Windows 10 Redstone 5 Gets Cloud Clipboard, Dark File Explorer, and More

Microsoft is shipping a big new build of Windows 10 Redstone 5 following Build 2018 today. The new build of Windows 10 includes a bunch of big new features, some of which was demoed at Build just yesterday. Here’s a list:

  • Improvements to Sets:
    • Sets now includes Acrylic.
    • Alt + Tab now shows recent Microsoft Edge tabs as separate windows, but you can disable it from settings.
    • You can now choose to make apps and websites open in a new tab or window in Settings.
    • You can now mute Edge tabs from Sets.
  • Cloud Clipboard is here: a new clipboard experience in Windows 10 that keeps track of what you copy and makes it accessible across all your Windows 10 devices. It doesn’t work with Android or iOS yet.
  • File Explorer finally includes a full-fledged dark theme.
  • Notepad now supports Unix, Linux, Macintosh line endings. It also includes a new option in the Edit context menu that lets you search for things on Bing.
  • Richer search previews: Windows 10’s default Search previews now show richer results, so you can see your recent documents in Word or create a new meeting on Outlook right form the search dialog.
  • You can now name tile folders on the Start Menu.

This is probably the first big Redstone 5 build Microsoft has released so far. It includes a couple of major new features as well as some other minor tweaks, but those looking to try out the new Your Phone experience will have to wait a bit longer. If you are in the Fast Ring of the Insider Program, make sure to grab the new build, 17666, from Windows Update.

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Conversation 47 comments

  • Daekar

    09 May, 2018 - 2:15 pm

    <p>Well… this is the first build that I'm actually excited about. Almost all those changes will impact my experience for the better. Cannot WAIT for cloud clipboard.</p>

  • Dave P

    Premium Member
    09 May, 2018 - 2:19 pm

    <p>666? oh boy. this is gonna be good :D</p>

    • madthinus

      Premium Member
      09 May, 2018 - 4:11 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#273780"><em>In reply to Dave_P:</em></a></blockquote><p>Hey, it worked for Doom</p>

  • aThingOrTwo

    09 May, 2018 - 2:38 pm

    <p>I presume that is a rough first cut at dark mode for Explorer and they won't ship it looking like that.</p>

    • Daekar

      09 May, 2018 - 2:45 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#273794"><em>In reply to aThingOrTwo:</em></a></blockquote><p>Not being a UI guru I don't find it immediately obvious what is wrong with the scheme in that screenshot. What would you change?</p>

      • NT6.1

        09 May, 2018 - 3:24 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#273795"><em>In reply to Daekar:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>The black is too black.</p>

        • Daekar

          09 May, 2018 - 4:14 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#273813"><em>In reply to NT6.1:</em></a></blockquote><p>Huh. I tend to like that, especially on OLED screens. Guess it's a subjective thing.</p>

        • NazmusLabs

          09 May, 2018 - 11:56 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#273813"><em>In reply to NT6.1:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yes, there are some apps that use dark gray while others use black. Both have their place. Dark gray looks better on LCDs and blacks look better on OLED. Ideally, there would be light mode, dark mode, and black mode. Some apps already support the three modes, but that's rare.</p>

      • aThingOrTwo

        09 May, 2018 - 4:49 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#273795"><em>In reply to Daekar:</em></a></blockquote><p>I will warn you I am not UI guru either!</p><p><br></p><p>The contrast and use of colour stands out to me as not quite right and overall it lacks visual consistency and cohesion. As a concrete example the down arrows in the ribbon (Navigation Pane, Sort by, Options etc.) are black on a dark background, whereas in "light" mode these arrows are dark on light, which is much more legible. </p><p><br></p><p>There are plenty more visual elements which do look right (the white border on help icon looks jarring) but the overall impression is that the dark colours have been "painted on" and that the design using the darker palette is not complete.</p>

    • paulc543

      09 May, 2018 - 9:48 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#273794"><em>In reply to aThingOrTwo:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>You would most likely presume wrong. We all thought the same thing about some of the hideous UI elements in the public previews of Windows 8. The tragically ugly icons come to mind. We all thought there was no way we were looking at the final UI design, but that's exactly what it was.</p><p><br></p><p>I agree the dark theme is not very good. There's any number of dark themed applications Microsoft could look at. None of them use pure black, and they all use subtle but consistant differences in shades. There's some shades here, but no rhyme or reason to any of it:</p><p><br></p><p>-The side bar is <em>barely</em> legibly lighter than the main black. </p><p>-The highlight (on Quick Access) is unlike any other shade. It's lighter than the tab in the title bar, but darker than the rest of the non-tab title bar space. </p><p>-The ribbon bar is way too light compared to anything else.</p><p>-The background of the view type box is light gray… who places one key light element in the middle of a DARK theme? Microsoft, that's who!</p><p>-The File menu item is highlighted blue, but the selected one (View in this example) is highlighted gray. Which is highlighted? Not the blue one that stands out the most, of course. </p><p>-The quick access bar background is… brown… BROWN??!??@?!?@?!?!?!?@?!?@?! </p><p><br></p><p>I would love a nice dark theme, the two applications I spend 90+ percent of my time in are both dark themed and they're perfect for night-time use. But this is just ugly. I really like Windows, but holy jesus, Microsoft sucks at UI design. There is no possible way whoever is in charge of design has any formal design education or expertise. Either that or it's all design by committee, which has long been known to rarely produce anything but pure garbage, as every design-blind manager steers the design to what he/she envisions will be acceptable to some uber-design-blind executive. </p><p><br></p>

