Windows 10 build 16215 released with lot of new features
After releasing Redstone 2 aka creators update to public, the focus now shifts to the builds from next Insider branch, widely called Redstone 3. Now, Microsoft has released 8th redstone 3 build 16215 to public yesterday. Many new build features are introduced in this build.
What’s new
- Start and Action center improvements including introduction of Acrylic design:
- Improvements to Start menu:
- If transparency is enabled, Start would show in Acrylic.
- Vertical resize improvements
- Horizontal resize improvements.
- Diagonal resize: Start Frame can be resized diagonally.
- It is now easier to grip border to resize Start.
- Smooth Tablet mode transition.
- New look for Action center:
- Redesigned action center to give a more simpler and clearer look of information in it. Also fluent design is enabled.
- Toast notifications also show up in acrylic design.
- Microsoft Edge improvements
- You can now pin your favorite website to taskbar.
- Now you can use full screen mode in Microsoft edge.
- Annotate books in Edge: You can add colors in EPUB files together with notes.
- Add tab to favorites option: Every open tab would be made a favorite and saved in the favorite folder separately.
- Improvements to Microsoft Edge Splash screen.
- Cortana improvements:
- Cortana can create a reminder if she finds a poster in camera roll. Make sure permission is there to access camera roll
- If you are a pen user, Cortana can keep track of future events on your screen. You need to use lasso tool to circle the relevant information and she should automatically create a reminder. Remember, you need to give permission to Cortana for this.
- Handwriting improvements
- You can write as much as you can using new conversion and overflow model.
- Select text to edit.
- Make corrections using ink gesture and overwriting text.
- Easier access to Emoji and symbols.
- The handwriting panel now has an option to float.
- Improved handwriting recognition for English language.
- Added find my pen in Find my device.
- Pen Interaction improvements:
- You can now scroll and select data with pen.
- Hardware keyboard improvements:
- To enter emoji, you can now use a shortcut Win+period/Win+Semicolon when focus is in the text box.
- New XAML touch keyboard is introduced which has the following features
- Enhanced text prediction.
- New Emoji experience.
- One handed touch keyboard.
- Shape writing with keyboard.
- New keyboard Settings menu.
- Dictation using touch keyboard on the desktop:You can use voice commands to dictate what you need to do with the keyboard, for example say inject backspace to press backspace key.
- Shell improvements:
- New share experience: Now you can copy link of the item to share so that you can paste it any app of your choice.
- Local media detection for Groove Music, Movies and TV and Photos:After storage scan, Windows would automatically prompt you to add music, pictures or videos to the library of the respective apps even if the location is not in the library.
- Settings improvements:
- New video playback settings option in Settings>Personalization>Video playback to control media settings.
- New HDR and color Settings page: If you have an HDR display, you will now see an option in Settings>System>display to fine tune your settings.
- Per-app default Settings page.
- Improvements to Network and Internet properties:You can now select your network as private or public using radio buttons, rather than older option of make this PC discoverable.
- A new right click context menu for WiFi available to connect under flyout.
- You can see a progress bar while moving/uninstalling an app.
- Adjusted the settings app so that Cortana settings are more central and Windows update is at last.
- Windows update improvements
- You can now see active policies if any in Windows updates.
- Individual update progress bar: Each separate update would have its own progress bar to track download.
- Gaming improvements:
- Game bar has a button to enable/disable it for a current game.
- You can now take screenshots in HDR using game bar.
- Screenshots would be saved in PNG format that is mapped to SDR.
- Developer improvements
- Run time broker is now per app.
- WSL doesn’t require development mode.
- Hyper-V now supports battery mode.
- Ease-of-acess improvements:
- Narrator improvements like
- Scan mode on by default.
- Narrator input learning.
- New hotkeys.
- Braille improvements.
- Color filters like Greyscale, color etc.
- Magnifier UI improvements.
Fixes and Improvements
- Language Packs via Settings > Time & language > Region & language are available again starting with this build.
- The issue causing updating to the latest builds to get stuck at 12% should be fixed. If you still hit this, please send us feedback in Feedback Hub so the team can investigate.
- [Fixed]The issue causing you to be unable to type in your password to log in to any UWP apps such as Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Messenger apps.
- [Fixed]The issue causing Outlook 2016 to hang on launch due to an issue where the spam filter gets stuck reading the Outlook Data File and the UI waits indefinitely for it to return.
