navigate more quickly, pause and so on. Also improved is Windows 10’s Bluetooth capabilities, so you can pair with Bluetooth devices in a single click.

The build also tweaks the Edge browser a bit, so that in full-screen mode you can use the address bar, navigate to other sites, add favorites and more. New security features have been added to Windows, including account protection when signing into Windows. And the Game Bar has been given a makeover to make it easier to access all of its features, including new icons for muting a microphone, toggling recording and more.

In addition, users of Windows S, the stripped-down version of Windows designed for schools but available for everyone, will be able to log into the operating system without using passwords.

Aside from that are the usual assortment of tweaks, improvements and bug fixes, including updating the Windows Subsystem for Linux, redoing the Privacy Settings page and fixing an issue in which the Advanced display settings link was missing from Display Settings.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17093.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17083

Release date: January 24, 2018

The big news in this release is a new set of privacy tools that let people see all the diagnostic data their devices send to Microsoft. The new Diagnostic Data Viewer lists all of the diagnostic information gathered, including Windows version, the ID of the device, connectivity information, performance and reliability data, app usage, installed software and more. You can scroll through each “diagnostic” event, as Microsoft calls them, or else search through them and filter them. You’ll also be able to fine-tune the level of data that Microsoft gathers.

To use the viewer, go to Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback. Turn on the Diagnostic Data Viewer toggle and click the button below it to launch the app. One warning about the viewer: The information it shows is extremely difficult to decipher and will be difficult for anyone other than programmers to understand. So the tool sounds more impressive than it really is. For a full description, check out the blog post “Microsoft introduces new privacy tools ahead of Data Privacy Day” from Marisa Rogers, the Windows Device Group’s Privacy Officer.

There’s a variety of other improvements as well, including a new Fonts page in Settings that makes it easier to choose and use fonts. You’ll be able to see previews of each font, get more details about each font, fine-tune and uninstall them. Web developers and typographers get a variety of tools for tweaking fonts. In addition, in this build, you’ll be able to get new fonts from the Microsoft Store.

The Timeline feature has been changed as well. In this build, you can more easily delete activities from your Timeline. And Windows 10’s ease of access features get a variety of changes, including the ability to automatically turn on or turn off scrollbars.

Beyond that is an assortment of tweaks, improvements and bug fixes, including fixing an issue that could cause Windows to get stuck on the rebooting screen for a long time, and another in which Settings would crash if you tried to change the state of the microphone or camera permissions in Privacy Settings.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17803.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17074

Release date: January 11, 2018

This build offers a variety of new features. Most of them focus on Microsoft Edge. Edge’s ebook reader gets a number of improvements, including a new look and feel based on Microsoft’s Fluent Design guidelines. The reader now provides a consistent interface whether you’re reading a PDF, EPUB book, or web content in Reading View. There’s also a new full-screen view. New grammar tools can highlight different parts of speech as well as break words down into individual syllables. And if you’re reading books purchased from the Microsoft Store, your reading progress, notes, bookmarks and annotations will more quickly sync across the devices on which you read them. If you’re having Edge read a book to you, it highlights words as they’re read.

Edge now stores credit card information and can autofill information on payment forms on the web. It also now supports CSS extensions for OpenType Font Variations, among other new features.

Windows 10’s Quiet Hours feature has been slightly tweaked. In the current version of Windows 10, Quiet Hours lets you turn off notifications between the hours of 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. In this build, you can customize the hours it works. Quiet Hours will also automatically turn on when you play games.

The Windows Settings app has been updated. In an attempt to consolidate settings of different kinds, the Disk Cleanup feature now can be found in Storage Settings, and the Sound Settings page has gotten a variety of minor tweaks.

Microsoft continues to work on better integrating pen input into Windows 10. In this update, you can tap a pen on any text field, and you’ll be able to input text using the pen. What you write is converted to text via handwriting recognition.

Beyond that are the usual assortment of tweaks, improvements and bug fixes, including fixing an issue where Settings sometimes crashed if the window was too small, and one in which Microsoft Edge sometimes crashed when deleting favorites.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17074.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17063

Release date: December 19, 2017

This is a major build with significant new features. The main one is Timeline, which was supposed to be part of the Fall Creators Update but which Microsoft delayed because it couldn’t get it working properly in time. Timeline is a kind of time machine that lets you see what apps and work you’ve been doing in the past, then jump back to them at the point you left off. It will work across devices, so that if you start work on a desktop PC, when you move to your laptop, you’ll be able resume work without missing a beat. Eventually it will work with iOS and Android devices as well, according to Microsoft.

Timeline works as an extension of Task View, with past tasks shown onscreen in addition to your current ones. You’ll be able to switch among them by clicking on the appropriate thumbnails. You can look at past tasks from the current day or previous days, and move through them all with a scrollbar on the right side of the screen. You can also search for a particular activity. To control how Timeline works, go to the new activity history page in the Settings app. Cortana also works hand in glove with Timeline, recommending activities you can resume using the feature.

Timeline works as an extension of Task View.

All of Timeline’s features aren’t yet enabled. For now, it works with activities done in Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and updated versions of Maps, News, Money, Sports and Weather. It likely works with other apps as well, although not necessarily all of them, and Microsoft hasn’t provided a list of which work with Timeline and which don’t. To use Timeline, click a new Task View icon on the task bar, or else press the Windows logo key + Tab, which is how your normally run Task View.

Developers can customize how their apps work with Timeline, including how the thumbnails work. (For details, see this blog post from Microsoft.)

Microsoft has been busy in this build; there’s more than just Timeline on tap. Also new is Sets, which add tabs to applications as a way for you to have various pieces of information in one place directly in the application itself. For example, if you’re in Excel, you could have a tab for your worksheet, another for a web page that has data you want to copy into the spreadsheet, and so on. Microsoft’s Dona Sakar describes it this way: “The concept behind Sets is to make sure that everything related to your task: relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files and applications, is connected and available to you in one click.”

Sets isn’t being delivered to all Insiders who get this update. Microsoft says it’s being released as a “controlled study,” but doesn’t provide details about how many people will receive it. Also, the name of the feature may change, and the way it works may change as well.

Microsoft Edge also gets improvements. Using Microsoft’s Fluent Design guidelines, it now supports a dark theme and has a variety of other minor user interface changes. Edge also supports the new Service Workers and the Push and Cache APIs Web standards, which let web pages send push notifications to the Action Center and refresh data in the background, even when Edge is closed.

Cortana, meanwhile, has gotten a few changes. The Notebook gets a new look, including a feature called Organizer that easily find your lists and reminders. Cortana now also lets you control Spotify using “natural language” to do things such as playing your weekly Spotify playlist, play specific tracks and more.

Fluent Design is being incorporated into more places throughout the Windows Shell, by applying its acrylic feature to the taskbar, Share UI, Clock & Calendar flyout, Network flyout, Volume flyout, and Input flyout. Acrylic lets developers add physical texture and depth to apps. Fluent Design also has been used to tweak the Settings app.

My People gets a variety of new features, including the ability to drag and drop contacts and rearrange them on the taskbar. You can also now decide how many contacts you want displayed on the taskbar — any number between one and ten. In the Fall Creators Update, you were limited to three.

There have also been a number of other minor changes throughout Windows, including the ability to use Paint 3D on screens you capture with the Snipping Tool. Emoji lovers will be pleased to know they can use the Emoji Panel in more languages. There are new privacy settings as well, notably one that lets you set global options for every privacy-related setting for microphone, camera and location access. That will let you disable apps and Windows from accessing these features on a device.

What IT needs to know: The build also has additions aimed at enterprises. The Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) will be included in Windows 10 Professional when the next version of Redstone ships. Currently, it’s available only in the Windows 10 Enterprise version.

IT will get some new features for optimizing the delivery of Windows 10, including new policies for Group Policy and MDM to let system administrators throttle bandwidth at specific times of the day, as well as being able to “restrict peer selection to the same subnet, automatically join devices into peer groups by using a DHCP server’s User option or the connection’s DNS suffix as well as the ability to increase the usage of peers by delaying the use of the HTTP source,” in Microsoft’s words.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) gets a number of updates, including the ability to run background tasks and run when connected via OpenSSH, VPN, Enter-PSSession and/or other similar Windows remote tools.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17063.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17046

Release date: November 22, 2017

This build includes minor feature changes, primarily improvements to the Windows Shell, including a simpler way to get to advanced options in Settings and an update to the way emojis are handled so that more of them appear when you type words related to them on the touch keyboard. In addition, Microsoft Edge can now save and automatically fill in preferred information in addresses and related forms. There are also many bug fixes, including restoring the Properties dialog for This PC in File Explorer to functionality.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17046.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17040

Release date: November 16, 2017

This minor build includes only a few new features. Additions to Settings include one that lets you adjust the brightness of SDR content on an HDR display. Also new is the ability to use shape-writing input on the wide virtual keyboard. (Shape-writing for the one-handed keyboard was introduced in the Fall Creators Update.) The handwriting panel has also been improved, with a change to the insertion gesture and a new commit gesture. There’s also a long list of bug fixes, including an issue where network profiles had changed from Private to Public after upgrading to the previous build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17040.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17035

Release date: November 8, 2017

This build is the first in Redstone 4 to introduce a variety of new features. There’s a new sharing feature called Near Share, which lets you share URLs and files with nearby PCs via Bluetooth. Both PCs need to have Build 17035 or above, and both the Near Share setting and Bluetooth need to be turned on in both PCs. Microsoft Edge also gets several new features, including the ability to mute tabs playing audio, and new context-menus options for EPUB books. The touch keyboard now uses Microsoft’s Acrylic design standards, and there are also more than 190 new kinds of keyboards, including more languages and keyboard layouts. The handwriting panel can now better recognize words.

Included are also many bug fixes and minor additions, including updating Cortana collections to support light themes, and fixing an issue in which Store download errors were displaying on the Windows Update history page.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17035.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17025

Release date: October 25, 2017

This minor build, an early one in the Redstone 4 release cycle, includes very few new features and changes. Ease of Access settings, such as for the Narrator, which reads onscreen text, have been regrouped and made simpler. Microsoft has also made changes to the Microsoft Yahei font used to display Windows user interface text in the Chinese (Simplified) Language so that it’s easier to read. Beyond that are the usual wide-ranging fixes, including one for not being able to scroll to the very bottom of the Start menu using touch when you are in tablet mode on small devices.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17025.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17017

Release date: October 13, 2017

Because this is an early build in the Redstone 4 release cycle, there aren’t many new features or changes. Cortana gets a few new tricks, including what Microsoft calls Cortana Collections, which are things you’ve already expressed interest in, including restaurants, recipes, things you shop for, movies, TV shows and more. Cortana puts them into organized lists so you can choose any of them easily. The build also simplifies actions taken between Cortana and Action Center. There is also a wide variety of fixes, including an issue where changing time zones made the lock screen clock incorrect until logging out and back in.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17017.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17004

Release date: September 27, 2017

This build is the first one to feature the 17xxx numbering system. Microsoft notes that the jump forward “is what we do normally at the beginning of development of a new feature update for Windows 10.” The build was done while Microsoft was getting the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ready, so there are very few changes or new features. It shows off some of Microsoft’s Fluent Design look-and-feel, including Reveal, a lighting effect which is supposed to “bring depth and focus” to interactive elements. You’ll see it on the Start Menu.

