Microsoft already testing new features in latest Windows 10 “canary ring” builds

Yesterday was quite a busy day for Windows Insiders as the company released two cumulative updates for Windows 10 Anniversary Update aka Redstone 1. As you may already know, cumulative updates only bring bug fixes and improvements to your current Windows 10 version, which means that they’re not always the most exciting kind of updates to install for Windows enthusiasts wanting to play with new features.

However, if you’re still enrolled in the Windows Insider Fast Ring, you will soon be allowed to test the first Redstone 2 build, which is the next major iteration of Windows 10 to be released in 2017. In the meantime, we guess that many Microsoft employees are already testing internal builds and Carmen Crincoli, Storage IHV partner manager at Microsoft just shared a quick tease of what’s to come:

Canary ring is already providing happy surprises. Love how quickly teams are working on new features.

— Carmen Crincoli, but Fhqwhgads (@CarmenCrincoli) August 10, 2016

The downside is, I now have to be careful about using my Surface during this conference in order to prevent inadvertently revealing things.

— Carmen Crincoli, but Fhqwhgads (@CarmenCrincoli) August 10, 2016

If you’re not familiar with it, the “Canary” ring is one of Microsoft’s internal testing rings along the “Operating Systems Group” (OSG) and “Microsoft” rings that the company uses to test Windows 10 builds internally. As we previously reported, Microsoft employees who are members of the Canary ring have opted in to test anywhere from daily to slower monthly released and validated builds. Once this “dogfooding” is done, preview builds which are considered good enough for the Windows Insider program are then pushed to Windows Insiders enrolled in the Fast ring.

It’s still not clear what cool features Crincoli is talking about in his tweets, but while we can’t wait to learn what’s coming in the next Windows 10 major upgrade, you should be aware that the first Redstone 2 Insider builds are not expected to be that exciting. Head of the Insider program Dona Sarkar explained yesterday:

With the new builds we release from our Development Branch, you won’t see any big noticeable changes or new features just yet. Just like we did after the release of the November Update, we are focusing on making some structural improvements to OneCore. If you recall – OneCore is the shared core of Windows across PC, tablet, phone, IoT, Hololens and Xbox. It is essentially the heart of Windows.

Let us know in the comments if you’re still excited by the upcoming Redstone 2 builds and stay tuned to Winbeta to get all the details in the coming weeks!