Microsoft Delivers Another Blockbuster Windows 10 Insider Preview Build

Microsoft Delivers Another Blockbuster Windows 10 Insider Preview Build

Two weeks after it delivered its biggest-ever Windows 10 Insider Preview build, Microsoft is back with another impressive update. Build 16226 adds another impressive list of new features to what will become the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

So let’s see what’s new.

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Microsoft Edge

For the second time in a row, Edge gets a lot of attention.

Improved tabs. Now, the Close Tab (“X”) will always be available, even when the tab is displaying a dialog box. (Likewise, the option to close all tabs—e.g. close Edge—is always available.)

Improved browser migration. While the Creators Update already dramatically improved Edge browser migration functionality, this build adds cookie and settings migration.

Improved EPUB support. New to this build: “Ask Cortana” is available when select text and then right-click, Ink Notes capabilities, and e-book roaming (reading progress, notes, and bookmarks are now synced between PCs).

Improved Favorites. When you add a new Favorite, you’ll see an expandable and collapsible tree of your Favorites folders so you can put it in the right place more easily. You can also edit the URL for any Favorite, and IT admins can configure Favorites via Group Policy or MDM.

Emoji

Microsoft has added support for the latest Unicode updates, “including new snacks, actions, dinosaurs, and even fantasy characters like genies, fairie, and zombies.” It has also updated some of the original emoji designs, and improved the hardware keyboard’s Emoji Panel to support search and a dark theme.

OneDrive

As you may remember, Microsoft released OneDrive Files on Demand last week. It’s not clear from Microsoft’s announcement if this feature is now just included in the new build, but I’d imagine that will happen eventually if not.

In any event, OneDrive has been updated to prompt you when an app is downloading an online-only file. That way, you can cancel the download if you wish.

Touch keyboard improvements

Microsoft has made a long list of improvements to the Touch keyboard, which now supports shape writing and text prediction for more languages, support for new East Asian languages, a one-handed curve-flick touch keyboard for Japanese, and more.

Pen support

Pen scrolling now supports Win32 desktop applications including File Explorer.

Sound improvements

Microsoft introduced Windows Sonic in the Windows 10 Creators Update, but now it’s even easier to enable. Just plug in a pair of headphones, right-click the sound icon in the notification area, and select Spatial sound to choose your preferred format.

Gaming improvements

There’s a new Xbox Networking section in Settings > Gaming that will help you troubleshooting game chat and multiplayer game issues. More impressive, Task Manager has been updated to include GPU performance over time.

Settings improvements

Microsoft has made tons of improvements and additions to Settings. You can delete a previous Windows version directly from Storage Sense, access a new Remote Desktop settings interface, and get more information when an update fails.

Shell improvements

The Reveal Highlight UX effect has been enabled by default on all list view (and related) controls in UWP apps. And File Explorer has been updated with a new Share option in the right-click context menu.

But wait, there’s more

There are a ton of other updates. My People gets some polish, Calculator picks up a currency conversion feature, there are many accessibility improvements, and even IT pros gets some love for a change: Windows 10 is beginning its transition away from the out-of-date and insecure SMB1 protocol, and Hyper-V’s Virtual Machine Manager now supports virtual machine (VM) sharing. Also, there have been various Mixed Reality improvements that only some developers will care about at the moment. Be sure to check Microsoft’s blog post for a complete list of improvements, plus some known issues as well.

 

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Conversation 27 comments

  • MerlinE.

    22 June, 2017 - 3:14 am

    <p>You left out the most important change! Surface Pro 1 has Wifi again!</p>

    • NarcoSleepy

      22 June, 2017 - 7:51 am

      <blockquote><a href="#129895"><em>In reply to MerlinE.:</em></a></blockquote><p>Not sure why this was downvoted. Build 16215 caused my SP2 wireless and bluetooth to not function. Is this a similar issue for SP1 and did this build fix it?</p>

  • SteveM

    22 June, 2017 - 4:12 am

    <p> There is also a new build for Windows 10 Mobile. <a href="https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/06/21/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-15226-mobile/#LcfT2zPxKjs7v2m5.97&quot; target="_blank">Details here.</a> Not much, but hey.</p>

  • chump2010

    22 June, 2017 - 4:51 am

    <p>I just wanted to say I am surprised at how surprised you are at Windows 10 getting lots of new features. Is this not what Microsoft promised when they first released 10? Continuous improvement with new releases. Its just that the past few releases have been duds mostly, not that much new stuff that stands out to users (not saying there was not new stuff, just that on release it did not feel like lots of killer new features). </p><p><br></p><p>I think what has actually happened is that we users get beta features…all the time every feature is a beta version, which is why it needs continuous improvement. Whereas when Microsoft released operating systems every 2-4 years, they would not have that many new new features, but the ones they did would be much more complete in and of themselves.</p>

  • CyberDadIO

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 5:39 am

    <p>I hope this one is better than 16215. That build, for me, has been quite unstable.</p>

    • VMax

      Premium Member
      22 June, 2017 - 5:54 am

      <blockquote><a href="#130281"><em>In reply to CyberDadIO:</em></a></blockquote><p> It's much worse for me – unusable. I've rolled back to 16215.</p>

    • JerryH

      Premium Member
      22 June, 2017 - 10:01 am

      <blockquote><a href="#130281"><em>In reply to CyberDadIO:</em></a></blockquote><p>I hope so too; 16215 had a complete showstopper – Outlook 2016 says that the Windows Search service isn't installed and it won't allow you to search (no index). I always worry when the Insider Blog post doesn't mention something like this as fixed AND doesn't mention it in known issues. Will try this build once they make it available for Enterprise TAP (we get the builds from Connect.microsoft.com and not via Windows Update. For some reason, this one is late and isn't there on Connect yet.</p>

