You can now try out the 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.
To enable this:
Make sure you are signed in with your Microsoft Account (MSA).
On your phone – make sure “Send texts on all my Windows devices” is turned on.
On your PC – make sure you have chosen which phone to send messages through. You do this in the settings of the Messaging app on your PC (screenshot above).
Try it out and less us know what you think via the Feedback Hub.
NOTE: You may have noticed that Skype integration in the Messaging app in this build of Windows 10 Mobile has been removed. This is so Skype can streamline your experience, replacing the integration with the Skype UWP Preview app for mobile in an upcoming build. In the meantime, you can use the existing Skype for Windows Phone app available in the Windows Store.
Cortana in more languages
With this build, we are enabling Cortana for the Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French (Canada) languages for Mobile (available previously in PC builds). If you’re running the Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview in these languages – give Cortana a try and let us know what you think. For each new market and language, the Cortana Team works to develop a custom experience that is relevant in each individual market and language. These are early versions that we will continue improve based on your feedback and we look forward to hearing more from you.
Voice input is also now available for these languages. Set focus to a text field and tap the microphone above the keyboard to give it a try.
Here’s what’s fixed for Mobile
We fixed the issue causing Language and Speech packs to fail to download.
We fixed the issue where in some cases your phone’s screen may not turn on and become unresponsive and Windows Hello stops working if you used the power button to lock/unlock your phone quickly.
We fixed the issue where in some cases, users might get in a state where neither space or enter are working on the keyboard.
We fixed the issue causing Facebook Messenger and other apps like WeChat, Transfer My Data, and UC Browser from failing to launch from Start or All apps.
We fixed an issue where diverse emoji couldn’t be deleted from the text box in an interactive notification.
We have updated the autocorrection logic so that if you have a word that’s about to be autocorrected, tapping the word you just typed will now stop the autocorrection from happening.
We have updated the Glance screen so it will now reflect Ease of Access text scaling.
We fixed an issue where tethering over Bluetooth wouldn’t work if Bluetooth had never been turned on before.
We fixed an issue where you couldn’t set a sample image as a lock screen background.
Known issues for Mobile
Feedback Hub is not localized and the UI will be in English (U.S.) only even with language packs installed.
We’re investigating a crash with the Camera app when going into your camera roll.
There is an issue in which you may see duplicate apps under All apps showing as pending despite being installed and usable on your phone. You may also see some apps stuck in the Store. To get out of this state, just start and pause a download in the Store and then choose to “resume all” downloads.
You may see square boxes in certain apps when using some of the new emoji – we’re still getting support for the new emoji added throughout the systems, this will be resolved in a future build.
There is a bug we’re investigating that prevents some apps such as Tweetium from launching.
We’re investigating issues which cause mobile data to stop working but show as connected.
Glance on/off setting is not respected after updating to a new build. After updating, you can reset this setting to what you had before.
A new Build Released to the Fast Ring insiders, lots of cool new stuff to test:
Don’t miss the connect app it’s coooool!
Here’s what’s new in Build 14316
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”. For more details, see this blog post.
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 (Download here for U.S. and download here for China) 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.
Share map directions across devices: To date, people go through a lot of effort to manually connect the dots between devices—emailing links to open on other devices or re-doing a search on the phone to find directions to a location they were just looking at on the PC. Today, we’re breaking down one of those barriers by enabling you to access navigation details across devices through Cortana. Tell Cortana “directions to < place>” on your PC and she’ll send those same directions to your phone.
UPDATE: We are aware of issues in which some of these new features are not working correctly with Build 14295 on mobile. The next mobile build will allow these features to work more completely.
Making Cortana easier to setup on your device: If you are in Cortana supported markets and struggled to get Cortana enabled, this will automatically download the necessary speech language, if needed, and enable Cortana for you.
New and Updated Extensions for Microsoft Edge: A few weeks ago, we announced the availability of extension support for Microsoft Edge with more on the way. Today, we are excited to share with you some new extensions that you can try out – Pin It Button and OneNote Clipper. In addition, we have updated versions of Reddit Enhancement Suite, Mouse Gestures, and Microsoft Translator. To install these new extensions, just click on “More” (…) at the top right in Microsoft Edge and click “Extensions” to open the Extensions pane and click “Get extensions”.