  • Dan1986ist

    Premium Member
    09 May, 2018 - 2:49 pm

    <p>By the way, Cloud Clipboard settings can be turned off if you prefer not to use it, or turned on if you want to use it in this build. Also, the cross device clipboard sync settings toggle only appears if one is signed into Windows with a MSA. </p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    09 May, 2018 - 4:32 pm

    <p>the new clipboard features look amazing, stuff like this should have been added to Windows ages ago</p>

  • MarkH

    Premium Member
    09 May, 2018 - 7:04 pm

    <p>Hold on, am I missing something or is there no way to disable Sets in this build? Seems like something as half-baked and clumsy to use (yes, I've posted the appropriate feedback) should at LEAST be optional.</p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      09 May, 2018 - 10:12 pm

      <p><a href="#273962"><em>In reply to MarkH:</em></a></p><p>Look under Multitasking settings.</p>

      • MarkH

        Premium Member
        10 May, 2018 - 11:27 am

        <blockquote><a href="#274020"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>That's certainly where it used to be, but as you can see in THIS build, the option to disable it is gone (hence my question). Setting the only remaining options to "Window" or "Windows only" and rebooting has no effect on whether or not Sets tabs are used.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/sIS1NSd.png"></p&gt;

        • MarkH

          Premium Member
          11 May, 2018 - 10:42 am

          <blockquote><a href="#274378"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Oh well, thank you for trying! Here's to hoping they do the right thing in the next build :-P</p>

        • Darekmeridian

          11 May, 2018 - 11:58 am

          <blockquote><a href="#274208"><em>In reply to MarkH:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>It was rignt next to the "Sets" setting a slider to turn if off :/ I like the way Groupy does "Sets" better it's more simplistic. I get the feeling they took out the ability to disable it to force people to test? </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • Jay

    09 May, 2018 - 8:00 pm

    <p>i want a native Unix terminal</p>

    • Manuth Chek

      09 May, 2018 - 8:17 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#273983"><em>In reply to infenit101:</em></a></blockquote><p>It’s called WSL. </p>

      • Jay

        10 May, 2018 - 8:13 am

        <blockquote><a href="#273988"><em>In reply to unsharptooth:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Its not as good as a native Unix terminal.</p>

    • NazmusLabs

      09 May, 2018 - 11:53 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#273983"><em>In reply to infenit101:</em></a></blockquote><p>It's already available sure the Anniversary update. Have you not been following?</p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    10 May, 2018 - 2:07 am

    <p>This build is fantastic. Sets is awesome and now when I load up a program that doesn't work in it, its a bummer….</p>

  • xperiencewindows

    10 May, 2018 - 2:01 pm

    <p>Why did Microsoft decide to micro-manage the dark theme? Simply make everything that was white, black. Problem solved. I see two shades of gray, (no pun intended), brown, two shades of 'black'.</p>

    • Spineless

      11 May, 2018 - 2:17 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#274272"><em>In reply to xperiencewindows:</em></a></blockquote><p>Maybe you should take more than 2 seconds to think about it, because your concept about this is wrong beyond belief.</p>

  • tobyburnett41

    Premium Member
    12 May, 2018 - 11:05 am

    <p>I've been trying to get used to Edge, instead of Chrome, for the better efficiency with my laptops, especially my new HP Envy ARM guy. A big annoyance has been the lack of a back option in the right-click context menu, sure hope they fix that soon. But this new version seems to have lost the favorites! I tried the "import from file" option, which does not seem to work, If it did, that would be a convenient way to manage the list. One very nice thing about Chrome has been how seamlessly it synchronizes favorites.</p><p><br></p><p>About Sets, a curious property is that you can't add an element of one Set to another, if it is the only one. You have to start a new tab. So to have two File Explorer views, I have several steps. A natural approach would be for a "duplicate" option for a tab in a Set, </p>

  • mano793

    25 December, 2018 - 7:29 am

    <p>amazing post. <a href="https://etechnog.blogspot.com/&quot; target="_blank">ETechnoG</a></p>

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