Beyond that, there are a variety of minor improvements and bug fixes, including for one in Microsoft Edge where the tab previews for PDFs were black with a white bar on each side.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17004.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16362

Release date: September 13, 2017

This build, as with the previous one, was created while Microsoft was getting the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update ready, so there are very few changes or new features. Bootup has been changed slightly, so you can see lock-screen customizations, such as whether you get status information from Cortana, before you log in. There have also been the usual miscellaneous bug fixes and minor improvements.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 17362.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16353

Release date: August 31, 2017

This build, the first en route to the Redstone 4 version of Windows 10, is an exceedingly minor one, with no new features. It fixes a very small number of minor bugs, including one in which the taskbar is unexpectedly thick if you booted up the PC while plugged in to an external monitor with a different DPI.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16353.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Redstone 3, version 1709) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16299

Release date: September 26, 2017; updated October 2, 2017

Note: On October 2, Microsoft released an update to 16299, called Insider Preview Build 16299.15, that appears to be the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. From this point on, updates will be made via Cumulative Updates with Windows Update, rather than through the Windows Insider program.

As with all the builds over the last several weeks, 16299 focuses on bug fixes. In this case they’re all minor. They include one in which Microsoft Edge might crash when scrolling embedded PDFs, and another in which some Insiders’ optical drive wouldn’t be listed under This PC after upgrading to a recent build.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16299.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16296

Release date: September 22, 2017

The bug-fix builds are coming fast and furious before the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. As with all the builds over the last several weeks, and all Redstone updates until the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is released, this build focuses on bug fixes. This one is the smallest yet: It has only three very minor fixes.

One takes care of a problem in which Hyper-V couldn’t create a VM on third-party network storage. Another fixes an issue in which for the first few minutes after clean installing a non-English build, many inbox app names might unexpectedly appear with English app names. And the third fixed a problem in which gaming apps using WebView with heavy use of HTML canvas might have unexpectedly had very low frame-per-second (FPS) rates.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16296.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16291

Release date: Sept. 19, 2017

Here’s yet another bug-fix build in preparation for the release to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Note that there’s a serious bug with this build and a previous release, Build 16288.1, in which a Surface Pro 3 becomes essentially “bricked” — it gets stuck on a “spinning dots” screen with no apparent way to get out of it. Microsoft has posted a fairly complex workaround, which the company claims will fix the problem. Microsoft also claims, “We will have a permanent fix with no required workaround steps in our next flighted build that is 16294 or greater.”

As with the last several builds over the last few weeks, and all Redstone updates until the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is released, this build focuses mainly on minor bug fixes. One small new feature has been added: Cortana users can now resume articles [and] news from their iPhones and Android phones to their PCs from within the Cortana app.

Aside from that, there are very few bug fixes, including one in which Microsoft Edge crashes if you add a Favorite to a Favorites folder and then immediately sort that folder by name.

What IT needs to know: Given the serious issue with this build on Surface Pro 3 devices, you may want to skip installing it and wait for Build 16294 or later.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 162891.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16288

Release date: Sept. 12, 2017

Here’s yet another small, incremental build in preparation for the release to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. As with the last several builds and all Redstone updates until the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is released, this build only has minor bug fixes, with no new features introduced. You may notice that the usual watermark in the lower-right-hand corner of the desktop has vanished. That usually indicates a build is a final one. But don’t be fooled: In this case it isn’t.

Microsoft notes: “This is NOT the final build as we’re not done yet. We’re just now beginning the phase of checking in final code to prepare for the final release. So we will have more builds to release to Windows Insiders between now and then. And the desktop watermark may re-appear in these builds.”

The fixes include a variety of improvements to Edge, including an issue where the tab preview for PDFs was just black with two white stripes, and another in which website tooltips could end up displaying behind the Microsoft Edge window after opening a link in new tab in the background. A variety of other minor changes were made to input, the Windows shell, gaming, devices, and a host of other unrelated ones.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16288.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16281

Release date: Sept. 1, 2017

Here’s one more minor build en route to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. As with the last several builds – and all Redstone updates until the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is released – this build focuses only on bug fixes, with no new features introduced. Those bug fixes are all minor, including one in which the Train Simulator 2017 game wouldn’t launch and another in which you couldn’t use your mouse because of sudden, brief CPU spikes.

 (Get more info about Insider Preview Build 162781.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16278

Release date: Aug. 29, 2017

Microsoft is accelerating its sprint to release the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update — this newest build is the third in less than a week. As with the previous builds in the last week, and with all Redstone updates until the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, this build is all about, and only about, bug fixes. The fixes in this build are all relatively minor, such as one in which Microsoft Edge crashed after you pinned certain websites to Start, and another in which the battery flyout sometimes incorrectly displayed “PC not charging” while the device was, in fact, charging.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16278.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16275

Release date: Aug. 25, 2017

The pace of updates is being picked up, with some coming as soon as two days after another. As with all Redstone 3 updates from now until the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is released, this build focuses on bug fixes. No new features are in it.

There are no major fixes, either, only very minor ones, including taking care of an issue that caused minimized per-monitor DPI-aware windows to miss DPI changes and end up with a mix of DPI scaling upon restoring. Also fixed was an issue that caused in the taskbar to be unexpectedly thick if you booted up the PC while plugged in to an external monitor with a different DPI.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16275.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16273

Release date: Aug. 23, 2017

With this build, Microsoft starts to make a sprint toward releasing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The builds have been branched into their own “fork,” called RS3_RELEASE — the exact same thing Microsoft did when it began to get close to releasing the Windows 10 Creators Update, when it branched into RS2_RELEASE.

Dona Sarkar, software engineer with Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, explains, “We are now at the point of the development cycle for the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update where our focus is now on stabilization for release to the world. This means that we intend to release these builds to Insiders more quickly to both the Fast and Slow rings as these builds [will] include mostly bug fixes.”

So don’t expect many feature changes, and expect those that are released to be minor. This build shows that. It has a new font called Bahnschrift, but apart from that, it’s mainly bug fixes, including one in which the Action Center icon showed it had a number of notifications that weren’t really there. Quite a few bugs were squashed in the Edge browser, including one in which some websites did not render correctly in inPrivate mode.

What IT should know: If you want to get a peek at what the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update will look like, this is a good build to try, although of course it can be buggy. Also see our story “Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: 9 key enterprise features.”

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16273.)

Install Windows S: In other Redstone news, you can now install a preview version of Windows S, Microsoft’s stripped-down version of Windows. To do it, download the setup tool — but you should check out the information at the following links before installing:

• Windows 10 S FAQ
• Supported Devices and Drivers
• Installing Office
• Office on Windows 10 S FAQ

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16237

Release date: July 7, 2017

This build makes a variety of miscellaneous changes throughout Windows, including Microsoft Edge, the Windows shell, gaming, the Task Manager, and improvements to input. Microsoft Edge gets a read-aloud feature, which will read the contents of a web page. It can also read PDFs out loud. Edge also gets a variety of bug fixes and very minor interface tweaks.

In the Windows shell, you no longer have to log out and back into Windows to fix the problem of blurry desktop applications after docking, undocking or using remote access. In addition, the Action Center gets a variety of small improvements. Notification buttons now span the entire bottom of the notification, instead of being justified to the right. You can also expand the first notification in each notification group in the Action Center, so you can easily eyeball emails, snooze reminders, and accomplish other tasks without having to individually expand every notification.

As for input improvements, Microsoft continues its devotion to emojis by supporting Emoji 5.0. You can also hover your mouse over any emoji in the Emoji Panel and see its exact Unicode character name. The touch keyboard gets minor fixes, notably several that make it more accurate.

In this build, Microsoft updates the Task Manager yet again, this time with very minor changes to the layout of the new GPU performance tracker introduced in Build 16226. More Task Manager changes are on the way in future builds.

There have also been the usual bug fixes and exceedingly minor changes, including correcting a bug that sometimes caused the Network & Internet Status Settings page to indicate that a network was public even though it had been set to be private in the Control Panel.

What IT needs to know: IT staff who like to participate in the regular Bug Bashes that Microsoft holds will be pleased to know that the next one will start at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, July 14th and end a little over a week later at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Sunday, July 23rd.

This build offers the first hands-on look at some of the new end-to-end security features to be officially released in the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, and so is well worth examining. To get a fuller picture of the security changes in store, go to “Announcing end-to-end security features in Windows 10” on Microsoft’s Windows 10 blog.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16237.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16232

Release date: June 28, 2017

This build is all about security, and includes a host of new features designed to harden Windows against attack. Many of them were previously announced by Microsoft in a blog post outlining the new security features it will build into Windows 10 in the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

Windows Defender Application Guard, which integrates with the Microsoft Edge browser to protect against online malicious attacks and malware, has been updated so that favorites, cookies and saved passwords will be carried across Application Guard sessions.

With this build, you can also audit, configure and manage Windows system and application exploit mitigation settings from inside Windows Defender Security Center. Expect there to be potential issues with this right now; as Microsoft warns, “remember that Exploit Protection is a work-in-progress and might not be fully functional just yet.”

The build also has a new feature called “Controlled folder access” in Windows Defender, which protects data against attacks, including ransomware. This feature monitors changes that applications make to files in protected folders. When an application tries to make a change to the files, and the application has been blacklisted by the feature, you’ll get a notification about the attempt, and the files won’t be allowed to be modified.

In addition to the security changes, there are a variety of bug fixes in this build, including one that caused Word 2016 to crash if you attempted to ink in it, and one where auto-complete in the URL bar of Microsoft Edge failed on some devices.

What IT needs to know: This build offers the first hands-on look at some of the new end-to-end security features to be officially released in the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, and so is well worth examining. To get a fuller picture of more security changes in store, go to “Announcing end-to-end security features in Windows 10” in Microsoft’s Windows blog.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16232.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16226

Release date: June 21, 2017

This build offers a variety of changes throughout Windows, particularly in Microsoft Edge. You can now more easily close tabs in Edge, because the X for closing them is always available, even if a JavaScript dialog such as an alert is showing. There are also a host of changes to Edge’s EPUB reader, including better integration with Cortana so that you can, for example, do research while reading an EPUB book. If you have a touch device, you can write notes in a book. The build also tweaks Edge’s Favorites feature in several ways, including letting you view favorites as a directory tree.

