Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10122 is Now Available for PCs

Microsoft is delivering a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build for PCs to fast ring testers today. Build 10122 includes a number of new features, such as Start and Continuum improvements, the promised New Tab page in Microsoft Edge, a new default apps interface, and more.

“This build is a bit more stable and polished than the last one, which is to be expected as we begin to stabilize for the public release this summer,” Microsoft Gabe Aul notes in a blog posted announcing the release. “From here on out you’ll see fewer big feature changes from build to build, and more tuning, tweaking, stabilizing, and polishing. The Insider Previews continue to be aimed at very technical people who want to play with pre-released code, but I think you’ll feel more and more comfortable using this build and future builds on your day to day systems.”

Well. That’s an awfully bold statement. 🙂

Here’s what’s new.

Start menu improvements. Microsoft has further refined the visual layout of Start by moving File Explorer and Settings to the bottom left of the menu, next to Power and All Apps “for better symmetry.” Additionally, the context menu you see when you right-click on items on Start has been updated, and the toggle for switching between Start menu and Start screen has been removed: you can find it now in Personalization settings. (Microsoft expects users to pick one or the other and stick with it. Plus people thought they had triggered Tablet Mode when they clicked the toggle.)

Continuum improvements. When you switch to Tablet mode, the left-hand pane is now collapsed and can be redisplayed by clicking the icon at the top left. In Tablet mode, Start now displays larger tiles to better use the available space and more closely resemble Windows 8.1.

Microsoft Edge improvements. Microsoft’s new web browser gets the cool New Tab page that it showed off at Build last month, and it’s set as the default home page now too. Edge also picks up InPrivate browsing, the ability to pin web sites to Start, history view, a new animated Reading View icon, and an audio indicator on tabs that have web pages making sounds or playing music. Under the covers, Edge also includes the latest enhancements to the Chakra rendering engine.

Default apps changes. Starting with this build, any new application install that causes a change in which app is used to open a certain file type will trigger a prompt so you can confirm the change. (In Windows 8.1, this only happened with legacy desktop applications, or what Gabe called “Classic Windows applications.”) If you upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, Windows 10 will give you an opportunity to upgrade your defaults during initial set up to new Universal Windows apps that come as part of the new OS.

There is one serious known issue: Users with AMD graphics cards will likely experience frequent crashes in Microsoft Edge. To avoid that, switch to the Slow ring and wait for the next build. (Navigate to Settings, Update & security, Windows Update, Advanced.) Or wait until Microsoft provides a fix, which could happen before the next build.

Installing now. I’ll post the other changes I find when I can.