  • Siv

    22 June, 2017 - 8:11 am

    <p>But have they put the right-click refresh option in Edge yet! Until they do that Firefox remains my daily driver!</p>

    • Narg

      22 June, 2017 - 9:35 am

      <blockquote><a href="#130345"><em>In reply to Siv:</em></a></blockquote><p>I guess F5 is too difficult?</p>

      • hrlngrv

        Premium Member
        22 June, 2017 - 1:16 pm

        <p><a href="#130363"><em>In reply to Narg:</em></a></p><p>It is with one hand on mouse and the other holding a vessel containing one's beverage of choice. SMALL functionality gaps are still functionality gaps.</p>

        • warren

          23 June, 2017 - 10:08 am

          <blockquote><a href="#130484"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>There's a refresh button on the toolbar. Use it. (And don't argue back with, "hurrr, but I have to move my mouse"…. you're going to have to do that when using a context menu anyways.)</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • MacLiam

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 8:23 am

    <p>16226 installed without problems on the Studio but there were major difficulties on the Book, which is now stuck in an Attempting to recover/Rollback loop that I have not yet been able to break out of.</p><p><em>UPDATE about 18 hours later</em>: The Book was declared officially dead by the Help Desk guys at the Microsoft Store where I bought it last year. My extended warranty had four days left, so they replaced it for me and even allowed an upgrade to the performance base model for the cost difference ($100) between the price I paid and the price of the new one. A satisfactory outcome, all in all, but I did lose a few files that can probably be rebuilt if necessary and a bunch of post-it type notes that will probably cause me some trouble in the future. I mean, if I could remember that kind of stuff I wouldn't have made those notes, right?</p><p>I'm a little gun-shy about FR updates on Books at the moment, so I may not be quite as aggressive on Insider activity for — well, over the weekend, maybe.</p>

  • wolters

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 9:07 am

    <p>I use a Surface 3 LTE for my Windows Insider and will update today…this sounds like a great update. </p>

  • Narg

    22 June, 2017 - 9:35 am

    <p>The last few builds have had some pretty nasty bugs in my testing. Hoping they get less occurring, and more stable on builds soon.</p>

  • cyloncat

    22 June, 2017 - 9:37 am

    <p>I'm on a Surface Laptop that was upgraded to Pro before anything was installed. Now running 16226 and it Device Guard is blocking all my non-Windows-Store apps. What the….? If I can't get this fixed quickly, I'll have to roll back. </p><p> </p><p>UPDATE: I just rolled back to 16215 and put this machine on the slow ring until it looks like this bug is fixed.</p>

  • John Dunagan

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 11:00 am

    <p>Any word on the second-monitor-going-dead-then-turning-back-on scenario?</p>

  • Dan1986ist

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 11:05 am

    <p>Wonder what the removal of SMB1/CIFS which the Computer Browser service depends on would mean for those using file and printer sharing on their LAN, those backing up to networked storage, or using other types of network accessible devices? Will Microsoft be changing said service in Windows 10 so it does not have to be dependent on SMB version 1 between now and Fall?</p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      23 June, 2017 - 9:15 am

      <blockquote><a href="#130384"><em>In reply to Dan1986ist:</em></a></blockquote><p>That is a foregone conclusion.</p>

  • TeeJaySD

    22 June, 2017 - 12:53 pm

    <p>Any idea when the Touch Keyboard, will support 'voice to text', when using my Surface Book in Tablet mode, it would be VERY handy to just speak what I want to enter. Kinda like on all the other mobile OS's. :/</p>

  • MutualCore

    22 June, 2017 - 1:06 pm

    <p>Edge is still a garbage fire.</p>

  • cseafous

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 3:04 pm

    <p>This is what I imagined would happen when they no longer had to devote resources to legacy versions of the OS. Now they just need to make EDGE a stand alone UWP and things can really start to ramp up.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    22 June, 2017 - 10:06 pm

    <p>FWIW, on my system this has been the slowest of all Insider build updates. So far it's taken over 50 minutes from clicking the Check button in settings, I'm on the Working on updates screen, and it's only to 10%.</p>

    • CompUser

      23 June, 2017 - 5:37 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#131920"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a><em> Yea, it took at least six or seven hours (on an Xfinity 120 Mb/second connection) for this build to download and install on my computer. It's pretty ridiculous.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • CompUser

    23 June, 2017 - 5:08 pm

    <p>I still will not use Edge even though it apparently got a lot of attention. Why? Because, for whatever reason, Microsoft still doesn't think users should be able to control the width of the Favorites Menu (it uses up about 20% of my display as it is), or to decide which side of our displays we want it to be on, like we could do with Internet Explorer. I'm very happy with Firefox 54, and so far, Microsoft has not given me a reason to switch back to either IE or Edge.</p><p>Sound Improvements: The Audio Service still will not start on the Insider partition of my dual-boot desktop. This service starts and all audio devices work fine on the Creator's Update partition, which uses the identical same hardware and drivers, but it just will not start, and therefore the audio devices do not work, on the Insider partition. It's been this way for some time now.</p><p>And the Calculator is gone. I searched for the executable and created a shortcut for it, but when I try to run it, I get the error "The code execution cannot proceed because CONCRT140_APP.dll was not found"; I click OK on that and get "The code execution cannot prodeed because vccorlib140_app.DLL was not found"; and clicking OK on that gets the "code execution cannot proceed because CONCRT140_APP.dll was not found" error a second time; and finally, clicking OK gets "The code execution cannot proceed because VCRUNTIME140.APP.dll was not found". Each of these also says reinstalling the program may fix the problem.</p>

  • navarac

    24 June, 2017 - 2:03 am

    <p>I notice that File History has slipped back quietly in Build 16226.</p>

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