It’s been over a month since Windows Insiders have had a new build to play with, but worry no more. After a series of delays, Microsoft has finally delivered, releasing Build 17063 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead Windows Insiders. This build is jampacked with new features including Windows Timeline, Fluent Design in Edge, and more.
Since there are plenty of new features this week, here is a quick look at what’s new, straight from Microsoft’s blog post. We will be following up with dedicated posts and updating this main post later on with links to more on each of these features.
- Windows Timeline: Timeline introduces a new way to resume past activities you started on this PC, other Windows PCs, and iOS/Android devices. Timeline enhances Task View, allowing you to switch between currently running apps and past activities.
- The new activity history settings page allows you to control which accounts appear in Timeline. This is most relevant for users with multiple accounts, such as a personal Microsoft account, and a work or school account.
- In addition to resuming past activities through Timeline, your personal digital assistant Cortana will suggest activities you might want to resume to help you stay productive as you switch between your phone, laptop, and other Cortana-enabled devices.
- Fluent updates in Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Edge now supports an updated Dark theme, with darker blacks, and much better contrast with all colors, text, and icons. This addresses many accessibility contrast issues, making the Microsoft Edge UI easy to navigate and more visually pleasing.
- Gesture Improvements for Precision Touch Pads: This build introduces a new gesture experience for Precision Touch Pads (found on Surface and other modern Windows 10 devices). You can now use gestures like pinch and zoom, or two-finger panning,
- Sets will be available to Insiders however because it is being introduced as a controlled study, not all Insiders will see Sets.
- Cortana’s Notebook has a new look: Notebook has undergone a UX transformation to be more responsive to Cortana’s evolving capabilities and allow users to easily complete their tasks.
- Cortana loves music: You can now use Cortana to control music playback on more of your favorite music apps (EN-US only)
- Bring on the Fluent! Today, Start and Action Center support acrylic to align with Fluent design principles. And now we’re bringing the next wave of Shell UI to the party by applying acrylic to the taskbar, Share UI, Clock & Calendar flyout, Network flyout, Volume flyout, and Input flyout.
- Input Improvements: Personalize handwriting panel, Split layout comes to touch keyboard, hardware keyboard suggestions update, emoji data update, emoji in more languages.
- This build brings a new “edit in Paint 3D” button to the Snipping Tool so you can take your snip to the next level via Paint 3D.
- Settings gets a new look: You’ve already seen we say “bring on the Fluent!” in other areas of Shell, and Settings is no different. With today’s build you’ll find not only have we refreshed the Settings UI leveraging Fluent Design principles, but we’ve also taken a look at the Settings homepage
- An improved My People experience: Based on your feedback we’ve been working on evolving the My People experience and taking it to the next level. This build brings with it a number of requested features, improvements and changes and redesigned it with an eye for visual acuity.
- A Registry Process in Task Manager
- New tools for developers and IT Pros on Windows
- Improved areas in Windows Defender, Subsystem for Linux
So there you have it, folks. That’s a look at the biggest new features in this week’s build. Wasn’t it worth the wait? Happy downloading, and be sure to keep tuned to OnMSFT all day long, as we will be diving into all these new features soon!
