The Windows 10 PC Build 14316 released for insiders on the fast ring is one of the biggest such updates in recent times. A number of new features have been added that were announced last week at Build 2016 for the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary “Redstone” Update.
Here’s a brief run of features from Microsoft’s blog site.
Run native Bash on Ubuntu on Windows: In this build, you can natively run Bash in Windows as announced last week at Build 2016. To do this, you first need to turn on Developer Mode via Settings > Update & security > For developers. Then search for “Windows Features” and choose “Turn Windows features on or off” and enable Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta). To get Bash installed, open Command Prompt and type “bash”.
Cortana Cross-Device Features: Starting today, we will be releasing new features to Insiders on an ongoing basis that keeps you in perfect sync across all the devices where you use Cortana to stay connected and never miss a beat throughout your day. With today’s build, we are rolling out the below features. If you are an Insider who doesn’t have a Windows phone, these features will also work with Android devices too but you will need Cortana Version 1.5 or higher for them to work.
Low Battery Notifications: Cortana will now inform you of low battery power on your mobile devices. For example, if your phone’s battery is low, a notification will pop up on your PC so you can promptly charge it before your next meeting
Find my phone/Ring my phone: We all lose track of our phone from time to time and now you can ask Cortana to find your phone, regardless of device, on your PC using the new find my phone feature. The feature will allow users to locate their phone from their PC through geo-location and by having Cortana ring your phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=bOGLBu4_cyY
Try out the Skype UWP Preview app: You can try out the Skype UWP Preview app announced a couple of weeks ago on the Skype blog. The Skype UWP Preview app includes a lot of the basic Skype functionality – with more features and functionality to come in the next couple of releases. We are first releasing this for PCs only, but we will be making the Skype UWP app available on for Mobile in a future build.
Action Center Improvements: We have added the ability to select which app notifications are more important to you in Action Center. On your device, you can manage the notification settings for individual apps by going to Settings > System > Notifications & actions. Just click or tap on a specific app to adjust its notification settings. You can prioritize its notifications in Action Center to be one of 3 levels: Normal, High, or Priority. Additionally, you can also adjust how many notifications are visible per app. The default is now 3 per app. If an app has more than 3 notifications, just click or tap to expand and see all notifications for that app. This was a top request from Insiders.
Updated Emoji: We wanted to share some cool work from our design team that is showing up in this build. We are updating the entire set of font-based emoji in Windows 10 that aligns with the Microsoft Design Language with a distinct visual style as well as the Unicode standard. These new emoji are designed to be detailed, expressive, and playful. Their larger size takes full advantage of every pixel and the two-pixel outline allows for emoji to appear on any color background without loss of fidelity. Our new emoji also supports skin tone modification across a wide variety of people glyphs.
Personalization Improvements: We’ve added the ability to universally toggle between dark and light modes via Settings > Personalization > Colors. When you switch to dark mode, apps such as Settings, Store, Alarms & Clock, Calculator and other UWP apps that listen and respond to theme changes in the OS will change into dark mode. Some UWP apps that control their own theme settings (separate from Windows) won’t change by toggling this setting.
We’ve also added a new option under Settings > Personalization > Colors to show color only on app title bars in addition to the option to show color on Start, the taskbar, and Action Center.
New PC access experience: Using the new Connect app, you can bring the Continuum experience from your phone (a Continuum-enabled Windows 10 phone is required) to the PC without needing a dock or Miracast adapter. Additionally, it also allows other Miracast-enabled PCs to project to other PCs without needing a dock or Miracast adapter as well. The Connect app will mention the ability to use a USB cable to connect to your PC however this is a bug and the app only supports wireless connections on PCs. This is an early preview of this feature – we have more work coming to make the experience even better.
Commenting in the Feedback Hub: As we announced at Build last week, we have added the ability to comment on feedback inside the Feedback Hub. You have seen responses from our engineering team in the app already, in what we call “sticky comments”. Those comments are now the top items in a comments thread where you can discuss feedback with each other and us. So in addition to up-voting on feedback, you can now comment on feedback too. We hope you will use the discussion feature to share workarounds, discuss suggestions others have made, and share any new info you have about problems you’re seeing. As always, please let us know what you think by going to Apps & Games > Feedback Hub and joining the discussion!
Messaging Everywhere Preview Coming Soon: We will soon be enabling a preview of the “Messaging everywhere” feature in Windows 10 that allows you to send and receive text messages from your phone directly from your Windows 10 PC’s. You will see options for this feature in the Messaging app on PC however an update is required for the Messaging app for Mobile for this experience to work. More to come on this when the experience is live.
Overall, this is a massive update and in case you roll on fast ring of Windows insiders, there is no reason to avert it. Share your experience in comments section below about this latest PC build from Microsoft