Please note: There is change in this build that will break existing extensions installed on your PC in Microsoft Edge if they were previously installed using an older build. You can download the new installation files and re-install the existing extensions using the new installers.
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 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.
Virtual Desktop Improvements: You can now pin a window so it’s available on every desktop. To do this, launch Task View then right-click on the window you want to pin and choose “Show this window on all desktops”. Try pinning Skype or Groove Music so they’re always at your fingertips. And if you have a multi-mon setup, you might enjoy the ability to have your email app on the second monitor no matter which desktop you switch to.
New Update Progress Experience: When you PC installs today’s new build update – you will see a new progress experience for installing the update. This is part of an effort to align the experience of installing updates from Windows Update.
Updated Battery Settings and Battery Saving Experience: We have renamed “Battery Saver” settings page to be “Battery” since we believe a single entry point for all battery related settings including Battery Saver simplifies the user experience.
We also updated the Detailed Battery Use page so you can now manage the per-app background settings inline without going to a second page and added a new background settings option called “Managed by Windows”.
With this option, not only will the app stop running in the background when Battery Saver is enabled, but it will temporarily turn off apps with high battery drain that you haven’t used in a while or pinned to your Start screen till you next launch the application (shown as “Turned off by system” on the Detailed Battery Use page). We also added a prompt asking the user if they’d like to turn on Battery Saver when battery is at 20% – something we had with Windows Phone 8.1 that Insiders wanted to see us re-implement as we merged Battery Sense into the Settings app for both PC and mobile.
Updated Windows Update Settings: You can now set the time in which you are most active on your device by adjusting active hours under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. Windows Update will avoid automatically installing updates during your active hours on your device.
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.
Here’s what’s fixed for PC
We fixed the issue where on some PCs with TPM chips, such as the ASUS Zenbook UX31, you may have experienced glitchy audio and jumpy movement when using the trackpad due to the “tpm-maintenance” task running constantly in the background instead of once per boot-up like it should.
We fixed the issue where if you use Hyper-V and have a Virtual Switch configured for your network adapter, you might see an error indicator (red-colored “X”) for your network adapter in the notification area of your taskbar.
We polished the Wi-Fi flyout UI and fixed an issue where text entry into a Wi-Fi password field was noticeably top-aligned rather than centered.
We fixed an issue for where when using multiple monitors and full-screen apps like PowerPoint or Remote Desktop would crash Windows Explorer.
We fixed an issue where Cortana wasn’t showing Settings pages in the search results.
We have updated the Windows Update notification after updates have been installed so now clicking on the notification will take you straight to your update history.
We fixed an issue where desktop (Win32) apps pinned to the Start menu would sometimes move after updating to a new build.
We fixed an issue where “Update and Restart” and “Update and Shut Down” wouldn’t start an update.
Known issues
The Visual Studio emulator for Windows 10 Mobile and Hololens will fail with “An authentication error has occurred. The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted”. If you are a developer and require the emulator for building apps, we suggesting moving to the Slow ring and skipping this build until we can fix this issue.
[ADDED 4/7] We are investigating an issue where UWPs do not appear on the taskbar when minimized. When this happens, the app icons don’t show up on the taskbar and they are also not shown in ALT + Tab or Task View. The only way to maximize these apps is via Task Manager. Additionally, you can try restarting Explorer.exe from Task Manager to get out of this state.
We continue to investigate issues with Narrator and other screen reader apps that make them unable to read selected text in the Feedback Hub, Cortana, and other apps.
In Microsoft Edge, some large downloads may appear to get stuck at 99% completion. You can work around this issue by renaming the file in your downloads after closing Microsoft Edge. This workaround skips security checks on the file, so it should be used only with files from a trusted source.
In some cases, attempting to turn on Developer Mode on may crash the Settings app. If this happens, the workaround is to use these steps here to enable Developer Mode.
Some apps notifications may only show the icon – however the full text of the notification will be visible within Action Center.
This eBook will discuss Windows Server 2016 Virtualization, also known as Hyper-V 2016. Many Hyper-V components have evolved with each Microsoft release, and knowing this information is key to understanding the increased functionality and usability.
