Hands-On with Redstone 5: Search Previews
- Paul Thurrott
- May 16, 2018
-
8
Microsoft is expanding its use of inline previews in Start search in the next version of Windows 10. Here’s a quick peek at how this functionality works.
In the current Windows 10 version, you can see search previews for the web, but they’re not expanded by default.
Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
Instead, you need to select the right-facing arrow to display the preview.
In Windows 10 Redstone 5, the Start search window that appears is already expanded to that wider view, most likely because there are now more previews available.
For example, I ran into the new search previews this morning when I searched for the Your Phone app.
This seems like a good use of space: You can see options for the app that would normally be hidden in a non-discoverable context menu.
There are other search previews in RS5 for recent documents and files, for tasks—Microsoft cites “jump-starting … a new Outlook meeting, a quick comment in OneNote, or changing a system setting,” though it’s not clear to me yet how that might work—and for Bing-based quick answers.
Microsoft notes that it will improve these previews over time and will further expand them to include other capabilities too. And while this is a fairly minor change compared to, say, Sets, these search previews still fall neatly into the same basic productivity bucket and look like a solid addition to Windows 10.