Just nine days after releasing its last Windows 10 preview, build 10122, Microsoft today released Insider Preview build 10130 - but if you were expecting any big new feature additions in this build, you may be disappointed.
The company said today that "from here onward you are going to see a lot of tuning, tweaking, stabilizing, and polishing which means fewer big feature changes from build to build" - but this release still brings a range of notable improvements to the OS, as it gets closer to the final build that will be released to manufacturers.
Microsoft"s release notes for build 10130 reveal what"s new in the latest preview:
Start: You can now customize your Start experience by opening the Settings app > Personalization > Start.
Here, you will be able to turn on full screen Start when in the desktop if you want. You can also customize the locations that are shown on bottom left of Start where you see Power and All apps listed. In 10122, it showed File Explorer and Settings but you can now customize this list here. (Note – in this build there is a known bug where after upgrading from Build 10122 to this build removes the File Explorer and Settings icons from the location area of Start. You can add them back in the Settings app as I mentioned previously and you’ll need to sign out and back in to see changes you make to the list.
Icon design: We’ve updated our icon design to reflect our Microsoft design language, creating a more consistent and cohesive look and feel across all our product experiences. These icons are more modern and lightweight, while creating a better visual relationship between typography and iconography. On top of that, app icons are now more consistent between desktop and mobile so apps like Word and Excel look similar no matter what device you’re using.
Feedback played a huge role in the current icon design refresh. In earlier preview builds, we heard our design was too flat and lacked richness. We’ve since iterated to deliver a balance between mono line style icons on mobile, and the three dimensional depth of desktop icons. The new icon set is familiar, yet fresh and usable.
Between the legacy aero-style icons and new app icons, several thousand icons were designed and redesigned. We explored Swiss graphic design, Dutch product design, and modern architecture (among other design fields and styles) to inform and inspire the design process. The icon evolution will continue as we push more consistency and better functionality.
Jump Lists on the Taskbar: We’ve refined the UI for Jump Lists so that it matches the rest of the new UI for Start and the Taskbar in Windows 10. Right-click on File Explorer if you have it pinned to your Taskbar and check out the updated Jump List.
Continuum improvements: When in Tablet mode, you can now swipe the top edge to open up the app commands if the app has them just like you could on Windows 8.1. We heard a lot of feedback from Windows Insiders on this and we’ve brought it back based on your input.
Improvements to Microsoft Edge: You’ll see improvements with Microsoft Edge in this build (still codenamed “Project Spartan” while we prep our branding changes) including the ability to pin/unpin the Cortana pane, Favorites pane, Reading list pane, or any other pane in the browser.
We’ve introduced more advanced print options. We’ve improved Address Bar badges. We’ve also made improvements to Reading view to support different content, window sizes, and device layouts such as the Surface Pro 3 in portrait. And playing full screen video on websites like YouTube or Hulu now work as you would expect.
Taskbar settings for Virtual Desktops: A month ago we introduced two Taskbar configurations for Virtual Desktop users and asked Windows Insiders to vote for their favorite. On one hand there is the global Taskbar that shows windows across all desktops and on the other hand there is the filtered Taskbar that only shows windows on the current desktop. Thousands and thousands of you have taken the opportunity to rate your experience living with these configurations. On average the satisfaction score for global Taskbar was 3.8 versus 4.2 for filtered Taskbar. We also observed users are 34% more likely to be strongly satisfied with the filtered Taskbar and three times less likely to be strongly dissatisfied compared to the global taskbar. The Insiders have spoken! The Taskbar will be filtered by default starting with this flight. Don’t worry global Taskbar fans, you can have it your way with just a settings change: Settings app > System > Multitasking > Virtual Desktops.
Cortana keyboard shortcut: For all you keyboard shortcut lovers out there – try out Win key + C. This will now launch Cortana’s speech recognition to ask questions, set reminders etc.
Microsoft Print to PDF: The feature in Windows 10 for printing to PDF now called “Microsoft Print to PDF”. To try it out, simply select “Print” from app and choose “Microsoft Print to PDF” as printer. If you were using “Print as a PDF” previously, you can remove it from Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > right-click on “Print as a PDF” and select “Remove device”.
Microsoft Print to PDF: The feature in Windows 10 for printing to PDF now called “Microsoft Print to PDF”. To try it out, simply select “Print” from app and choose “Microsoft Print to PDF” as printer. If you were using “Print as a PDF” previously, you can remove it from Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers > right-click on “Print as a PDF” and select “Remove device”.
Playback improvements with the Movies & TV app: You can now play videos in the Movies & TV app in full screen mode with this build.
While this is an overview of the major changes that Microsoft has made in build 10130, there are likely to be many more smaller - but still useful - improvements and enhancements in the new build that haven"t been detailed above.
Be sure to send us a tip if you spot anything exciting in build 10130 - and let us know how you get on with installing and using it!