- [Fixed]An issue from the previous flight where Microsoft Edge would crash when enabling or disabling extensions.
- Removed the power option to “update and shutdown” for now as it wasn’t working.
- You may see Recovery Drive tool show up under “Recently added” on Start after updating to this build. We have made a change that makes the tool, previously only accessible via Control Panel, to now be available in the Windows Administrative Tools folder in Start.
- [Fixed]An issue where an unexpected Wireless Display Media Viewer app with a blank icon was visible in Start after upgrading on certain devices.
- Improvements to facial recognition, along with a new toast you’ll see prompting you to further train Windows Hello if having issues signing in when a large amount of backlighting detected.
- [Fixed]An issue resulting in Windows Hello Face failing to work on the previous flight for a large number of non-English languages.
- [Fixed]An issue resulting in games such as Civilization VI, Galactic Civilizations III, and Expeditions: Viking failing to launch on recent builds.
- [Fixed]An issue where inbox UWP app icons were overscaled in Cortana search results.
- adjusted the text in our prompt to initiate cross device notifications from saying “Trust this PC?” to now say “You got a message on your phone. Want to see phone messages on this PC too?”.
- [Fixed]The issue causing some people to hit Error 0x8000ffff while trying to launch an isolated Edge session in Windows Defender Application Guard.
- [Fixed]An issue from recent flights where moving focus away from the Microsoft Edge window while the Bopomofo IME was the active input method would result in the window becoming unresponsive.
- [Fixed]An issue where the icons of contacts pinned to the taskbar would appear cut off when using small taskbar icons.
- [Fixed]An issue where mirroring a display and then disconnecting from it would break night light on that screen.
- We fixed an issue where when night light had been manually enabled, and the device entered then exited S3 sleep, night could then become disabled.
- [Fixed]An issue where pinned secondary tiles would appear as groups in that app’s Notification & Actions Settings.
- [Fixed]An issue resulting in garbled characters when viewing the new tips in Settings on non-English languages.
- [Fixed]An issue resulting in VIM being broken for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) users in result flights.
- [Fixed]An issue where the choice command was failing when run in a Command Prompt script.
Known issues
- Features that are delivered on-demand from Windows Update such as Developer Mode, .NET 3.5, and Speech Packs will not be available for this build. If you are a developer and require Developer Mode – please ensure it is enabled BEFORE taking this build.
- On some PCs with enterprise configurations, you may not be able to open PDFs in Microsoft Edge on this build. As a workaround, you can download PDFs and open them with a third party reader or the Reader app from the Windows Store.
- Microsoft Edge may load web pages at the wrong scale factor (highly zoomed in) on some devices with high density displays. As a workaround. switching to another tab and back should resolve this problem.
- Some PDFs may open in a cropped view (zoomed in) in Microsoft Edge, and part of the content may be inaccessible to the user. Additionally, input to these PDFs may be offset to the wrong location on screen. As a workaround, you can download PDFs and open them with a third party reader or the Reader app from the Windows Store.
- After upgrading, inbox apps that are the same version on the downlevel OS and uplevel OS will disappear from Start. If you are impacted by this, please go to Settings > Apps > Apps & Features, select the impacted app, tap “advanced options”, click reset, and that should fix it.
- We’ve made a fix to address your feedback that PDFs aren’t opening in Microsoft Edge. This will resolve the issue for most Insiders, however we’re still investigating one issue specific to those with Windows Information Protection (EDP) enabled. We’re working to address this as soon as possible in an upcoming flight.
- New Windows Mixed Reality developers need to install build 16193 or RS2 RTM, plug in the Windows Mixed Reality headset and set up Mixed Reality, then upgrade to the latest FAST build for the best development experience. If you update to Build 16215 without setting up Mixed Reality, you will not be able to download Mixed Reality software. You will end up with multiple copies of each printer after upgrading. Only the copy with the highest number will work.
- Wi-Fi will get turned off on certain devices like the Surface Pro 1 and Surface Pro 2 and some USB devices and won’t work due to a driver issue. To get Wi-Fi working again, you will have to roll-back to the previous build.
- If you’re using a Chinese IME and try to type in Cortana, it will hang Cortana and not work.
- Some UWP apps such as Twitter will crash on launch.
- After updating to this build, Microsoft Text Input Application might appear on your All apps list and when you try to open it, it opens as a blank window.
- The mini surveys we call SIUFs from Feedback Hub will not work on this build.
Read more here:
This update would be available via Windows update as always.