Emoji fans will be pleased to see that the build support the latest Unicode updates, including new snacks, actions, dinosaurs and fantasy characters like genies, fairies and zombies. All are accessible from the touch keyboard and Emoji Panel.

The touch keyboard now supports “shape writing” for more languages. In shape writing, you can swipe your fingers across letters instead of tapping them, which makes for faster text input. The keyboard also adds text predictions for more languages.

Those who use Task Manager to track the performance of their PC get a new feature to obsess over: It tracks your GPU use. Find it on the Performance tab, where you’ll see GPU utilization information for each GPU component (such as 3D and Video encode/decode) and graphics memory usage statistics. If you head over to the Details tab, you’ll see GPU utilization information for each process. (Note: Microsoft warns that this feature might be buggy, so expect some problems with it.)

The overall Windows shell gets a few tweaks, including the ability to share a file in File Explorer via the right-click context menu. Beyond that, there are small tweaks in the Calculator, Settings, ease of access and other places. There is also a long list of bug fixes, including for one that prevented PDFs from opening in Microsoft Edge on some devices with enterprise configurations.

What IT needs to know: IT admins can now configure Edge favorites by using group policy and mobile device management, including defining and locking preconfigured favorites in addition to the user’s favorites.

For security reasons, Microsoft is continuing its several-year process of removing the SMB1 networking protocol from Windows by default, in order to reduce the “attack surface” of Windows 10. All Enterprise and Education editions now have SMB1 uninstalled by default. In Home and Professional editions, though, only the SMB1 server component is uninstalled by default, but the SMB1 client remains installed. Note that the removal of SMB1 means the legacy Computer Browser service is being removed as well, because it cannot function without SMB1.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16226.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16215

Release date: June 8, 2017

Addendum: As of June 13, a new feature called OneDrive Files On-Demand is being made available to Windows Insiders in the Fast Ring who are on Build 16215. With Files On-Demand, OneDrive users can see and access all of their files in the cloud, even if those files aren’t on their local computers. The online files can be opened in the same way as any local file, by using desktop applications, Windows Store apps or File Explorer.  

OneDrive Files On-Demand is being rolled out in waves over several days to Windows Insiders in the Fast Ring who are on Build 16215. It can also be downloaded and installed from Microsoft.

June 8 release: This build offers many minor changes throughout Windows. It shows off a new user interface for the Start menu and the Action Center, which use some elements of Microsoft’s new Fluent Design System, a design language which the company announced at its Build 2017 event in May. The Start menu can now be resized diagonally, and it’s easier to resize it because you can more easily “grip” the edge of the frame. The Action Center’s new interface separates information more clearly and better differentiates categories of information.

Microsoft Edge has received minor improvements. Favorite websites can be pinned to the taskbar, e-books can be annotated in Microsoft Edge, and PDFs get more highlight colors. Cortana has received small improvements as well, including the ability to use your computer’s camera to perform actions such as taking a picture of a flier for an upcoming event and creating a reminder based on it.

In addition, improvements to the touchscreen handwriting recognition feature make it easier to write longer pieces of text and correct handwritten mistakes within the handwriting panel. And anyone who has ever misplaced a pen for their touchscreen will welcome the new Find my Pen feature, which shows you where you were the last time you used it on your computer.

It’s also now easier to enter emoji on your keyboard. And a new touch keyboard was introduced on the Desktop, which offers improved text prediction and a new settings menu.

The Windows shell has seen new work as well, including making it easier to share links in the Share user interface. Settings gets several deeper features, notably new video playback settings and a new context menu for Wi-Fi networks.

A host of other overall improvements focus on Narrator, the Gaming bar, ease of access, and fonts. There are also the usual assortment of minor changes, improvements and fixes to bugs, such as Microsoft Edge crashing when enabling or disabling extensions.

What IT needs to know: This build improves the ability of Task Manager to accurately show resource attribution, resource management, and fault tolerance. You can now run Bash on Windows without having to use Developer Mode. And when you’re using Hyper-V, you can now see your machine’s battery status.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16215.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16199

Release date: May 17, 2017

This minor build includes several new features for the My People app. You can pin your favorite contacts to the taskbar and see emoji from your pinned contacts. Pinned contacts also display counters for messages you haven’t yet read from them. And you can now share files with contacts by dragging and dropping files onto pinned contacts, which creates an email message to the contact with the file attached.

The build also includes several minor changes to settings, notably the addition of a health section that pulls information from the Windows Defender Security Center, making it easier to see the overall health of your PC in a quick glance.

Beyond that are the usual assortment of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes, such as Windows Defender Security Center not flagging disabled drivers as issues.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16199.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16193

Release date: May 11, 2017

The big news in this build is the release of Story Remix, a major upgrade for the Windows 10 Photos app. It lets you mix together photos, videos, music, transitions, inking and 3D objects to create “stories” — essentially, screen shows on steroids. It does more than that, though: It also will create these stories itself, at your bidding. So, for example, you can click the Remix button for a collection of photos or videos, and Remix will put together a suitable soundtrack, transitions, and so on. You can then edit what Remix has done.

Story Remix uses what Microsoft says is “deep learning and AI” to tag people, places and things, so they’re easier to find via search.

Beyond that, this release offers the usual assortment of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes, such as making the Settings app more stable so it doesn’t crash when navigating to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16193.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16188

Release date: May 4, 2017

This build features several improvements for Microsoft Edge’s PDF reader. The reader now lets you fill in PDF forms and annotate PDFs. The app’s navigation has also been improved, and you can also finally rotate PDFs.

Edge also gets a security improvement: The Windows Defender Application Guard, which offers increased protection against malware and Zero Day attacks. There’s also a related change that anyone who has ever been confused about Cortana’s settings will be pleased to see: Cortana settings are now available in the Settings app, rather than separately.

This build also includes a variety of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16188.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16184

Release date: April 28, 2017

This build introduces a new feature called My People that Microsoft promised was on the way last October, but that was delayed until after the Creators Update. My People is a social app that lets you pin your favorite people to the taskbar, and makes it easy to contact them in a variety of ways, including the ability to share files and photos, chat, and include emojis. The app remembers the way you’ve shared with each person previously and uses that method each time afterwards, unless you decide to change it.

There are also a variety of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes for the OS, including the ability to disable the Night Light feature (which reduces the amount of blue light produced by your display).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16184.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16179

Release date: April 19, 2017

This early build has few changes in it. A new feature introduces automatic checkpoints to Hyper-V for developers so that they can easily undo mistakes by being able to always revert to the last time they started a virtual machine. Power throttling, which can save up to 11% in CPU power consumption, has been turned on. There are also a variety of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16179.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16176

Release date: April 14, 2017

Because this is an extremely early build of the next upgrade to Windows, there are no noticeable new features. Microsoft has mainly worked on OneCore, which is the heart of the operating system that works not just on the PC version of Windows 10, but also on Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Server, Xbox 10, Windows 10 IoT and the HoloLens operating system. There are some very minor changes and bug fixes. The Narrator, which had been broken in the build 16170, now works, for example.

(Get more info about Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16176.)

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16170

Release date: April 7, 2017

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Even before the official rollout of Windows Creators Update, Microsoft released the first preview build update for the next upgrade to Windows 10, due out by the end of the year.

Given that it’s the earliest public build of the next upgrade, there’s very little new here, only the most minor of bug fixes, such as an update to the share icon in File Explorer. However, there are a number of known issues with the build. Narrator doesn’t work in it, for example, and some apps and games may crash. So if you decide to try it, proceed with caution.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 16170.)

Preview builds for the Windows 10 Creators Update (Redstone 2, version 1703) Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15063

Release date: March 20, 2017

This build offers only two minor changes and bug fixes: one in which Edge would become unresponsive and another that affected language packs.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15061

Release date: March 17, 2017

This build offers only a few minor changes and bug fixes, including one in which some VPN connections don’t show up in Network Connections.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15060

Release date: March 16, 2017

This build offers only a few minor changes and bug fixes, including one in which Microsoft Edge would not launch several minutes after it crashed.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15058

Release date: March 14, 2017

This build offers a few minor changes and bug fixes, including one that caused some Windows apps such as the Windows Store to fail to launch, and one in which people could not get to the Wi-Fi settings page.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15055

Release date: March 10, 2017

This build offers only minor changes and bug fixes. There are 10 fixes for Microsoft Edge, including one for circumstances in which touchpad and keyboard input periodically stops working for a few seconds at a time when using an Edge window.

For the first time, the Windows version number displayed is 1703, which likely indicates the next update to Windows — called Creator’s Update — is close to final. The version number usually indicates when the final build will be compiled, which in the case of “1703” would mean March 2017. If that’s the case here, it would mean that the Creator’s Update would likely be compiled some time this month.

It has been reported that the official availability date of the Creators Update will be April 11. Not uncommonly, it takes several weeks between when an update is compiled and when it’s generally available to the public, so the time frame seems right.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15048

Release date: March 3, 2017

This build offers only very minor changes and fixes for bugs such as: LastPass password manager extension for Microsoft Edge sometimes failed to show autofill buttons; the mouse wheel would not work properly; some games minimized to the taskbar as soon as they were launched.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15046

Release date: Feb. 28, 2017

This build offers a variety of minor changes that will be released to the general public in the Creators Update, which is expected in April. Windows Defender Security Center has several modifications, including the addition of an icon in the notification area so you can easily see your protection status. Cortana now displays apps, files and websites that appeared in Microsoft Edge when you last used it. There are also a variety of small changes, improvements and bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15042

Release date: Feb. 24, 2017

This minor build offers new animation for Cortana, a new animation for the Edge URL bar which shows when Flash content is being blocked, and a few minor improvements to Edge’s ebook-reading capabilities. There are also various small changes, improvements and bug fixes.

Note: This build only works with PCs running 64-bit versions of Windows, not 32-bit versions.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031

Release date: Feb. 8, 2017

The main feature of this minor build is the introduction of the Compact Overlay window feature, which lets developers write apps that display in a thumbnail above other windows so they’re always visible — for example, for watching a video. The Windows 10 Movies & TV app and Skype Preview app will eventually make use of it. There’s also a new Share icon, and a variety of minor bug fixes and changes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15025

Release date: Feb. 1, 2017

The main new feature in this minor build is braille support for the Narrator screen reader. There are also several small improvements and bug fixes. The build is aimed primarily at the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update and is the primary build for the second Windows 10 Creator’s Update Bug Bash, during which users and developers identify as many bugs as possible; it started on Feb. 3 and will end on Feb. 11.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15019

Release date: Jan. 27, 2017

This minor build focuses in large part on adding features to Xbox gaming. Included is the ability to broadcast your gaming play by streaming it over the internet, as well as a new Game Mode that optimizes your PC for gaming. Scott Henson, Xbox Partner Group Program Manager, has provided a list of all new gaming features on his blog. Even though this build is, to a great extent, targeted at gamers, Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group, noted in the announcement that, “This build does have some platform-related bugs that will impact the ability to play popular games on your PC.”

