Here's what's improved, fixed, and still broken in Windows 10 build 18885

It's been some time since Microsoft released a new build of Windows 10 for Insiders in the Fast Ring, with the most recent one being build 18875 from two weeks ago. That changed today, though, as build 18885 is now available in the Fast ring (which is now merged with Skip Ahead). The build introduced some previously-announced improvements to Your Phone and support for dictation in more languages, but it also comes with an array of fixes and known issues.

For the squashed bugs, Microsoft notes that the issue with USB drives and SD cards being assigned to different drive letters after an upgrade - a problem which has stalled users from upgrading to the May 2019 Update in certain versions of Windows 10 - has been fixed. Here's the full list of improvements:

We fixed an issue that could result in USBs and SD cards being unexpectedly assigned a different drive letter after upgrading.

We fixed an issue that could result in the post install setup message unexpectedly appearing while you were actively using your PC sometime after login.

We’ve improved the layout of the App Volume and Device Preferences page in Sound settings and tweaked the page view for better usability.

We’ve updated the text of the Storage Sense group policies to make them a bit more clear.

We fixed an issue that could result in the “Make Windows better” page appearing after login showing “please wait”, with a progress wheel, for a long period of time. We also fixed an issue that could result in this page unexpectedly appearing while you were interacting with the device sometime after login.

We fixed an issue that could sometimes result in Windows Hello looking for the user and immediately signing them back in right after locking the PC, rather than first prompting with “Welcome back, dismiss the lock screen to sign back in”.

We fixed an issue that could result in some Insiders seeing only a flat blue screen when connecting to a recent build over remote desktop.

Of course, no Insider build would be complete without its fair share of known issues, and Microsoft lists a few of them in today's release. These include the same problems we've been hearing about for some time now, such as issues with anti-cheat software in some games. This is because the fix for the problem is up to individual developers. Here's the full list of known issues:

There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future.

Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue.

If you use remote desktop to connect to an enhanced session VM, taskbar search results will not be visible (just a dark area) until you restart explorer.exe.

We’re investigating reports that on certain devices if fast startup is enabled night light doesn’t turn on until after a restart. (Note: The problem will occur on a “cold” reboot or power off / power on. To work around if night light doesn’t turn on, use Start > Power > Restart.)

There’s a noticeable lag when dragging the emoji and dictation panels.

Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on.

Some features on Start Menu and in All apps are not localized in languages such as FR-FR, RU-RU, and ZH-CN.

As usual, developers also have to be aware that downgrading from the Fast ring to the Slow ring after installing a build might result in developer features not working, as they're designed to target specific builds in specific rings.

Build 18885 is part of the 20H1 development cycle, which is leading up to next year's first big update to Windows 10. Because of the long development time, we're likely to not see a ton of major additions for some time.