Microsoft’s plan to split Windows 10 from shell is happening
Windows 10 preview shows signs of Windows OS separating from the shell in line with Microsoft’s modular plans.
Microsoft’s latest preview of next spring’s major feature update to Windows 10 brings improvements to Feedback Hub and better controls over restarting apps.
The new Windows Insider fast ring build, 18965 from the 20H1 branch, comes a week after Microsoft hived off Notepad and put in the Microsoft Store so the app can be fixed outside the regular Windows 10 release cycle. Before that it added support for the standalone Cortana app and added an ‘always on top’ mode to the Calculator app.
This latest update addresses users’ request for direct control over when Windows automatically restarts apps that were open when a PC is restarted.
Users can search for a new setting called “restart apps” in the settings search box or from the Start menu. Toggling the new setting to ‘on’ will automatically save restartable apps when users sign out and restart them upon signing in again.
The Feedback Hub has also been refreshed with a new search user interface that should help users more easily distinguish between problems and suggestions via icons and different colors for each.
Microsoft is also working to solve the issue of how problems are highlighted. While voting on suggestions has worked fairly well in helping engineers understand what users want, Microsoft notes that voting on problems was “trickier” because they’re not driven by popularity.
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The company has created a new “Add similar feedback” feature so that users can select a problem that looks like the one they’re experiencing, which takes them to a feedback form with a pre-populated title. Users can edit the title and add their own description of what’s happening.
Users on this build might notice Microsoft’s new “Cloud download” option in the Windows Recovery Environment under “Reset this PC”, however Microsoft notes that it’s not actually working yet.
The company has also released a new version of Chromium-based Edge to its developer channel and has made its brand new Beta channel build available from the Microsoft Edge Insider page.
Tracking Prevention, a privacy featured announced in June, is now “fully available” in the Canary and Developer channels. It’s also added form filling and password syncing to both channels, while the browser’s new Collections feature is available in the Canary channel.
Microsoft notes that it has fixed a bug that caused searches made from the address bar use Bing, even if the user had selected different search provider.
Some Edge preview users have complained that Edge’s new tab interface doesn’t allow them to hide the Bing search bar and that only Microsoft accounts can be used to sign into the browser.
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