There are a variety of other minor changes, such as giving Microsoft Edge the ability to read e-books aloud, and being able to stop app and game download progress in the Action Center. There are also several small improvements and bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15014

Release date: Jan. 19, 2017

This build adds a handful of minor new features, and fixes a variety of bugs, many of which have been pointed out by users in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub. With it, you can now buy e-books from the Windows Store and read them in Microsoft Edge. There’s also a new custom color option in the Color settings, the Wi-Fi settings have been simplified, and there is a new Storage setting for letting you automatically delete files you don’t need any longer.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15007

Release date: Jan. 12, 2017

This minor build focuses on several small improvements to the Edge browser. You can now share tabs with other apps on your PC; you can also more easily import favorites, browsing history and passwords from other browsers. Microsoft has updated the web notes feature so it uses Windows Ink, among other features.

There are also non-Edge improvements; for example, when you switch from one PC to another, Cortana will display (in the Action Center) links to the Edge websites and the SharePoint or OneDrive documents you most recently used on the original PC. There are several other small changes and a variety of bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002

Release date: Jan. 9, 2017

This build makes a fair number of changes to the Edge browser and adds a few tweaks to the overall interface.

Edge now features a useful tab preview bar that pops up at the top of the screen when you click a small down arrow to the right of the + next to your tabs. You can then scroll through the tab preview bar by clicking an arrow on its right side, or by using a mousewheel, touchpad, or swiping on a touch screen.

Edge also gets two new buttons for managing tabs: one of them closes all your tabs; the other one thumbnails the tabs you’ve closed and lets you restore them all, or each individually. Edge also blocks untrusted Flash content and gives you the choice of whether you play it or not. The Microsoft Edge changelog lists all the changes to Edge.

People who are fans of the Start menu will welcome a new feature that lets you group Start tiles into folders. This build also addresses a complaint that some people have had about windows resizing not being smooth enough — according to Microsoft, it’s now smoother on both desktop applications and Windows apps.

The build also includes minor improvements to Windows Ink, Cortana, Windows Defender, accessibility features and the Settings app. And, as always, there are a variety of bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14986

Release date: Dec. 7

This build focuses on several system changes, including improvements to Cortana. By speaking to Cortana, you can now turn off, restart, lock, or put your PC to sleep, and raise and lower your system volume. You can also control the iHeartRadio and TuneIn Radio music apps using voice commands.

Windows Ink has gotten some new features — for example, it’s more difficult to accidentally delete sketches. There are several new Microsoft Edge extensions, including for the Ebates cash-back service. There are lesser improvements, such as the addition of a Windows Defender dashboard and improvements to Narrator. And, as always, there are a variety of bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14971

Release date: Nov.17

This minor build adds several minor features. You can now read unprotected e-books in the EPUB file format with Microsoft Edge. The Paint 3D Preview app is included as part of Windows for the first time — previously it was a separate download. PowerShell becomes the default command line for Windows. There are also a variety of minor bug fixes, such as improving the reliability of the protractor and inking in Sketchpad, and fixing an issue with the Magnifier’s keyboard shortcuts.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14965

Release date: Nov. 9

This minor build adds minor features. The Sticky Notes app has been updated to include more languages, improved text input while typing and a few bug fixes. Windows Ink Workspace gets some minor improvements, including an upgraded protractor and faster loading of Sketchpad. It’s also now easier to connect to an external monitor from a tablet —  you can do it from the virtual touchpad instead of a mouse. There are also the usual host of bug fixes and small improvements, including one that stops Internet Explorer from crashing right after loading.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14955

Release date: Nov. 3

This minor build is the first to use a new Microsoft platform for publishing updates, called the Unified Update Platform (UUP), although only the mobile build is delivered with UUP — it will still be a while before PC updates will be delivered using it. Microsoft says that UUP will lead to smaller update download sizes — 35% smaller from one major update to another. Aside from that, build 14959 can support an app that runs on just-announced Microsoft hardware, including the Surface Studio: Paint 3D Preview, which adds 3D modelling tools to Microsoft Paint. (The app isn’t in the new build; it has to be downloaded separately.)

The build also includes a variety of bug fixes and small improvements, such as better controlling of scaling of virtual machines in Hyper-V Virtual Machines, and squashing a bug related to Windows’ automatic brightness setting.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14955

Release date: Oct. 25

This minor build includes updates to Windows’ built-in Mail and Calendar apps. You can now open mail messages in a new window. You can also use @mentions: When you type the @ symbol in the body of an email and follow it with your contact’s name, Windows pulls the contact’s email address from your contact list and adds it to the To: field. The build also includes a variety of fixes. For example, it fixes a bug which wouldn’t allow people to sign into some apps — such as MSN News and Groove — with their Microsoft account.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14951

Release date: Oct. 19

This minor build adds new features for users who have a precision touchpad. It allows you to record your favorite keyboard combinations and assign them to gestures; you can also change the audio volume with a gesture. Windows Ink gets some improvements as well, including the addition of stencils and the ability to use Windows Ink in the Photos app. The camera interface has been simplified and there are a variety of bug fixes and minor improvements.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14946

Release date: Oct. 13

This minor build lets you customize how your touchpad works, notably by letting you customize three- and four-finger gestures and taps. To do it, go to Settings > Devices > Touchpad and look for the “Other gestures” section. The Wi-Fi settings page has been redesigned, and includes a new setting that lets you have a turned-off Wi-Fi turn back on automatically after a certain amount of time elapses. The build also includes a variety of bug fixes.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14942

Release date: Oct. 7

This minor build updates the Photos app, including a horizontal bar that makes it easier to navigate and view photos. The build also lets you collapse the app list on the Start menu by going to Settings > Personalization > Start and turning on “Hide app list in Start menu.” Windows Update gets a new icon. There are also a variety of bug fixes and minor improvements.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14936

Release date: Sept. 28

This minor build adds several new extensions to Microsoft Edge, including the Microsoft Personal Shopping Assistant, which lets you save products from several web sites in one location, along with price alerts and comparison shopping. Also new is the Turn off the Lights extension that lets you turn a web page black around a video you’re watching, so you can more easily focus on the video. The build also includes a variety of bug fixes for problems such as Explorer.exe crashing frequently.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14931

Release date: Sept. 21

This minor build focuses mainly on small bug fixes. In addition, you can now track traffic in the Maps app by tapping the traffic icon in the app bar. You can also send SMS and MMS messages using Skype on a Windows 10 PC if you have a Windows 10 phone with Skype and Skype is set as the default messaging app.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14926

Release date: Sept. 14

This minor build adds a “Snooze” feature to Edge so that you can set Cortana reminders on pages you’re viewing. The Cortana reminder appears as a notification and in Action Center, which lets you open that site in Edge. This is helpful for people who keep tabs open as a way to remind them to do something on a site.

Insiders will appreciate another change: If you’ve uninstalled an app, that app won’t be reinstalled when you upgrade to the newest Preview build. So, for example, if you uninstall the Amazon Kindle app, it won’t be re-installed when you go to a new Preview build.

There are also a number of bug fixes in the build as well.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14915

Release date: Aug. 31

This minor build has only one new feature: It enables Windows Insiders to download their Insider preview builds, OS updates and app updates from other PCs on their network and from PCs on the internet. This should lead to faster downloads and updates. It needs the Windows Update Delivery Optimization feature to be turned on (it’s turned on by default). If you want, you can turn off the feature entirely and just download your updates the usual way, straight from Microsoft.

There are also a variety of bug fixes — for example, to make the power button on the Start menu work and to correct an issue that had turned off Cortana’s text-to-speech capabilities.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14901

Release date: Aug. 11

This first public preview build of Redstone 2 included no new significant features; instead, it focused on Windows 10’s plumbing. An announcement about the preview build on Microsoft’s Insider Hub (accessible only to those who are running Windows 10) noted that in the first Redstone 2 build, “You won’t see any big noticeable changes or new features just yet…we are focusing on making some structural improvements to OneCore.”

OneCore, the announcement went on to note, “is the shared core of Windows across PC, tablet, phone, IoT, Hololens and Xbox. It is essentially the heart of Windows.”

The announcement warned that the build might be buggy.

Slack AI customers can now interact with AI “agents” in other apps, including Asana, Box and Anthropic’s Claude. 

The AI agents, accessible via a new chatbot interface in Slack, let users perform a range of actions in the integrated app, Slack said Monday. 

[ Related: Dreamforce 2024 and Salesforce coverage ]

With the Asana agent, for instance, Slack users can “surface project insights and recommendations, such as status, blockers, next steps, and more,” parent company Salesforce said in a statement. The Adobe Express agent lets users create content such as graphics for social media posts from a prompt without leaving Slack. 

Other agents coming to Slack include Amazon Q Business, Cohere, Perplexity, and Writer.

Users can access the third-party agents via the Slack Marketplace or  create their own agent with “purpose-built APIs,” Slack said. 

A chatbot interface connects with parent company Salesforce’s CRM software. This involves access to Salesforce’s own Agentforce AI assistant, which has been rebranded from Einstein Copilot. From within Slack, the Agentforce AI can provide an update on the status of sales opportunities and cases, recommend next steps, draft emails, and more. 

Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot has been rebranded Agentforce AI assistant.

Salesforce

Agentforce in Slack is slated to be available in beta next month. 

Other updates to Slack AI — the company’s paid AI service — include note taking in huddles voice and video calls. Here, the transcript of a huddle conversation is used to create a canvas document (Slack’s document editor tool) containing related information such as a meeting summary, action items, and links to relevant files. 

In Slack’s Workflow Builder, users can direct the AI assistant to generate a workflow automation using natural language prompts. 

The Slack AI search function gets an update, too; users can now surface results based on files uploaded or connected to a Slack workspace. Until now, Slack could only search conversations in the app; now the tool can retrieve information from sources such as canvas documents, Google and Microsoft documents, and files in connected apps, Slack said. 

Aside from AI-related features, Slack introduced new templates that can provide a starting point to help users begin a new project. A template for a marketing team could create a Slack channel with a standardized brief in a canvas document, a project plan in a Slack list, and an automated workflow for weekly status updates, the company said. 

Templates will be available in October.

Finally, Salesforce channels — available now to Slack Sales Elevate customers and later to Salesforce Starter Suite customers — are a new type of channel that connects Salesforce CRM records to conversations in a Slack workspace, enabling users to update CRM data without switching screens.

