Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 19013 to the Fast ring today, and as usual, it"s pretty light on new features. It"s the latest build from the 20H1 development branch, and if recent rumors are to be believed, 20H1 could RTM as soon as December. That means that you shouldn"t expect anymore major new features.
One of the new features in today"s build is more kaomoji. You might recall that kaomoji was added to the emoji picker with Windows 10 version 1903, so now there are more than them. The other new feature is that the Windows Subsystem for Linux will release memory back to your system when you"re not using it. Previously, your WSL VM could grow when you needed it to, but it couldn"t shrink.
Here"s the full changelog:
More kaomoji
As some of you may know, with Windows 10 version 1903, we updated our WIN+(Period) / WIN+(Semicolon) keyboard shortcut to not only include emoji, but to also now contain kaomoji and special characters. What are kaomoji? Basically, they’re faces with expressions you can make by combining various characters–for example, you might be familiar with the shruggie:
In any case, based on your feedback, in this build we’re updating our kaomoji list with a few more favorites, including:
And more! Enjoy
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 will now release unused Linux memory back to your Windows machine
Previously, your WSL 2 Virtual Machine’s (VM) memory would grow to meet the needs of your workflow, but would not shrink back down when the memory was no longer needed. With this change, as memory is no longer in use in the Linux VM, it will be freed back to Windows, which will shrink in memory size accordingly.
Other updates for Insiders
PowerToys v0.12 now available!
We’ve just released our 0.12 release of PowerToys on GitHub. We’ve gotten tons of great feedback and suggestions from the community and want to directly say thank you to everyone.
New features include a great new utility called PowerRename, which makes it easy to batch rename a bunch of files, improvements to FancyZones, and support for Dark Mode.
Check out our latest article for all the details.
Your Phone app–Elevating the Phone screen feature by removing its dependency on Bluetooth connection
Windows Insiders, we heard your feedback about the Phone screen feature’s dependency on Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. To address your feedback, we partnered closely with Samsung to bring you a more streamlined experience across all Windows 10 PCs by removing the peripheral role dependency for Phone screen, which will expand the overall reach of this feature.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10 was the first device to introduce this feature in August. After a positive response, we’ve recently enabled this feature across Samsung Galaxy Fold, S10, S10+, and S10e smartphones. You’ll need to update your supported Samsung devices with the recent software update that enables the ‘Link to Windows’ feature. To continue offering this experience to other smartphones, we’re expanding this feature support to Samsung Galaxy A30s, A50s, and A90 smartphones, and we’ll continue to add additional devices in the coming months.
With the new experience rolling out, we’ll be removing the Bluetooth connectivity option, effective immediately. If you were previously enjoying Phone screen over Bluetooth and you have a phone model that doesn’t yet support Link to Windows, the Phone screen node will disappear automatically within the Your Phone app. We recommend that you unpair your devices by going to the Bluetooth settings on both your PC and your Android phone, so that you don’t have a connection that is no longer in use.
Thank you for helping us refine the Phone screen experience so far!
Phone screen requirements:
- Select Android phones running Android 9.0 or greater
- PC running Windows 10 October 2018 Update or later
- Android phone must be on and connected to the same network as the PC
- You will need a supported device to use this feature:
- Samsung Galaxy Fold
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10/ Note 10+
- Samsung Galaxy S10/S10+/S10e
- Samsung Galaxy A30s/A50s/A90
Refer to the Your Phone FAQs for additional information.
Preview new DirectX 12 features
In the latest 20H1 builds, you can preview new DirectX 12 features, including DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1, Mesh Shader, and Sampler Feedback. In this blog post, the DirectX Team explains what each of these features are and how they will improve the gaming experience in Windows 10!
While we"re seemingly prepping for the 20H1 RTM, it"s worth noting that Windows 10 19H2, or the November 2019 Update, still hasn"t been released. That should be available in the coming weeks.