Windows 10 Build 16215 is out

Microsoft today released yet another Windows 10 Insider Preview version. Windows 10 build 16215 which represents the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, code name "Redstone 3", is available now for Fast Ring Insiders. This build comes with tons of changes. Let's see what's new.

The change log features the following improvements and updates.

Start & Action Center bring elements of Fluent Design

This build introduces new UI for Start and Action Center that includes elements of our new Fluent Design System which was announced at Build 2017.

Start improvements include:

• Acrylic: If you have transparency enabled for Start, you’ll notice it’s now been updated to use the new acrylic design.
• Vertical resize: No more glitches at the bottom of the frame.
• Horizontal resize: The frame now starts resizing horizontally immediately (like vertical resize), as opposed to only “snapping” to certain widths.
• Diagonal resize: The frame can be resized diagonally!
• Resize grips: It’s now easier to “grip” the edge of the frame to start resizing.
• Tablet mode transition: Smoother transition into tablet mode.

A new look for Action Center: Action Center has been redesigned based on your feedback to provide much clearer information separation and hierarchy. And the new design for Action Center also includes elements of our Fluent Design System such as acrylic! (and in case you were wondering, we’ve also added acrylic to our notification toasts!). As a reminder, you can customize the visible quick actions by going to Settings > System > Notifications & actions.

Note: we’re investigating a bug where notifications in the Action Center lose their outline if acrylic falls back to having no transparency. This will be fixed in a later flight.

Microsoft Edge Improvements

Pin your favorite websites to your taskbar: Pinned sites are back! We heard your feedback, and are in this build you can now pin a website to the taskbar from Microsoft Edge! We’ll use the site’s icon to give you quick access to your favorite sites right from the taskbar. Simply select “Pin this page to the taskbar” from the settings menu in Microsoft Edge.

Full screen mode (F11) in Microsoft Edge: This build introduces a new Full Screen experience in Microsoft Edge. Simply press F11 or choose the new Full Screen icon in the Settings menu to take your websites full-screen. You can exit Full Screen view by pressing F11 again, or by clicking the Restore icon in the top-right corner.

Annotate Books in Microsoft Edge: We’ve added the ability to annotate EPUB Books by highlighting in four colors, underlining, and adding comments. To get started, select some text, and choose an option from the menu.

To add notes as you read, select text, tap or click the Add a note button and add your note.

To edit or delete your note, click the Edit your note button.

Microsoft Edge PDF improvements: We’ve added more highlight colors and the option to Ask Cortana in PDFs in Microsoft Edge.

Other Microsoft Edge Improvements, including:

• Microsoft Edge’s splash page (seen when newly launched) so that the color transitions more smoothly to the Start and New Tab pages.
• You will now be able to close the Microsoft Edge app directly using the close button, even when a JavaScript dialog is showing.
• We’ve added an option to “Add tabs to favorites” from the right-click context menu on tabs. Using it will create a Favorites folder with all the sites open in tabs in the current window.
• New tabs will now animate more smoothly onto the tab bar when opened and closed.
• We’ve improved session restore behavior so that when a multi-window Microsoft Edge session is restored by clicking on a link (for example, from an email), the window in focus at the end of restoration is the one containing the new link.

Cortana Improvements

Taking Cortana reminders to the next level through vision intelligence: Most of us have experienced taking a picture of upcoming event poster or bookmarking an event site for future reference, only to forget about it later. With this build, we’re rolling out two new features starting with the en-us market to help you never again miss an event you’re interested in!

Cortana camera roll insights: With your permission, Cortana will now prompt you to create a reminder when she notices event posters in your camera roll! To try it out, make sure you’re signed into Cortana with your MSA or work account, and then give Cortana permission to access your camera roll via Settings > Cortana > Permissions & history > “Manage the information Cortana can access from this device”. The next time you take a picture of a flier for an upcoming event, Cortana will reach out asking if you want to create a reminder for that time.

Note: Cortana will only provide insights when your device is plugged into a power source and on an un-metered network.

Cortana Lasso: Are you a pen user? If so, Cortana can now help keep track of future events on your screen! Use the new lasso tool to circle the relevant information and Cortana will recognize the time, and offer suggested follow-ups through a context menu. Keeping track of upcoming events has never been easier! To try it out, go to Settings > Device > Pen & Windows Ink > Press and hold, and select Cortana Lasso in the dropdown picker. Find a website with upcoming event info, or an event poster someone shared in social media – once you have the event on your screen, just press and hold the pen back button, circle the time information, and watch Cortana do her magic. That easy!

Note: For this to work, your pen will need to support Press and Hold – for example the pen that came with the Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, or Surface Studio.

Evolving the handwriting experience in Windows 10

Using your feedback to evolve the handwriting experience: We’ve been hard at work incorporating your feedback, and with today’s build we’re introducing a new XAML-based handwriting panel – with more gestures, easier editing, emoji, and more!

New features include:

Write as much as you want in the panel with the new conversion & overflow model! As you write, you’ll now see your previous words convert to typed text within the handwriting panel. When you fill the handwriting panel and lift your pen off the screen, the text will shift so you have room to continue writing. Press the commit button to insert all the text and clear the slate.

Select text to edit it: See something you want to change? If you select text while the handwriting panel is open, that text will now appear within the panel so you can easily make alterations.

Make corrections within the handwriting panel by overwriting converted text: Was something misrecognized? Instead of using the suggested text alternate, you now have the option of just inking the correct letters right on top of the converted text!

Make corrections using ink gestures: Once your written words have been converted to type, or if you’ve selected existing text, you can now easily make simple edits from within the handwriting panel using our four new gestures: strikethrough, scratch, join, and split. Try it out!

Find My Pen: Don’t know where you put your pen? The pen doesn’t have a GPS, so we can’t help you there, but what we *can* do is tell you where you were when you last inked on your computer. Which is what we’ve done! Head over to Settings > Update & Security > “Find My Device” to see what it’s all about.

Entering emoji on your hardware keyboard just got easier: We’ve heard your feedback, and today we’re happy to announce the new Emoji Panel! Press Win + period (.) or Win + semicolon (;) while focus is in a text box and the Emoji Panel will pop up for you to quickly scroll through and pick the emoji you want.

In the “People” emoji category, you can change the skin tone of the emoji by clicking the button on the top-right:

n addition to using your mouse to select an emoji, you can also navigate through the panel by using the following keys:

• Arrow keys – Navigate among emoji
• Tab / Shift + Tab – Switch emoji category
• Enter – Select an emoji
• Esc – Close the panel​

Currently this emoji experience is only available when English (United States) is the active language of your keyboard. As a reminder, if you need to switch between the languages in your language list, you can use the Win + Space hotkey.

A new touch keyboard:

We have a totally new touch keyboard on Desktop! If you’ve been jealous of better keyboard features on your phone, then you’ll be happy to hear with today’s build we’re bringing those familiar phone keyboard experiences to your PC with our new XAML-based touch keyboard!

This includes many popular requests we’ve heard from you such as:

• Enhanced Text Prediction
• Improved emoji experience
• One-handed touch keyboard
• Shape writing with the one-handed touch keyboard
• A new touch keyboard settings menu
• Dictation on the Desktop

Windows 10 build 16215 feature a lot of other settings. You can learn about them from the official change log. Improvements were made for Settings, Windows Update, Game Bar, Bash on Ubuntu (Windows Subsystem for Linux), Ease of Access, Hyper-V. We'll review all these changes separately in the upcoming articles.

If you are on the Fast ring of the Windows Insiders program, then go to Settings -> Update & security -> Windows Update -> Check for updates.

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