Along with iOS 18, Apple today is releasing macOS Sequoia, iPadOS 18, and the latest update to watchOS. (Apple Intelligence, which isn’t expected to begin to appear until next month, has gotten a lot of attention, but the pre-AI versions of these operating systems offer plenty of useful features and updates.)

Focusing today on macOS Sequoia, should you upgrade immediately? That depends. 

There are good things to tempt you, but you might need to wait — particularly if third-party services or applications you use (especially higher-end apps) don’t yet support the new OS.

If Apple Intelligence is the thing you’re most interested in, there’s no need to rush, since those tools won’t available until October in some countries, and next year in others. Global launch (including in Europe) will follow. Apple will also let Mac admins manage access to the service.

So, what’s Sequoia got to make you swoon if you ignore Apple Intelligence?

iOS, Mac, and iPhone: S.W.A.L.K.

What may turn out to be one of the most useful productivity-enhancing features in Sequoia is the increased integration between the Mac and iPhone. While EU customers won’t get this feature yet, iPhone Mirroring lets you use your iPhone on your Mac in a compact mini window. This lets you interact with iPhone apps via your Mac, and also lets you drag-&-drop files between the devices (though, that feature won’t debut until later this year). I think this could get really interesting if you use an iPad and a second Mac, too, as the implication is that you’ll be able to move files and folders around between the machines to your heart’s content in a quite focused way.

A second integration means notifications received on your iPhone can also appear on your Mac. 

Manage busy desktops

Dragging a window to the edge of the screen will automatically place that window in a tile in the main window. This works across multiple windows, making it much easier to parse information from numerous websites and applications in one clear to the eye view. You can shift windows around, if you like.

Apple Solving the eternal presentation headache

If you use Webex, Zoom, or even FaceTime, Sequoia will show you a view of what will be made visible to other meeting attendees when they share their screen before they actually share it. If you’ve ever unexpectedly needed to share a document during a meeting while other confidential items are open on your Mac, you’ll recognize what a small but handy improvement this is.

Even experienced Zoom hosts can’t help but exhale a little when they share their screen, as this is never quite as certain as you need for comfort. Now, it is.

Safari redesigned to get web clutter out of your way

Safari is smarter than before. You’ll be able to read page summaries or gather together links at the touch of a button. Reader view has been improved with a variety of features, including auto-generated table of contents to make navigating complex pages much easier. If a page features video, Safari will either open the clip in a big window or pop it inside a smaller pop-up window if you decide to navigate to another site while leaving the original site window open.

Finally, Safari will let you hide distracting items such as subscription pop-ups from view when you visit a site. 

Notes, Reminders, and Calendar

Just as on the iPhone, Mac users can expect audio transcription and summarization features in Notes when Apple Intelligence appears. The app has also become more capable, with collapsible section headers and different text and highlight colors. Finally, if you record a call taken on your iPhone, a transcript will be created that can also sync with Notes on your Mac.

Calendar and Reminders work more smoothly now, with Reminder tasks showing up in Calendar and a Month view that lets you see both Calendar and Reminder entries at a glance.

Apple

The Password application

Apple’s all-new Password application is a new skin on Keychain, making the information — passwords, passkeys, Wi-Fi passwords — much more accessible and usable than before. The app uses iCloud to sync across all your logged-in Apple devices (and Windows hardware using the iCloud for Windows application).

Better collaboration tools

Freeform remains a really useful collaborative space where teams can work on ideas together from whatever Apple device they happen to use. On the Mac, the latest iteration includes a new diagramming mode to connect different objects and usability improvements when moving around a large board using a mouse.

Some Siri intelligence

Kick the system around and you’ll find a new accessibility tool that lets you make custom voice commands to invoke Shortcuts. You might use this to set up a tool that lets you ask Siri to create a PDF from what you are reading on a Mac, for example. You can find these options in System Settings>Accessibility>Vocal Shortcuts.

Smaller, useful tweaks

A handful of additional system tweaks wipe old annoyances away. You can schedule when messages are sent, for example. Another change allows you to install larger applications (more than 1GB) on external drives, subject to some restrictions. You also won’t need to have double the amount of space for an app on your drive to install it. 

In addition:

• An updated Calculator application lets you see mathematical expressions and previous calculations, and integrates with Notes to create what Apple calls Math Notes. The latter is essentially a way to do algebraic equations on your Mac. 
• There’s a new Keep Downloaded option that will ensure a local copy of a file is kept on your Mac rather than being stored in iCloud.

One more thing? 

Apple has shipped a Chess application with Macs for decades. Yet the last time this got updated was with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther — 20 years ago. The historically important game, probably included in the Mac because Steve Jobs liked Chess so much, clearly isn’t on Apple’s speedy upgrade cycle. In Sequoia, it finally gets a makeover with new graphics, though sadly without a 3D or Kriegspiel mode.

Which Macs does macOS Sequoia work with?

If you ignore Apple Intelligence, the new Mac operating system is compatible with the following devices:

• MacBook Pro (2018 and later).
• MacBook Air (2020 and later). 
• Mac mini (2018 and later).
• iMac (2019 and later). 
• iMac Pro (2017 and later). 
• Mac Pro (2019 and later). 
• Mac Studio (2022 and later).

The problem is that not all of the above devices support Apple Intelligence. To use Apple Intelligence, you need to be working with a Mac running an M1 or later Apple Silicon chip. No Intel Macs will run Apple Intelligence.

Finally, on security — once macOS Sequoia is available, it will be the only version to receive full security updates in the next 12 months. The two most recent versions (Sonoma and Ventura) will get some updates, but Monterey and earlier versions will get none. This means that if you rely on Macs, it’s worth ensuring you know which machines you run, what version of the OS they use, and what data they have access to.

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

Microsoft has added a new collaborative document tool to the Microsoft 365 Copilot chatbot that lets users store and share information created by the generative AI (genAI) assistant. It’s one of several M365 Copilot features announced Monday, including new Copilot features in apps such as Teams, Outlook, and Excel. 

Microsoft describes Copilot Pages as a “dynamic, persistent canvas” accessible within Copilot’s Business Chat conversational interace.

With Pages, users can paste Copilot responses into a collaborative document that can be accessed and edited by coworkers. The document can be shared as a link or embedded in another M365 document as a Loop component. 

“Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others,” said Jared Spataro, Microsoft corporate vice president. “You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page.”

Copilot Pages will be available later this month for M365 Copilot customers and via the free-to-use Copilot, provided users are signed in with a Microsoft Entra account — Microsoft’s identity and access management system. 

Microsoft also announced updates to Copilot in various M365 apps, including the general availability of the M365 Copilot in Excel; it had been in beta since the M365 Copilot launch last November. Updates in Excel include the ability for the assistant to access data that hasn’t been formatted in a table; support for additional formulas, such as XLOOKUP and SUMIF; and the ability to work with text as well as numerical data. 

It’s also possible to perform data analysis using Python in Copilot (a feature now in public preview).   

“Now, anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data — all using natural language, no coding required. It’s like adding a skilled data analyst to the team,” said Spataro. 

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Copilot in Outlook can now help users prioritize emails.

Microsoft

In Outlook, the “Prioritize my inbox” feature highlights emails the Copilot considers to be of interest to a user, along with a summary of the email’s content. Users will be able to tell the Copilot which topics, people, and keywords are most important to them when the feature is available in public preview later this year. 

In PowerPoint, a Copilot update lets users create presentations with an organization’s branded template andpull approved images stored in SharePoint Organization Asset Library. 

A new feature coming to the Teams Copilot later this month allows the genAI assistant to provide information on meetings based on both video and text conversations, while Copilot in Word can now add in data kept in emails and meetings (in addition to searching web data and files such as Word and PDFs). For Copilot in OneDrive, users will be able to ask the AI assistant to compare up to five documents when the feature launches later this month.

Finally, Microsoft has announced general availability of Copilot agents, which lets users customize the tool to automatically carry out business processes. 

Despite significant business interest in the possibilities of Copilot, many Microsoft 365 customers have yet to deploy the assistant widely across their organizations. A combination of data security concerns related to its use internally, as well as questions over the value it provides and the significant change management efforts required to implement the technology successfully, are all factors in the rollout pace.

The latest announcements improve the Copilot experience within apps such as Excel and PowerPoint and enhance the usefulness of the AI assistant, said Jason Wong, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner.

He also pointed to the addition of Copilot Pages and the Team Copilot announced in May, both of which open the AI assistant to collaborative uses in addition to individual productivity. Copilot agents can provide “role-based and domain specific knowledge to be accessed through Copilot,” he said. 

“Some Gartner clients are inquiring about Copilot Studio and how to extend generative AI to curated knowledge bases, but most are looking for something even simpler like the Copilot in SharePoint experience, which is currently in preview,” said Wong.  

“However, it remains to be seen if all these new capabilities can drive the sticky adoption that Microsoft wants, since there’s already a lot of change fatigue in the workforce brought on by new generative AI features from many vendors and products.”

Apple’s latest iPhones support a new breed of Apple AI called Apple Intelligence, a collection of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that will be made available across the company’s platforms starting in October with the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Apple Intelligence supplements Apple’s existing machine-learning tools and relies on generative AI (genAI) technology similar to that used by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apple’s version to a great extent runs on its own self-trained genAI models, which are built to be integrated across platforms, capable of using a user’s personal information, and private by the design.

Announced at this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June, Apple Intelligence is designed “to make your most personal products even more useful and delightful.” (That’s how Apple CEO Tim Cook described it.)

Essentially, the company has moved to build an AI ecosystem that is personal, private, and powerful, what Apple calls “AI for the rest of us.”

Here’s a look at what’s coming and how Apple got to this point.

Why Apple Intelligence matters

Apple has worked with AI since its earliest days (more about this below), but in in the last couple of years — since the arrival of ChatGPT and others — the company has been perceived as falling behind its competitors. There are many reasons for that, not least that Apple’s innate secrecy was a turn-off to researchers at the cutting edge of AI. Internal squabbles over precious R&D resources may also have slowed development.

But one moment that might have changed the scene took place over the winter holidays in late 2023, when Apple Senior Vice President for Software Craig Federighi tested GitHub Copilot code completion. He was reportedly blown away — and redirected Apple’s software development team to begin to apply Large Language Models (LLMs, a basic part of genAI tools) across Apple products. The company now sees this work as foundational to future product innovation and has diverted vast quantities of resources to bringing its own genAI technologies to its devices.

Analysts note that with Apple Intelligence soon to be available across the newer Macs, iPhones, and iPads, the company could quickly become one of the most widely used AI ecosystems in the world. (Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives predicts Apple’s devices will be running 25% of global AI soon.) This matters, since AI smartphones and PCs will drive sales in both markets across the coming months, and Apple now has a viable product family to tout.