Many of the new features require the basic usage of PowerShell. You’ll find them documented throughout this eBook as examples of features that allow IT Professionals to leverage Hyper-V PowerShell scripts in their own environments.
The goal of this eBook is to provide the necessary tools to successfully test, and eventually manage, a Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V environment.
This list includes a limited set of Windows Phone 8.1 devices and does not include some devices that are currently running Windows 10 Mobile in the Windows 10 Mobile Insider program. As Windows 10 delivers significant new innovations, many older devices are not able to successfully upgrade without an impact on the customer experience. Our goal is to only offer the Windows 10 upgrade to devices that we are confident can continue to deliver a good customer experience.
Improvements to the Phone app: We know how important it is to stay informed when someone is trying to reach you, whether that’s through notifications, Live tiles on your Start screen, or directly within your communications applications. To help with this, we’ve added missed call and voicemail waiting indicators to the tabs inside the Phone app. Once you navigate to a tab with a missed call or voicemail – the indicator goes away. We’ve got another change coming that will keep the indicator in place until you navigate away from the tab. There is also a bug where you might not see the indicator clear right away – a fix is coming soon for this as well. Let us know what you think!
Updates to Outlook Mail & Calendar: Yesterday, we released an update to the Outlook Mail & Calendar apps that introduces some new features and improvements. In Outlook Mail, you can turn off the message preview text in the message list (Settings > Reading > Conversation and turning “Show preview text” off). You can also quickly get rid of junk email in your inbox by pressing down on a message to bring up the context menu and choosing ‘Move to Junk’. In Outlook Calendar, you can now let others know “I’ll be late” directly from meeting notifications.
Coming Soon – the Feedback Hub: When you open Insider Hub on this build, you will see a new welcome dialog for Feedback Hub. Coming in the next mobile and PC build – we are bringing together the Insider Hub and Windows Feedback apps into a single app called the Feedback Hub. The Feedback Hub carries over all of the best things from the previous two apps plus some new things Insiders will enjoy. For example, in addition to upvoting feedback, you will be able to also leave comments on feedback. We have also redesigned the homepage in Feedback Hub to bring together announcements and quests. Stay tuned as we’ll have more to say about the Feedback Hub with the next builds for mobile and PC when the app is ready for Insiders to use.
Here’s what’s fixed
We have addressed an issue where the background behind the All apps list would not have an overlay (causing it to appear too bright or too dark, depending on your background) if you went back to All apps list after launching an app.
We fixed an issue causing the title of a song in volume control to flicker a few times when you pressed play or changed tracks after a pause.
We fixed an issue some users were experiencing with Build 14267 where your device could hang while typing and reboot.
We made some more improvements to the Live tile refresh logic. First, if there are pending notifications for several Live tiles, we will now update them in one quick sweep across the Start screen rather than one at a time. Second, if a Live tile has both badge and content updates, they will now appear at the same time. Finally, apps will now launch faster from the Start screen if there are incoming Live tile updates at the same time.
We fixed an issue where Live tiles for certain apps (such as the Weather app) would sometimes unexpectedly be cleared of active notifications.
We fixed an issue in which the Start screen background would appear to stutter behind the tiles when scrolling up and down the Start screen on some devices such as the Lumia 950.
We fixed an issue where the keyboard would sometimes pop up when swiping over to the All apps list.
We fixed an issue where icons for certain apps would appear too tiny on Live folders on the Start screen if your phone was set to 350% DPI.
We fixed an issue where “More notifications” message in Action Center was not properly formatted.
We fixed an issue where for certain languages, pressing “@” button could result the contents of the clipboard being pasted.
We fixed an issue where notifications using custom sounds would be silent if the underlying audio file had been deleted. Now, if that file is not present, it will play the default notification sound.
Connected to wireless displays should now work by going to Action Center and expanding Quick actions and choosing “Connect”.
Known issues
We have updated the Bluetooth AVRCP profile on mobile to version 1.5. Some cars only tell Windows what they support and vice versa during the initial pairing ceremony. In order for this update to take full effect, you need to delete your existing Bluetooth pairing with your car and then re-pair. After doing so, if you notice any issues using media playback controls or missing artist or track info, please file a new feedback item including your car’s make, model, and year.
