Microsoft just announced Windows 10 Redstone 5(a.k.a. version 1809) build to insiders in the Fast ring. As usual, the build comes with some very interesting new features and improvements.
What’s new
- Your Phone app
Microsoft showed the demo of the app at Microsoft build 2018, and since then there were various rumors circulating whether it is going to be in the final release of Redstone 5. With Build 17730, Microsoft finally introduces the Your Phone app. With the app installed on your PC, you can get an instant access to your Android phone and can get photos from your phone straight to your PC. The app is now available to Insiders running Redstone 5 build, but Microsoft recommends Build 17723 or higher for better performance. The app will not work in the China region, but Microsoft promises to bring it to Chinese people in near future.
The scenario with iPhone is a bit different with Your Phone app installed on your PC. If you have an iPhone and own a PC your access is limited means, you cannot just drag and drop pictures from your iPhone to your PC. On iPhone the app simply let you continue on PC just like how we do it with our Android smartphone. Microsoft though at the time of Build 2018 said that they would work with Apple to further tie Your Phone App with Windows 10 PCs, but we did not hear a word ever since.
- A Faster Safer Internet with HTTP/2 and CUBIC
Windows 10 Microsoft Edge clients will take advantage of connection coalescing for HTTP/2 as supported in Windows Server 2019. Also, there are improvements in security and performance on Microsoft Edge browsers by guaranteeing HTTP/2 preferred cipher suites.
- Aligning the Insider Feature Update experience with Retail
When you are asked to restart for new flights, you will now receive the same notifications and experience as what we plan to provide to our retail customers. Depending on your ring, you will be asked to schedule your restart for the first couple of days, then we will ask if we could automatically schedule restarts outside of your active hours. Your participation in this experience will help us understand rough edges to improve before we release to retail.
General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC
- We have fixed the issue impacting WDAG, Remote Desktop and Hyper-V. Remote Desktop Client (mstsc.exe) users should no longer see an error dialog complaining about low virtual memory when a connection is being established. And users can use enhanced sessions in Virtual Machine Connection (vmconnect.exe) again.
- Thank you everyone who has given us feedback on the “Block Suspicious Behaviors” feature that was recently added to Windows Security. For the time being we’re removing it from the build while we work on addressing some of the things you shared with us.
- We fixed an issue resulting in the volume slider in certain apps performing poorly with touch in recent flights.
- We fixed an issue resulting in certain apps, like the Twitter app, not rendering content when navigating after a while.
- We fixed an issue where expanding the Driver Updates dropdown in View Update History in Settings didn’t list anything (even when there were items to list) in recent builds.
Known issues
- Clicking a link to launch one app from another app may not work for some Insiders. We’re investigating.
- We’re progressing in our work on adding dark theme in File Explorer and the Common File Dialog, but we still have a few things left to do. You may see some unexpectedly light colors in these surfaces when in dark mode and/or dark on dark text.
- When you upgrade to this build you’ll find that the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc) no longer have an acrylic background.
- When you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues, or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.
- When you set up Microsoft Edge as your kiosk app and configure the start/new tab page URL from assigned access Settings, Microsoft Edge may not get launched with the configured URL. The fix for this issue should be included in the next flight.
- You may still see the notification count icon overlapping with the extension icon in the Microsoft Edge toolbar when an extension has unread notifications.
- On Windows 10 in S Mode, launching Office in the Store may fail to launch with an error about a .dll not being designed to run on Windows. The error message is that a .dll “is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Try installing the program again…” Some people have been able to work around this by uninstalling and reinstalling Office from the Store.
- When using Narrator Scan mode you may experience multiple stops for a single control. An example of this is if you have an image that is also a link. This is something we are actively working on.
- When using Narrator Scan mode Shift + Selection commands in Microsoft Edge, the text does not get selected properly.
- We’re investigating a potential increase in Start reliability and performance issues in this build.
- After setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time on this build with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be re-paired a second time before appearing in the headset.
- When using a Windows Mixed Reality immersive app, saying “Flashlight on,” may fail to activate the flashlight feature even though the status appears as active on the Start menu.