Apple How Apple approaches Apple Intelligence

To deliver AI on its devices, Apple has refused to dilute its longstanding commitment to user privacy. With that in mind, it has developed a three-point approach to handling queries using Apple Intelligence:

On device

Some Apple Intelligence features will work natively on the device. This has the advantage of working faster while preserving privacy. Edge-based processing also reduces energy requirements, because no cloud communication or server-side processing is required. (More complex tasks must still be handled in the cloud.)

In the cloud

Apple is deploying what it calls Private Cloud Compute. This is a cloud intelligence system designed specifically for private AI processing and capable of handling complex tasks using massive LLMs.

The idea behind this system is that it provides the ability to flex and scale computational capacity between on-device processing and larger, server-based models. The servers used for these tasks are made by Apple, use Apple Silicon processors, and run a hardened operating system that aims to protect user data when tasks are transacted in the cloud. The advantage here is you can handle more complex tasks while maintaining privacy.

Externally

Apple has an agreement with OpenAI to use ChatGPT to process AI tasks its own systems can’t handle. Under the deal, ChatGPT is not permitted to gather some user data. But there are risks to using third-party services, and Apple ensures that users are aware if their requests need to be handled by a third-party service. 

The company says it has designed its system so when you use Private Cloud Compute, no user data is stored or shared, IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests that go to ChatGPT. The focus throughout is to provide customers with the convenience of AI, while building strong walls around personal privacy.

Apple

What Apple Intelligence features exist?

Apple has announced a range of initial features it intends making available within its Apple Intelligence fleet. The first new tools will appear with iOS 18.1, which is expected to appear when new Apple Silicon Macs and iPads are introduced later this fall.

Additional services will be introduced in a staggered rollout in subsequent releases. While not every announced feature is expected to be available this year, all should be in place by early 2025. In the background, Apple is not resting on its laurels; its teams are thought to be exploring additional ways Apple Intelligence can provide useful services to customers, with a particular focus on health.

Apple

At present, these are the Apple Intelligence tools Apple has announced:

Writing Tools

Writing Tools is a catch-all term for several useful features, most of which should appear in October with iOS 18.1 (and the iPad and Mac equivalents). These tools work anywhere on your device, including in Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps. To use them, select a section of text and tap Writing Tools in the contextual menu.

• Rewrite will take your selected text and improve it.
• Proofread is like a much smarter spellchecker that checks for grammar and context.
• Summarize will take any text and, well, summarize it. This also works in meeting transcripts. 
• Priority notifications: Apple Intelligence understands context, which means it should be able to figure out which notifications are most important to you.
• Priority messages in Mail: The system will also prioritize the emails it thinks are most important.
• Smart Reply: Apple’s AI can also generate email responses. You can edit these, reject them, or write your own.
• Reduce Interruptions: A new Focus mode that is smart enough to let important notifications through.
• Call transcripts: It is possible to record, transcribe, and summarize audio captured in Notes or during a Phone call. When a recording is initiated during a call in the Phone app, participants are automatically notified. After the call, Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.

Search and Memory Movies in Photos

Search is much better in Photos. It will find images and videos that fit complex descriptions and can even locate a particular moment in a video clip that fits your search description.

Search terms can be highly complex; enter a description and Apple Intelligence will identify all the most appropriate images and videos, put together a storyline with chapters based on themes it figures out from within the collection, and create a Memory Movie. The idea is that your images are gathered, collected, and presented in an appropriate narrative arc; this feature is expected to debut with iOS 18.1.

Apple Clean Up tool in Photos

At least in my parts of social media, the Photos AI tool that most seemed to impress early beta testers was Clean Up. This super-smart implementation means Apple Intelligence can identify background objects in an image and let you remove them with a tap. I can still recall when removing items from within images required high-end software running on top-of-the-range computers equipped with vast amounts of memory.

Now you can do it in a trice on an iPhone.

Image Playground for speedy creatives

Expected to appear in iOS 18.2, Image Playground uses genAI to let you create animations, illustrations, and sketches from within any app, including Messages. Images are generated for you by Apple Intelligence in response to written commands. You can also choose between a range of themes, places, or costumes, and also create an image based on a person from your Photos library.

The feature is also available within its own app and should appear in December.

Apple Genmoji get smarter

Genmoji uses genAI to create custom emoji. The idea is that you can type in a description of the emoji you want to use and select one of the automatically generated ones to use in a message. You will also be able to keep editing the image to get to the one you want. (The only problem is that the person on the receiving end may not necessarily understand your creative zeal.)

This feature should show in December with iOS 18.2.

Image Wand

This AI-assisted sketching tool can transform rough sketches into nicer images in Notes. Sketch an image, then select it; Image Wand will analyze the content to create a pleasing and relevant image based on what you drew. You can also select an empty space and Image Wand will look at the rest of your Note to identify a context for which it will create an image for you.

Image Wand is now expected late 2024 or early 2025.

Apple Camera Control in iPhone 16 Pro

A new feature in iPhone 16 Pro relies on visual intelligence and AI to handle some tasks. You can point your camera, for example, at a restaurant to get reviews or menus. It will also be possible to use this feature to access third-party tools for more specific information, such as accessing ChatGPT.

Additional visual tools are coming. For example, Siri will be able to complete in-app requests and take action across apps, such as finding images in your collection and then editing them inside another app.

Coming soon: Siri gains context and ChatGPT

ChatGPT integration in Siri is expected to debut at the end of the year, with additional enhancements to follow. The idea is that when you ask Siri a question, it will try to answer using its own resources; if it is unable to do so it will ask whether you want to use ChatGPT to get the answer. You don’t have to, but you will get free access to using it if you choose. Privacy protections are built in for users who access ChatGPT — IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. 

Siri will also get significant improvements to deliver better contextual understanding and powerful predictive intelligence based on what your devices learn about you. You might use it to find a friend’s flight number and arrival time from a search through Mail or to put together travel plans — or any other query that requires contextual understanding of your situation. 

The contextual features should appear next year.

Apple On-screen awareness, but not until 2025

A new evolution in contextual awareness is scheduled to arrive at some point in 2025. This will give Siri the ability to take and use information on your display. The idea here is that whatever is on your screen becomes usable in some way — you might use this to add addresses to your contacts book, or to track threads in an email, for example. It’s a profound connection between what you do on your device and wherever you happen to be.

Another, and perhaps even more powerful, improvement will allow Siri to control apps, and because it uses genAI, you’ll be able to pull together a variety of instructions and apps — such as editing an image and adding it to a Note without having to open or use any apps yourself. This kind of deep control builds on the accessibility tools Apple already has and leans into some of the visionOS user interface improvements.

It’s another sign of the extent to which user interfaces are becoming highly personal.

Where can I get Apple Intelligence?

Apple has always been quite clear that Apple Intelligence will first be made available in beta in US English. During beta testing, Apple adjusted this slightly so that these tools work on any compatible iPhone running US English as its language and for Siri.

The company will introduce Apple Intelligence with localized English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. Additional language support — such as Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish — is coming next year.

What devices work with Apple Intelligence?

Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 series device. It also runs on Macs and iPads equipped with an M1 or later chip.

What AI is already inside Apple’s systems?

All these features are supplemented by numerous forms of AI tools Apple already has in place across its platforms, principally around image vision intelligence and machine learning. You use these built-in applications each time you use FaceID, run facial recognition in Photos, or make use of the powerful Portrait Mode or Deep Fusion features when taking a photograph.

There are many more AI tools, from recognition of addresses and dates in emails for import into Calendar to VoiceOver all the way to Door Detection, even the Measure app on iPhones. What’s changed is that while Apple’s deliberate focus had been on machine-learning applications, the emergence of genAI unleashed a new era in which the contextual understanding available to LLM models uncovered a variety of new possibilities.

The omnipresence of various kinds of AI across the company’s systems shows the extent to which the dreams of Stanford researchers in the 1960s are becoming real today.

denvit An alternative history of Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence might appear to have been on a slow train coming, but the company has, in fact, been working with AI for decades.

What exactly is AI?

AI is a set of technologies that enable computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. The idea is that the hardware becomes smart enough to learn new tricks based on what it learns, and carries the tools needed to engage in such learning.

To trace the trail of modern AI, think back to 1963, when computer scientist and LISP inventor John McCarthy launched the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). His teams engaged in important research in robotics, machine-vision intelligence, and more.

SAIL was one of three important entities that helped define modern computing. Apple enthusiasts will likely have heard of the other two: Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which developed the Alto that inspired Steve Jobs and the Macintosh, and Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center. The latter is where the mouse concept was defined and subsequently licensed to Apple. 

Important early Apple luminaries who came from SAIL included Alan Kay and Macintosh user interface developer Larry Tesler — and some SAIL alumni still work at the company.

“Apple has been a leader in AI research and development for decades,” pioneering computer scientist and author Jerry Kaplan told me. “Siri and face recognition are just two of many examples of how they have put this investment to work.”

Back to the Newton…

Existing Apple Intelligence solutions include things we probably take for granted, going back to the handwriting recognition and natural language support in 1990’s Newton. That device leaned into research emanating from SAIL — Tesler led the team, after all. Apple’s early digital personal assistant first appeared in a 1987 concept video and was called Knowledge Navigator. (You can view that video here, but be warned, it’s a little blurry.)

Sadly, the technology couldn’t support the kind of human-like interaction we expect from ChatGPT, and (eventually) Apple Intelligence. The world needed better and faster hardware, reliable internet infrastructure, and a vast mountain of research-exploring AI algorithms, none of which existed at that time.  

But by 2010, the company’s iPhone was ascendant, Macs had abandoned the PowerPC architecture to embrace Intel, and the iPad (which cannibalized the netbook market) had been released. Apple had become a mobile devices company. The time was right to deliver that Knowledge Navigator. 

Apple When Apple bought Siri

In April 2010, Apple acquired Siri for $200 million. Siri itself is a spinoff from SAIL, and, just like the internet, the research behind it emanated from a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project. The speech technology came from Nuance, which Apple acquired just before Siri would have been made available on Android and BlackBerry devices. Apple shelved those plans and put the intelligent assistant inside the iPhone 4S (dubbed by many as the “iPhone for Steve,” given Steve Jobs’ death around the time it was released).

Highly regarded at first, Siri didn’t stand the test of time. AI research diverged, with neural networks, machine intelligence, and other forms of AI all following increasingly different paths. (Apple’s reluctance to embrace cloud-based services — due to concerns about user privacy and security — arguably held innovation back.)

Apple shifted Siri to a neural network-based AI system in 2014; it used on-device machine learning models such as deep neural networks (DNN), n-grams and other techniques, giving Apple’s automated assistant a bit more contextual intelligence. Apple Vice President Eddy Cue called the resulting improvement in accuracy “so significant that you do the test again to make sure that somebody didn’t drop a decimal place.”