If you have a Microsoft Band 1 or 2 paired to your phone, it will no longer sync after updating to this build due to a system API failure that occurs after the update. If you want to get your Band syncing with your phone again – you can temporarily change the language of your phone as a short term workaround until we release a fix. Additionally, you can also choose to reset your phone to get out of this state – however you may experience this update issue again with the next build until we fix this issue. This issue may also impact Skype video and audio calls.
We are investigating an issue where the Gadgets app is not able to detect the Microsoft Display Dock on phones running Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview builds, and thus cannot update the firmware version. If you have a dock which has already been updated to version 4 then this will not affect you. If you have a dock that has not been updated, then you may experience some minor issues with USB-C stability.
Connectivity to older Wi-Fi networks using the WEP encryption security method may be broken. WEP is an insecure method for protecting your Wi-Fi connection but a small percentage of Windows users still use it. A workaround would be to configure your wireless routers to use WPA or WPA2 or wait for the next Insider flight when this is fixed.
Cortana in more languages: With this build, we are enabling Cortana for the Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) or French (Canada) languages! If you’re running the Windows 10 Insider Preview in these languages – give Cortana a try and let us know what you think. For each new market and language, the Cortana Team works to develop a custom experience that is relevant in each individual market and language. For instance, in Brazil – Cortana is fond of pasteis which is a common food found in many regions across Brazil. And in Mexico, we added local flavor to reflect the accent and language of the country. But our work is never complete and a big part of our development process is getting feedback from you. These are early versions that we will continue improve based on your feedback and we look forward to hearing more from you.
Cortana remembers things for you: We have all had those moments throughout a busy day where we need to remember something, but don’t have time to stop what we are doing to set a detailed reminder. With Cortana, you can now save useful information like the name of a book you want to read (ex: “remind me to read [insert book name]”), or a to-do item without a due date (ex: “remind me to wash the car”). You have the option to set specific details like location, time, and people at a later time so that Cortana will surface it when its most relevant. You can always view and edit all of these in the same place you see your reminders in Cortana today. In future builds Cortana will be able to retrieve these upon request, just like a real personal assistant would.
Updated logon experience: Previously on PC, there were two separate backgrounds for the Lock screen and then the logon screen. We’re merging the experience so there is just a single background – your Lock screen background. This is similar to the behavior seen on mobile. If you have a custom Lock screen background set, you will see your Lock screen background is now used for both the Lock screen and logon screen. If you’re a Windows Spotlight user – hold tight, you’ll see this change soon in a future build. We’re also working on some additional tweaks here to make the transition between the Lock screen and logging in much smoother.
Performance and Candidate improvements in Japanese IME: We have improved performance of IME especially on typing response. So your typing experience will be smoother than before. We also extended our prediction content and you can select wider variety of candidates from prediction candidate list.
A few other things for you to try
Sway integration with Photos app: Try out the Sway integration in the Photos app by going to one of your albums in the Photos app and clicking on “Tell your story with Sway” button. Then your album immediately becomes an interactive, web-based experience where you can use Sway to add section headers, text narration, captions, and other details to enhance the flow of your narrative and create your own story. For more on the Sway integration with the Photos app in Windows 10 – read this blog post.
March updates for the Xbox app (beta) for Windows 10: A new update to the Xbox app (beta) for Windows 10 will be bringing along some new features including a Gamerscore Leaderboard and an updated ‘Featured’ section. If you’re part of the Xbox One Preview, there are some good updates on the way for you too on the console. Read this blog post from Xbox Wire for all the details. You can download the Xbox app (beta) app for Windows 10 here from the Windows Store.
Here’s what’s fixed for PC
We fixed an issue where Microsoft Edge and Cortana were crashing for users with roaming profiles.
We fixed an issue where Cortana would continue to show reminders that have been completed.
We fixed an issue where items copied/moved to the desktop would not display until the desktop is manually refreshed by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing “Refresh” or pressing F5.
We fixed an issue where downloading certain drivers from Windows Update was causing some PCs to bluescreen.
