Here’s a roundup of what’s new in Toast notifications in Windows 10 Anniversary Update

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by Radu Tyrsina 

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The upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update, due this summer, will bring a slew of changes to Windows 10 on PCs and mobile. Updates are coming across the OS, from Cortana, notifications, Action Center, Settings menu and options, and of course much, much more. If you’re a Windows Insider, then you’ve already been experiencing many of the changes coming to Windows 10.

Today, the Microsoft Developer blog took some time to outline all of the changes coming to Toast notifications, with an emphasis on how developers can implement the newest notification features in their apps. Here’s a quick rundown of the changes coming in Anniversary Update.

Toast supports full Adaptive: In the previous release, Toasts only supported a limited set of Adaptive schema (text and image). With the Anniversary Update, Toast notifications support the full Adaptive schema. Developers can now make Toast notifications visually as rich as Live Tiles, and re-use a large portion of their payload between Toast notifications and Live Tiles.

Wide tile.
Toast notification.

Notifications in the Cloud: We have enabled cross-device scenarios for users who own multiple devices (linked via their MSA login), making notifications more “ambient”.

Hero Image: You can specify a hero image in a Toast notification to emphasis visual content and celebrate imagery.

Hero image in a notification.

Attribution: You can specify a new text element placement that provides a consistent way to show content attribution in a Toast notification.

Attribution in notifications.

Context menu action: You can specify an action that gets placed in the context menu.

Context menu action for notifications.

Web Notifications via Microsoft Edge: Edge now supports web notifications through W3C standard web notification API’s. These web notifications are displayed as native Toast notifications and appear in Action Center.

Notification Listener: Apps can finally access the user’s notifications (via a public API), enabling scenarios like showing notifications on wearable accessories.

Action Center UI Refreshed: We’ve made some UI improvements to Action Center and notifications that you’ll automatically see without changing your app’s code.

More User Control/Customization: Users now have more control of Action Center through the Notifications & Actions settings page.

Enhanced user control over notifications.

If you’re a developer, then be sure to check out the blog post for all of the details on implementing these changes. For us users, we’ll just look forward to enjoying much improved Toast notifications in Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina Shield

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time). For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web. Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they're looking for.