But times changed fast.

Did Apple miss a trick?

In 2017, Google researchers published a landmark research paper, “Attention is All you Need.” This proposed a new deep-learning architecture that became the foundation for the development of genAI. (One of the paper’s eight authors, Łukasz Kaiser, now works at OpenAI.)

One oversimplified way to understand the architecture is this: it helps make machines good at identifying and using complex connections between data, which makes their output far better and more contextually relevant. This is what makes genAI responses accurate and “human-like” and it’s what makes the new breed of smart machines smart.

The concept has accelerated AI research. “I’ve never seen AI move so fast as it has in the last couple of years,” Tom Gruber, one of Siri’s co-founders, said at the Project Voice conference in 2023.

Yet when ChatGPT arrived — kicking off the current genAI gold rush — Apple seemingly had no response. 

The (put it to) work ethic

Apple’s Cook likes to stress that AI is already in wide use across the company’s products. “It’s literally everywhere on our products and of course we’re also researching generative AI as well, so we have a lot going on,” he said. 

He’s not wrong. You don’t need to scratch deeply to identify multiple interactions in which Apple products simulate human intelligence. Think about crash detection, predictive text, caller ID based on a number not in your contact book but in an email, or even shortcuts to frequently opened apps on your iPhone. All of these machine learning tools are also a form of AI. 

Apple’s CoreML frameworks provide powerful machine learning frameworks developers can themselves use to power up their products. Those frameworks build on the insights Adobe co-founder John Warnock had when he figured out how to automate the animation of scenes, and we will see those technologies widely used in the future of visionOS.

All of this is AI, albeit focused (“narrow”) uses of it. It’s more machine intelligence than sentient machines. But in each AI application it delivers, Apple creates useful tools that don’t undermine user privacy or security.

The secrecy thing

Part of the problem for Apple is that so little is known about its work. That’s deliberate. “In contrast to many other companies, most notably Google, Apple tends not to encourage their researchers to publish potentially valuable proprietary work publicly,” Kaplan said.

But AI researchers like to work with others, and Apple’s need for secrecy acts as a disincentive for those in AI research. “I think the main impact is that it reduces their attractiveness as an employer for AI researchers,” Kaplan said. “What top performer wants to work at a job where they can’t publicize their work and enhance their professional reputation?” 

It also means the AI experts Apple does recruit subsequently leave for more collaborative freedom. For example, Apple acquired search technology firm Laserlike in 2018, and within four years, all three of that company’s founders had quit. And Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow (another a SAIL alumni), left the company in 2022. I imagine the staff churn makes life tough for former Google Chief of Search and AI John Giannandrea, who is now Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy. 

That cultural difference between Apple’s traditional approach and the preference for open collaboration and research in the AI dev community might have caused other problems. The Wall Street Journal reported that at some point both Giannandrea and Federighi were competing for resources to the detriment of the AI team. 

Despite setbacks, the company has now assembled a large group of highly regarded AI pros, including Samy Bengio, who leads company research in deep learning. Apple has also loosened up a great deal, publishing research papers and open source AI software and machine learning models to foster collaboration across the industry.

What next?

History is always in the rear view mirror, but if you squint just a little bit, it can also show you tomorrow. Speaking at the Project Voice conference in 2023, Siri co-founder Adam Cheyer said: “ChatGPT style AI…conversational systems…will become part of the fabric of our lives and over the next 10 years we will optimize it and become accustomed to it. Then a new invention will emerge and that will become AI.”

At least one report indicates Apple sees this evolution of intelligent machinery as foundational to innovation. While that means more tools, and more advances in user interfaces, each those steps leads inevitably toward AI-savvy products such as AR glasses, robotics, health tech — even brain implants. 

For Apple users, the next step — Apple Intelligence — arrives this fall.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Long before Taco Tuesday became part of the pop-culture vernacular, Tuesdays were synonymous with security — and for anyone in the tech world, they still are.  Patch Tuesday, as you most likely know, refers to the day each month when Microsoft releases security updates and patches for its software products — everything from Windows to Office to SQL Server, developer tools to browsers.

The practice, which happens on the second Tuesday of the month, was initiated to streamline the patch distribution process and make it easier for users and IT system administrators to manage updates.  Like tacos, Patch Tuesday is here to stay.

In a blog post celebrating the 20th anniversary of Patch Tuesday, the Microsoft Security Response Center wrote: “The concept of Patch Tuesday was conceived and implemented in 2003. Before this unified approach, our security updates were sporadic, posing significant challenges for IT professionals and organizations in deploying critical patches in a timely manner.”

Patch Tuesday will continue to be an “important part of our strategy to keep users secure,” Microsoft said, adding that it’s now an important part of the cybersecurity industry.  As a case in point, Adobe, among others, follows a similar patch cadence.

Patch Tuesday coverage has also long been a staple of Computerworld’s commitment to provide critical information to the IT industry. That’s why we’ve gathered together this collection of recent patches, a rolling list we’ll keep updated each month.

In case you missed a recent Patch Tuesday announcement, here are the latest six months of updates.

September: Latest Patch Tuesday update fixes 4 zero-days

Addressing four zero-days flaws (CVE-2024-38014, CVE-2024-38217, CVE-2024-43491 and CVE-2024-38217), this month’s Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft includes 79 updates to the Windows platform. There are no patches to Microsoft Exchange Server or the company’s development tools (Visual Studio or .NET). And Microsoft addressed a recently exploited vulnerability in Microsoft Publisher with two critical updates and nine patches rated important for Microsoft Office. More info on Microsoft Security updates for September 2024.

August: Patch Tuesday means patch now

Microsoft pushed out 90 updates in its August Patch Tuesday release, including fixes for five Windows zero-days (CVE-2024-38178, CVE-2024-38193, CVE-2024-38213, CVE-2024-38106, CVE-2024-38107) and one zero-day affecting Office (CVE-2024-38189). This means a “Patch Now” recommendation for both Windows and Microsoft Office. Microsoft offered several (pretty useful) mitigations and recommendations to reduce the impact of these security issues. More info on Microsoft Security updates for August 2024.

July: 4 zero-day flaws

This July’s Patch Tuesday from Microsoft addressed a significant number of vulnerabilities, including four zero-day threats.  Here’s a quick rundown: Microsoft released updates for SQL Server, with patches for Windows, Office, .NET, and Visual Studio. It also released four critical updates for Windows, including patches for Hyper-V and MSHTML. There’s one critical update for Office’s SharePoint platform.
More info on Microsoft Security updates for July 2024.

June: Relatively quiet on major updates

This month’s Patch Tuesday brought mostly low-risk updates with no reported zero-day vulnerabilities. Key areas addressed include changes to Secure Boot (requiring third-party driver testing), code integrity policies (needing verification for Windows Defender features), and core Windows systems (necessitating broad application testing). While there were no critical updates for Office or Exchange Server, some updates to Visual Studio require attention for developers.
More info on Microsoft Security updates for June 2024.

May:  3 zero-day vulnerabilities signal ‘patch now’ alert

This month’s Patch Tuesday highlights three critical zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Windows PCs and requiring immediate patching  — that is,  identified as “patch now.” Some updates like those to Office and Edge browsers follow standard release schedules, but be aware of a critical update for SharePoint Server.  Developers need to aware o a late addition to the update cycle affecting the Azure Agent, requiring attention for Azure-based virtual macHines. Testing is crucial this month, especially for core Windows features like the Common Error Log, DNS, cryptography and routing services.
More info on Microsoft Security updates for May.

April: Microsoft showers users with 149 patches

April’s Patch Tuesday was a complex one, especially for SQL-dependent applications. This hefty Patch Tuesday from Microsoft included 149 updates. While there were no zero-day vulnerabilities, key areas addressed include crypto APIs, networking and remote desktop connections. A major update to the Kerberos security system removes Windows 11 from the affected list, highlighting the importance of staying updated. For developers, 11 updates target the development platform, with 10 focused on SQL ODBC issues and 1 on .NET. While the .NET update can be added to the standard schedule, the ODBC updates require careful examination.
More info on Microsoft Security updates for April.

March: It’s a complicated Patch Tuesday

This month’s Patch Tuesday from Microsoft was complex. There were no reported zero-day vulnerabilities, but a number of updates, particularly those affecting SQL, OLE and ODBC components, underscore the importance of a thorough evaluation. Key areas of focus include file management, cryptography, networking, remote desktop connections, and SQL-related functionalities. Given the interconnectedness of these systems, organizations should prioritize testing across their application portfolios to identify potential impacts. The update to the Kerberos security system is noteworthy, as it removes support for certain Windows 11 versions.
More info on Microsoft Security updates for March.

Addressing four zero-days flaws (CVE-2024-38014, CVE-2024-38217, CVE-2024-43491 and CVE-2024-38217), this month’s Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft includes 79 updates to the Windows platform. There are no patches to Microsoft Exchange Server or the company’s development tools (Visual Studio or .NET). And Microsoft addressed a recently exploited vulnerability in Microsoft Publisher with two critical updates and nine patches rated important for Microsoft Office. 

Significant testing will be required for this month’s Microsoft SQL Server patches, which affect both server and desktop components — with a focus on application installations due to a change in how Microsoft Installer handles changes and installation rollbacks.

The team at Readiness has crafted a useful infographic outlining the risks associated with each update. 

Known issues 

Microsoft always publishes a list of known issues that relate to the operating system and platforms included in each update, including the following two minor issues for September:

• After installing the Windows update released on or after July 9, 2024, some Windows Servers may experience intermittent interruptions to remote desktop connections. Those using RDP over HTTP while employing a Remote Gateway server are most likely to experience this issue. Microsoft is working on a resolution and published a knowledge article (KB5041160) to assist with mitigations.
• As a result of the recent updates to Microsoft SharePoint Server, some users are reporting an issue in which SharePoint workflows can’t be published because the unauthorized type is blocked. The issue also generates the event tag “c42q0” in SharePoint Unified Logging System (ULS) logs. In addition, recent changes could cause the deserialization of custom types that inherit from IDictionary to fail. For more information, see KB5043462 on these issues. (Sounds like something from the Succession TV series.)

Due to recent changes to Windows Installer, User Account Control (UAC) does not prompt for credentials on application installation repairs. Once this update (September 2024) has been installed, UAC will again prompt properly. Your scripts will need to be updated if you have not already accounted for this change. 

Though Microsoft has provided documentation on avoiding the issue by disabling this feature in UAC, we think this is a much-needed change and recommend following this latest best practice.