Known issues for PC
We’re investigating an issue in which some Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book devices experience a freeze or hang and all input such as keyboard/trackpad and touch do not work. The workaround is to hold down the power button to force the device to hard-reboot.
We are continuing to track several issues reported by Insiders where some PCs will freeze or bluescreen when resuming from hibernation. Disabling hibernation is a workaround in some cases until this is fixed.
If you have Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Internet Security, or the Kaspersky Total Security Suite installed on your PC there is a known driver bug that prevents these programs from working as expected in builds from the Development Branch. We are partnering with Kaspersky to fix this issue for a future release, but at this time there are no known workarounds. While this issue is present, we recommend using Windows Defender or another third party anti-virus product of your choice to remain protected.
Turning on the “always show all icons in the notification area” setting disrupts the layout of the notification area (“systray”). Your notification area will look out of alignment.
We are seeing reports of crashes with apps such as QQ crashing due to an OS reliability issue we are currently investigating. This bug is also impacting older apps such as Windows Live Mail and Expression Encoder 4.
Windows Defender Offline, a great tool to do an offline scan of your pc has been around for a while, enabling you to create a bootable usb-stick or ISO/CD has been integrated into the latest build of Windows 10 Insider 14271.
Opening Settings / Update & Security / Windows Defender you’ll notice the new option scrolling down to the bottom.
Pressing the ‘Scan Offline’ Button will immediately start a reboot of your device
Your system will reboot in a ‘mini’ version of Windows only showing the Windows Defender application to work with
Defender runs a ‘Quick Scan’ (scans memory & system locations) and returns to your operating system.
Cool new feature to do some quick troubleshooting!
Feedback and firmware. Two things we know you’re passionate about. It is with these two things in mind that we bring you good news that will make your participation in the Insider Program even easier.
Previously for Insiders, if there was new firmware available for your device you would be required to recover your device to a production image using the Windows Device Recovery Tool and then re-join the Insider ring of your choosing. This was a painful experience and we listened to your feedback. That’s why we implemented the Production ring option in the Windows Insider application. When we made the first change to enable the Production ring, we also made note that we would work on making it even easier.
What is happening today?
Today we are launching firmware updates for a few Windows 10 Mobile devices. The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL will receive this firmware revision [1078.38.16025] in select markets. To receive this update today, Insiders will need to switch to the Production ring and check for updates. Windows Insiders that don’t move to the Production ring will receive these updates in early March as we synchronize Insider ring and Current Branch firmware publishing. Key improvements include:
Stability fixes
Improvements for GPS reliability
Improvements for call audio quality
Additionally, the LG Lancet (VW820) on Verizon and the Lumia 830 on AT&T, both in the US, will receive firmware updates. These new firmware version numbers are as follows:
LG Lancet [820.10300.11.101]
Lumia 830 [2179.0.15455.24047]
Due to device targeting restrictions, these updates are only available to devices running Windows Phone 8.1. Windows Insiders that would like this firmware immediately will need to recover to 8.1 using the Windows Device Recovery Tool, install the new firmware, and then update to Windows 10 Mobile once again.
What comes next?
Early March is our next key milestone. The Production ring option makes it easier to obtain firmware, but it doesn’t solve the other half of the equation: Insiders need to receive firmware updates in a timely manner without ring-hopping.
With this goal in mind we’ve been hard at work developing the necessary update pipeline to make this possible. What does this mean?
When available, the new firmware will be automatically delivered to your device
Insiders will no longer need to switch to the Production ring to receive firmware updates
This new firmware update pipeline will be completed in early March
After this change, Insiders and Retail users will receive firmware updates at the same time, pending availability for a given make/model/variant
For the current wave of firmware updates rolling out, Insiders will see a small gap in time for receiving this new update, pending the pipeline completion. We know this isn’t optimal. Insiders want the new firmware too and we don’t blame you! This is simply a matter of timing for completing the work needed on our side. As noted, Insiders will see automatic delivery of new firmware beginning in early March, including the new updates released today. This doesn’t mean that all devices will have firmware updates, but for those that do… you’ll receive them automatically without any additional work required on your part.
