Today, Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 21286 to the Dev channel. It"s the first new build in three weeks, thanks to the holiday season. It"s the first rs_prerelease build in four weeks though, and it"s the first that"s for everyone. For a while, Microsoft was releasing builds from the meaningless fe_release branch, and then in mid-December, the firm gave Insiders a choice between fe_release and rs_prerelease. Now, this rs_prerelease build is for everyone on the Dev channel.
It has a number of new features too. There"s a new news feed feature called "news and interests". It will sit right in the taskbar, although you can remove it if you want to.
Here"s what else is new:
Modernized Storage Spaces Settings
You can now create and manage Storage Spaces from within the Settings app. This includes creating storage pools and storage spaces, adding, and removing disks, and optimizing pools. This new experience provides an accessible, modern experience integrated with other storage features.
Run commands on start up in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
We have added an option that allows you to run any specified Linux command on startup of a WSL distribution. You can accomplish this by editing the /etc/wsl.conf file in your distribution and adding an option titled “command” under a section titled “boot”. This command will run whenever your specific WSL distribution starts up. The example below shows using this functionality to create a method to log the time and date for each startup of this WSL distro.
This command will run when a WSL distribution is first started. WSL distributions will remain running for a few minutes even after the last Linux process inside of them is closed. You can view if your WSL distro is running using wsl --list --verbose and you can manually shut down all WSL distributions using wsl --shutdown.
Improving your experience when transitioning between time zones
Based on feedback, we’re making a couple small adjustments for users of “Set time zone automatically” in Date & Time Settings:
- When your time zone is updated because of a high confidence detected location change, we’ll now send a notification letting you know about it. The notification will include information about the new time zone and clicking it will open the Date & Time Settings.
- If we detect a low confidence location change and there is a single administrator on the device, we will now send a notification asking if you would like to update your time zone – clicking the OK button in the prompt will make the change.
As always, you can install this build through Windows Update. If you"re not on the Dev channel yet, you can enroll in through the Windows Insider Program tab in Settings.