Happy Friday, Windows Insiders: Microsoft has announced the availability of Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14942 for Fast ring testers. The best news? There are several new features.
Let’s jump right in.
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
Start menu. Now, you can hide the All Apps list in the Start menu, a top request since Microsoft delivered the reviled new design with the Anniversary Update. Cheers. Your nightmare is over.
New Photos app. I already wrote about this, but Microsoft is also debuting a newly-designed Photos app alongside this new build. This includes a new horizontal navigation bar, a new light viewing mode, new animations, and a true full screen mode. Oh, and it’s available on Xbox One too.
Precision touchpad. Microsoft has improved how gesture and click detction works on precision touchpads (like those found in Surface devices). “This includes enhancing detection and disambiguation of left and right clicks, making two finger taps and clicks a bit easier, reducing false positives in our two-finger tap detection and improving our pinch to zoom detection,” Microsoft explains. “We have also made algorithm changes in an effort to reduce inadvertent zooming when panning. If you have a precision touchpad on your device, please take the opportunity try out with this build and let us know how it feels with these changes.”
PC upgrades. Finally, Microsoft has improved the build over build upgrade experience so that apps you previously uninstalled or not silently reinstalled on the upgrade.
Windows Update. Not a huge deal, but there is a new Windows Update icon in this build.
Processes in Task Manager. Microsoft has changed the way it displays processes in Task Manager, so it may look like there are more processes running. Don’t freak out: on PCs with 3.5 GB or more of RAM, svchost.exe groups are finally being split out so you can see what’s really happening.
Active Hours. Microsoft has expanded the hour range of Active Hours from 12 hours to 18 hours, but only for those on Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise or Education.
Narrator. The Narrator tool picks up form field navigation, and you have a ton of new keyboard shortcuts in scan mode.
Yeah, lots of stuff. And a few known issues and smaller other improvements.Check out the Microsoft blog post for more information.