Windows 10 Fall Creators update: Major features, Full Changelog & Release Timelines

Windows 10 Falls Creators update Major Features & Official Videos:

Fluent Design:

Microsoft’s Fluent Design system has five main elements: Light, Depth, Motion, Material and Scale. Windows Insiders are already enjoying taste of Fluent design in updated Native Windows 10 apps on Fall Creators update preview builds. But as Microsoft reveals in its official Fluent design demo video these changes are part of Fluent Design Wave 1. While insiders have access to Wave 1 design via native apps, Microsoft is already working on Wave 2 of Fluent Design.

Watch the big Fluent Design Demo below to learn more about Fluent design and what to expect in terms of UI changes on Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and native apps.

Windows Timeline:

Windows Timeline lets you jump back in time to find what you were working on, whether it was 2 hours or 2 months ago. Easily hop back into your files, apps and sites as if you never left. This experience also follows you as you switch devices among Windows 10, iOS or Android.

Here’s a short video demo of Windows Timeline in action:

Pick up where you left off:

Lately known as “Continue experiences” on Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft is looking to take the feature step further with Cortana and the power of Microsoft Graph and Cloud. When you log out of one device say Windows PC and switch to another, say Android phone. Cortana, available on Android, asks if you want to continue working in your app, doc or website on this device.
What is more, you can even copy content including text, images, videos etc. on one device and paste between connected devices from your clipboard.

Here’s a short video demo of Pick up where you left off in action:

Save local disk space with OneDrive Files on-demand:

This feature lets you access your files in the cloud without using storage space on your device with OneDrive Files On-Demand. All your files can be seen in File Explorer and accessed on-demand whenever they are needed. What this simply means is you can preview the files right inside the app/browser on cloud, and download it later, if you need to. This is pretty neat feature especially if you are carrying a tablet device with a low storage space.

Story Remix:

Microsoft also announced Story Remix as one of the upcoming top features of this Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. It allows doing cools things with our videos in 3D. You can mix, create, add effects from real world to your videos to make them awesome.

Windows 10 Falls Creators update full Changelog (Official & Unmentioned Changes from Insider Builds):

We have compiled the official and unmentioned changes noticed in Insider Preview builds of Redstone 3 aka Fall Creators update here.

Build 16199:

Emotive Experience in My People: The next wave of cool features for My People is now available for Windows Insiders! In addition to being able to place your favorite people to the taskbar, today’s build brings even more personal ways to stay in touch and share with the people closest to you.

We’re adding:

• See emoji from your pinned contacts: When you receive emoji from your pinned contacts you can now watch them appear and animate right from the taskbar! Have one of your pinned contacts send you an emoji via Skype (for example “(hero)”) and see what happens! If you’d like to turn this off, open taskbar settings by right-clicking on the taskbar.
• Notification Badging: The contacts pinned to your taskbar will now display a counter if there are unseen messages, ensuring you have at-a-glance access to communications you have missed from your pinned contacts. Note: You might need to update Skype to version 11.16.556.0 to see notification badges when new Skype messages come in.
• People-first Sharing: You now have two easy ways to share with your people in Windows 10! Drag-and-drop files directly onto the contacts in your taskbar to start an email, or share directly to your contacts via the share picker by choosing from a list recommended people to email.

Try it out! As always, we look forward to your feedback.

Improved Game Settings: We’ve made some improvements and adjustments that PC gamers will enjoy via Settings > Gaming and the Windows Game bar (WIN + G).

Some things to check out:

• Broadcast using game-only audio: Under Settings > Gaming > Broadcasting, you can now choose “Per-app audio” to broadcast using only the game’s audio to Beam as opposed to the audio for your entire PC.
• Audio settings is now Game DVR in Game bar: We have renamed the Audio settings page under the settings in Game bar to be Game DVR. All Game DVR settings from the general gaming settings page has been moved to be under Game DVR. Per-app audio settings is also included here as well.

Note: Windows Insiders will see a “Game Monitor” page under Settings > Gaming for potential future functionality which doesn’t do anything right now.

Other Settings Updates: One of our ongoing goals is to help make it easier for you to understand the state of your system and quickly get to the settings you need to tailor your Windows 10 experience. With that, this build brings two new features to Settings:

• Settings > System > About now integrated with System Health: The About Settings page has been simplified to be accessible to all customers. In addition to the overall UX cleanup, we have also added a health section that pulls in information from the Windows Defender Security Center so you can see your system health at a glance.
• Tips and Videos in Settings: To help you learn more about your options, we’re starting to add tips and videos to Settings. We’re still growing our collection, but to start with you can find them in under Settings > Ease of Access or Settings > Update & security, a handful of other areas. More content is being added all the time and we’re really hoping to get your help figuring out the best tip content for each page. If you have an idea of a tip that would help your least techie friend or family member, please provide us feedback through the feedback hub! Note: Depending on the size of the Settings window, you will find the tips either at the bottom of the page, or on the side.

