Windows 10 Technical Preview 2: Music and Video Preview Apps Now Available

During the January press event for Windows 10 Technical Preview 2, Microsoft quickly showed how it planned to visually update its Music and Video apps for Windows to universal versions. And today, if you’re running the latest build, you can grab the first preview versions of these apps and see how (or whether) things have progressed.

Frankly, these apps are mostly just visual redesigns to match the new universal app style and many features are still missing. But here are a few changes I see in the preview apps.

Music

Universal app design. Music drops the Modern look and adopts the universal app look and feel, with no app bars, universal back button, minimalistic icons, and a sparse visual style. Settings happens through a Settings icon, not the now-missing Settings charm.

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music-main

Collection view has been replaced. Where Music previously had a single Collections item in the nav bar, requiring you to choose between Albums, Artists and Songs views from there, the Music Preview app just puts Albums, Artists and Songs right there in the nav bar alongside Radio and Explore (which is the Store interface).

More readily available options. The Albums, Artists and Songs views now have Shuffle All and Select buttons in addition to the previously-available Filter and Sort By. But here’s something cool: You can filter each view to show only that music that is on OneDrive!

filter-to-onedrive

According to Microsoft, a number of features will come in later builds. These include the ability to browse and buy music in the Windows Store Beta (you can still buy music in the old Music app if needed), right-click context menus, an improved back button for easier app navigation, support for the dark color theme, a compact mode, Settings improvements, improved support for accessibility, and more.

You can download the Music Preview app now from the Windows Store.

Video

Universal app design. As with Music, Video Preview drops the Modern look and adopts the universal app look and feel.

video-main

New playback experience. And speaking of universal, the playback experience picks up that Spartan look too.

video-play

Collection view has been replaced. And as with Music, Video Preview drops the single Collections item in the nav bar and has Videos (personal videos), Movies and TV views instead.

No Store. Where the old app has Movies Store and TV Store items in the nav bar, Video Preview does not: eventually you will buy these items through the Windows Store Beta.

According to Microsoft, a number of features will come in later builds, including the ability to buy new movies and TV shows in the Windows Store Beta, the ability to download movies and TV for offline play, new device management features, improved search results, movie reviews and cast information, and Settings improvements.

You can download the Video Preview app now from the Windows Store.

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