Major revisions 

This month, Microsoft published the following major revisions to past security and feature updates, including:

• CVE-2020-17042: Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This print spooler update was first released in November 2020. This is an information update to reflect that Windows Server 2022 (Core) is now affected.
• CVE-2024-30077: Windows OLE Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This two-month-old patch from Microsoft has been updated to include support for the ARM platform. 
• CVE-2024-35272: SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider Remote Code Execution. First released in July, the affected software table has been updated to include entries for Visual Studio 2019 and 2022. No further action required.
• CVE-2024-38138: Windows Deployment Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. This is a documentation update to a patch released last month to include support for all supported versions of Windows Server. No further action required.

Unusually, we have a patch revision that is not strictly documentation related. This month, it’s CVE-2024-38063 (Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability). Unlike other revisions, this latest version of a critical network patch will require testing as if it were a new update. System administrators need to take this latest patch revision seriously and test before (re)deployment.

Testing guidelines

Each month, the Readiness team analyzes the latest Patch Tuesday updates and provides detailed, actionable testing guidance based on a large application portfolio and a detailed analysis of the patches and their potential impact.

For September, we have grouped the critical updates and required testing efforts into separate product and functional areas including:

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft released several updates to the Microsoft SQL Server platform that affects both Windows desktops and SQL Server installations, including:

• A significant update to all supported versions (2016-2022) of Microsoft SQL Server that will require a full installation test. 
• An updated core Windows library (SQLOLEDB) that helps Windows applications communicate with SQL Server databases and tools. Though Microsoft rated this change low-risk, Readiness recommends a portfolio analysis that highlights all apps that depend on this data-bound communication approach and a full test cycle for each one identified.

Due to the nature of this September SQL Server update, we highly recommend testing the patch itself and the patching process — with a view to the patch REMOVAL process. We understand that this will require time, skill, and effort — but it will be better than a full restore from backup. 

Windows

Microsoft made networking and memory handling security issues a focus this month with the following changes to Windows:

• Due to an update to 64-bit to 32-bit memory handling in Windows (called thunking), 32-bit Camera applications will require testing on 64-bit machines this month. Using Microsoft Teams or playing a video from a USB drive would provide good testing coverage for this change.
• Virtual Machines (VMs) that require a VPN will require connectivity testing. In addition, the following protocols — PPP, PPTP, SSTP — will require a basic connectivity test. 
• A minor update to Windows defender will require basic testing for endpoint security.
• A minor update to core networking functions will require a test of high network traffic this month. The focus should be on the transfer of large files using applications such Teams, Outlook and Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft delivered a significant update to the MSI Installer (application installer) sub-system that will require application install level testing for a portion of your portfolio. Part of this update relates to how shell links are handled in the storage subsystem, which might cause redirected folders or shortcuts to behave unexpectedly during an installation — particularly on secure or locked-down configurations.

We suggest that installations, rollbacks, un-installations and UAC checks be validated this month. Checking for “zero” exit codes on the MSI Installer log is always a good start.

Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates

This section contains important changes to servicing, significant feature depredations, and security related enforcements across the Windows desktop and server platforms.

• Enforcements: Microsoft Entra now requires TLS 1.2 (using the latest Microsoft cryptographic libraries) as defined by RFC5246. Microsoft has published several scripts to assist with assessing whether your clients are using the latest libraries and protocols (they’re found here).
  
• Lifecycle: General support for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 ends in January 2025. Given the large number of updates to this aging server, it might be time to upgrade.

Mitigations and workarounds

Microsoft did not publish any mitigations or workarounds this month.

Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings: 

• Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge).
• Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server).
• Microsoft Office.
• Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Microsoft Development platforms (ASP.NET Core, .NET Core and Chakra Core).
• Adobe (if you get this far).

Browsers

Microsoft’s Edge browser no longer synchronizes exactly with Patch Tuesday; there were several updates to Microsoft’s version of the Chromium browser that address the following reported vulnerabilities:

• CVE-2024-41879: Adobe PDF Viewer (Gotcha!)
• CVE-2024-38208: Edge for Android updates.
• CVE-2024-38207: Microsoft MSHTML Memory Issues.
• CVE-2024-38210 and CVE-2024-38209: Microsoft Remote Code Execution.

Once we are done with the Microsoft updates, we can focus on these Chromium patches:

• CVE-2024-8636: Heap buffer overflow in Skia.
• CVE-2024-8637: Use after free in Media Router.
• CVE-2024-8638: Type Confusion in V8 (JavaScript).
• CVE-2024-8639: Use after free in Autofill.

After checking for compatibility or suitability challenges presented by these changes, we have not seen anything in the Edge or Chromium update that could affect most enterprise deployments. Add these browser updates to your standard release schedule.

Windows

Microsoft released two critical rated updates to the Windows platform (CVE-2024-38119 and CVE-2024-43491) and 43 patches rated important. The following Windows features have been updated:

• Windows Update and Installer.
• Windows Hyper-V.
• Windows Kernel and Graphics (GDI).
• Microsoft MSHTML and Mark of the Web.
• Remote Desktop (RDP) and TCP/IP subsystems.

The real concern is that three of these vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-38014, CVE-2024-38217, CVE-2024-43491 have been reported as exploited. In addition, another reported vulnerability in the Windows HTML subsystem (CVE-2024-38217) has been reported as publicly disclosed. Given these four zero-days, we recommend that you add these Windows updates to your Patch Now release schedule.

Microsoft Office 

Microsoft addressed two critical vulnerabilities in the SharePoint platform (CVE-2024-38018 and CVE-2024-43464) that will require immediate attention. There are nine other updates rated important that affect Microsoft Office, Publisher and Visio. Unfortunately, CVE-2024-38226 (which affects Publisher) has been reported as exploited in the wild by Microsoft. If your application portfolio does not include Publisher (many don’t) then add these Microsoft updates to your standard patch release cycle.

Microsoft SQL (nee Exchange) Server 

This month brings a significantly larger update to the Microsoft SQL Server platform with 15 updates (all) rated as important. There are no reports of public disclosures or active exploits, and these patches cover the following broad vulnerabilities:

• Microsoft SQL Server Native Scoring Remote Code Execution Vulnerability.
• Microsoft SQL Server Native Scoring Information Disclosure Vulnerability.
• Microsoft SQL Server Information Disclosure Vulnerability.
• Microsoft SQL Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability.

Though there will be a significant testing profile this month, affecting both server and desktop systems, we suggest you add these SQL Server patches to your standard release schedule. 

Microsoft development platforms 

No development tools or features (Microsoft Visual Studio or .NET) have been updated this month.

Adobe Reader (and other third-party updates) 

Things are a little different this month for Adobe Reader. Normally, Microsoft releases an Adobe Reader update to the Windows platforms. Not so, this month. 

Adobe Reader has been updated (APSB24-70) but has not been included in the Microsoft release. This month’s Adobe Reader update addresses two critical memory-related security vulnerabilities and should be added to your standard app release cycle.

Apple didn’t make a song and dance about it during this week’s iPhone 16 launch, but one other thing that’s about to change (at least in Europe) is that it will support third-party app stores with the release of iPad OS 18. (It already supports this on iPhones in the EU.

We knew this was coming. 

European regulators decided Apple needed to open up its platform earlier this year when they imposed requirements in the Digital Markets Act (DMA). What we don’t yet know is the extent to which the move to open up iPads and iPhones to this kind of competition will leave European customers vulnerable to security and privacy attacks. 

Changing the story

We also don’t yet know whether every store that appears will be legitimate, or whether their security procedures will be as rock solid as those Apple provides. 

In part, that’s because we can’t predict how stable those regimes will become, or the extent to which increasingly well-resourced hackers will identify and exploit vulnerabilities in third-party app shops. That’s the big experiment that’s really taking place here, and we won’t see the results of this regulatory dedication to market ‘liberalization’ for some time to come.

It’s hard to believe Apple is having a good time in Europe. The bloc just demanded $14 billion in tax from the company, and regulators seem resistant to giving Apple the transparency it needs before offering Apple Intelligence there. 

Your private answer

Privacy is a core commitment to Apple. It works hard to protect it. And yet, the regulators say the company’s demand for transparency around how the DMA will be applied to these features in the EU shows how anti-competitive the company is.

That’s a stretch. Apple’s argument is predicated on the nature of the personal data its system can access on devices. That information is personal, and the company is committed to keeping it that way. This’s why Apple Intelligence is being developed as a super-private AI service you can use when you want to hold your data close. 

If Apple finds itself forced to make that information available to third parties, then what will be the consequences on personal privacy? When you have a regulator who seems to think it’s a victory to play ‘Fortnite’ on her iPhone, then Apple would probably prefer to negotiate with someone possessed of more nuance. Sometimes things get worse before they get better.

Opening up…

Context aside, the addition of iPads to the open market does expand the number of potential consumers third-party stores can approach. 

However, it’s fair to say that developers have so far been pretty slow at taking Apple up on the terms under which it has so far offered to open up app store access. I suspect further compromise will be reached, but I also think Apple has the right to ensure its business is sustainable; I doubt critics will get a free ride, no matter how entitled to one they believe they are. 

In the end, the big question around the matter never seems to be asked. No one yet has stuck their neck above the parapet to ask how much profit a business should legitimately make? It is amusing the extent to which business-backed political entities everywhere want to avoid defining an ethical approach to profit margins. 

Perhaps they fear losing election contributions if they do.

Let the games begin

Nevertheless, the Great European App Store experiment is under way, and while the number of third-party stores that have appeared so far is limited, this may change. As well as Apple’s App Store, European iPhone and iPad users can now pick between Setapp Mobile, AltStore PAL, Aptoid, Mobivention, and the Epic Games Store. (Two of these are games stores, one a B2B white label app distro service, SetApp is an app subscription service, and Aptoid is an open-source friendly indie app store.)

From baby acorns, new trees grow. But the way I expect this to play out is that as the number of such stores grows, the sector will become more competitive, and then grow a bit until M&A action starts. Once the inevitable market consolidation does take place, it seems reasonable to expect we’ll end up with a couple of stores that have unique USPs, and two or three larger concerns, one of which may (or may not) be Apple’s App Store. 

That’s assuming Apple’s concerns around platform security and third-party apps are never realized; if they are, consumers will flock to the only secure store they know. As of Monday, EU consumers on iPads as well as iPhone will be able to try their luck. Good luck with that.

Please follow me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill group on MeWe.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has announced a breakthrough in artificial intelligence hardware by developing a brain-inspired neuromorphic computing platform. Capable of storing and processing data across 16,500 conductance states in a molecular film, this new platform represents a dramatic leap over traditional digital systems, which are limited to just two states (on and off).

Sreetosh Goswami, assistant professor at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc, who led the research team that developed this platform, said that with this discovery, the team has been able to nail down several unsolved challenges that have been lingering in the field of neuromorphic computing for over a decade.