Expanding Storage Sense’s abilities: During development of the Windows 10 Creators Update, we added the ability to automatically free up space using Storage Sense. We’re continuing to grow this feature, and you can now choose to automatically clean up files that have been unchanged in your Downloads folder for 30 days. Just go to Settings > System > Storage and click on “Change how we free up space” to adjust this setting.

Streamlining Narrator Feedback: We’ve updated Narrator so that when you press Caps Lock + E + E while Narrator is running, it will now launch the Feedback Hub.

Incoming call notifications: For our Insiders with Android phones, Cortana can now display cross device incoming call notifications! Install the Cortana app on your phone, go to “Settings” > “Sync notifications” and turn on all the Cortana cross-device features. The next time you receive a call, a notification will appear on your Fast ring PC telling you who it is and giving you the option to text back a reply or decline the call.

Build 16193:

Tell your story your way: Today at Build we unveiled a big update coming to the Windows 10 Creators Update and the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Story Remix is an evolution of the Photos app that makes it easier than ever to relive your memories and introduces video story creation from your photos and videos. Windows Insiders will be the first to try out many of the new features demonstrated today – with more to come!

• Videos made easy: Story Remix uses its understanding of your content to find collections of content most relevant to you and automatically brings it together into video stories – each with a soundtrack, theme, and transitions. You can keep these suggested video stories to enjoy and share, remix them with just a click of a button, or edit them yourself in story editor to get it just right. Anyone can get started creating great videos with the help of Story Remix.
• Search: Story Remix uses deep learning and AI to automatically tag your content. Now you can search by people, places or things to easily find specific photos in your ever-growing collection so that you can view, edit or create a story.

• Updated UX: The Story Remix app now includes elements of Fluent Design like connected animations, conscious scrollbars, and acrylic. The Explore page is the hub for your entire collection of photos and videos, where you can view your content in three different sizes – small, medium, and large. The Create page is the jumping off point for creating new stories.
• Discovery bar: The new discovery bar gives you quick access to delight and common tasks, making it easy to create a new story, see stories we’ve created for you, and discover your past memories of people, places, and things.
• Share your stories: Upload your video stories quickly to YouTube and Facebook, or share them easily via email or via OneDrive.

Power Throttling Update: Starting with Build 16193, the Task Manager column name has changed from “Background Moderated” to “Power Throttling”. For more information on Power Throttling, read this blog post here.

Individually controlling the volume of your UWP apps: We’ve updated the Volume Mixer to now include UWP apps (like Microsoft Edge, or Groove Music), so you can set their volume without impacting the overall system volume. Appreciate everyone who’s shared feedback requesting this, let us know what you’d like to see next! Note: UWP apps will only appear in the Volume Mixer once they start playing sound. To open the Volume Mixer, right-click on the speaker icon in the taskbar.

Build 16188:

Awesome new features in Microsoft Edge’s PDF Reader: In addition to addressing a lot of Insider feedback on PDF functionality in Microsoft Edge, this build is also packed with a bunch of new features for reading PDFs in Microsoft Edge that we want you to check out. Here is the description of the features to look out for:

• PDF Form filling: Every now and then we encounter forms to be filled which are in PDF format. Now you can fill in PDF based forms within Microsoft Edge, save them and print them!
• PDF Annotations: The annotations capability in the browser is now extended to PDFs as well. You can use the “Make a Web Note” button on the top right of browser frame to invoke an annotations bar.

Using different modes in the annotations bar, you can ink on the PDF, highlight text and erase your annotations. You can save the work onto the PDF file for later use.

• Table of Contents for easier navigation: For reading longer documents, you can now use the Table of Contents (ToC) feature for easier navigation. You will see the ToC button on the left of the PDF toolbar if the document has ToC defined by the author. Click on any heading in the side pane to navigate to that part of the document.

• Better viewing and navigation: Sometimes PDF documents, such as documents that are copies of documents scanned in, are not in proper orientation and need to be rotated to view them properly. Now you can rotate the PDF documents for better readability. Look for the rotate button in the toolbar. Also, it is important to be able to adjust the reading layout of the files to best suit user’s needs based on the screen size, type etc. Using the “Layout” flyout menu on the toolbar, now you can switch from one page to two page layouts and change to page-wise scrolling for better navigation experience for longer documents.

Windows Defender Application Guard: Announced last September in the Microsoft Edge Blog, Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge is now available in Windows Insider Previews for Enterprise users in the Fast Ring. Microsoft Edge running in Application Guard provides enterprises the maximum level of protection from malware and zero day attacks against Windows. We’ve made it easy to test drive Microsoft Edge with Application Guard. First, turn on Windows Defender Application Guard using the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog. Select the checkbox as shown below for Windows Defender Application Guard.

