Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18845 today, and it's available to all Insiders on the Skip Ahead subset of the Fast ring. Just like the previous two builds, it's from the 20H1 development branch, as the firm skipped right over 19H2, due to wanting to work on the core so it will work for the Azure team.
As is typically the case this early in the development cycle, there's not much in the way of new front-facing features. The only thing that's new today is support for official Emoji 12.0 (rather than the preview, before it was approved), and this is likely a feature that will make it into 19H2 when it arrives in the Fast ring this spring, or possibly even into 19H1 before it RTMs next month.
Here's the full changelog:
Emoji 12.0 Update
With Build 18277, Insiders got their first look at the Emoji 12.0 emoji. In early February, the set of emoji to be included with Emoji 12.0 was finalized by Unicode, and with today’s build when you press WIN+(period) or WIN+(semicolon), all of these emoji now have keywords hooked up to make them easy to search for. Try it once you install the build! Keywords include otter, sloth, waffle, ballet shoes, and more.
If you haven’t tried it already, be sure to also check out our new Kaomoji and Symbols section in the picker – makes it super easy to type things like (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ or em dash!
As the 20H1 codename indicates, we're not going to see this feature update until the first half of 2020. That's why it's safe to assume that some of the features that we see early on, especially minor features like emoji updates, will arrive in earlier versions of Windows 10 like 19H2.
If you're on Skip Ahead, you can grab today's build from Windows Update. If not, you're out of luck. There's limited availability for Skip Ahead, and it's all filled up.
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