Click OK and then restart your computer.

Next, open Microsoft Edge and then click the Edge menu. You’ll see a new menu choice for “New Application Guard window.”

When you click this, a new Edge Window will open in . You’re ready to enter any website address in the address bar to visit and that session will be isolated in Application Guard.

We are looking forward to your feedback, here is a link to reach us on Feedback Hub.

See this forum post for more details.

Note: Windows Defender Application Guard requires Windows Enterprise Edition and Hyper-V.  Your PC must be capable of running Microsoft Hyper-V to use Application Guard.

Ninjacat Icon for Windows Insider Program in Settings: Check out the new Ninjacat icon representing the Windows Insider Program under Settings > Update & security > Windows Insider Program.

Cortana’s settings have been integrated into Settings: Cortana is a core component of Windows and users look to the Settings app to find Cortana’s settings. We’ve heard your feedback about discoverability, and with this build, we’ve made the change to migrate all of Cortana’s settings into Settings. You can access them by clicking the settings gear in Cortana, going to Settings > Cortana, or just searching for the setting you’re interested in.

A reimagined Magnifier Settings page: In order to improve the experience both for low vision users, as well as casual Magnifier users who use it for presentations or quick zooming, we’ve updated the Magnifier Settings page. Insiders will notice that the page has not only been redesigned, but also comes with a few new features, namely:

• You can now easily follow Narrator around the screen with Magnifier by selecting “Follow the Narrator cursor”.
• We’ve embedded a list of all the available Magnifier shortcuts into the Settings page for quick reference.
• You can now zoom using your mouse wheel by holding down a key combination (Win + Ctrl)
• We’ve added an option to open the Magnifier settings from anywhere in the OS by pressing Ctrl + Win + M.
• You can now set your preferred Magnifier mode in Settings.
• We’ve added an option to select your preferred zoom increment when using Magnifier.

If you’re a Magnifier user, please try it out and share your feedback!

Improving your update experience: We’ve heard your feedback, and with Build 16188 we’ve replaced the previous modal Windows Update dialog with a new interactive toast notification so you can easily be aware of an available update without it interrupting your work. Try it out next time you get an update, and as always, please share your feedback!

Build 16184:

• My People: Technology is all about making it easier for you to connect with your most important people. Whether you want to share a photo, make plans for dinner, or get an answer from a friend or coworker – My People is here to take it to the next level and bring the people you care about most to the center of your experience.

You can now:

• Pin your people to the taskbar – we’ll suggest some to start with, or you can pick your own! (Note: you are currently limited to having 3 people pinned to your taskbar currently.)
• View multiple communication apps together and filtered to each person on your taskbar.
• Choose the app you want to use to chat and we’ll remember for next time.

By now, you are wondering ‘but how do I host this party in my taskbar?’. To start with, go to the Store app and make sure you have all the latest updates for the Skype, Mail, and People apps. Then click on the People icon in the taskbar to activate the first run experience and get setup.

Note: Contact syncing is enabled by default following system settings in versions 11.13+ of Skype. If you have an older version of Skype you will need to manually enable contact syncing via the Skype app settings.

Have feedback you want to share with the team? We want to hear it! You can send us feedback by tapping the ellipsis in the People flyout and selecting “Send feedback”, or by opening the Feedback Hub and sharing your thoughts in the Desktop Environment > My People section. We have some more work on its way for this that will soon be lighting up for Insiders, including our improved Share story for People, so stay tuned!

• New experience for Gmail accounts in Windows 10 Mail & Calendar apps: Last week, we announced we’re introducing a new experience for Gmail accounts in the Windows 10 Mail and Calendar apps that brings our latest features such as Focused Inbox and richer experiences for travel reservations and package deliveries that were previously only available to those with an Outlook.com or Office 365 email address. Windows Insiders will be the first to try out the new experience as the roll-out gradually happens over the next few weeks. You’ll know the new experience is available for your account when you are prompted to update your Gmail account settings.

Build 16179:

• Revert VM: Continuing our theme of simplifying Hyper-V for developers on Windows 10 (see What’s New), we’re introducing automatic checkpoints so that you’ll always be able to undo a mistake in your virtual machine – you can now always revert to the last time you started a virtual machine.
• Introducing Power Throttling*: You may remember some of the power experiments we did back in January with Build 15002. Power Throttling was one of those experiments, and showed to have up to 11% savings in CPU power consumption for some of the most strenuous use cases. So, we’re turning this on for everyone starting with last week’s build. Check out our complete blog post on this for more details!