Following up on Tuesday's release of a new Redstone 5 Insider build for the Fast ring, Microsoft is rolling out a fresh build for the next big Windows 10 feature update, codenamed 19H1, for Skip Ahead Insiders. Coming in at build number 18219, today's release mostly focuses on Narrator improvements, but there are also plenty of general fixes and changes tagging along as well.
What's new
Narrator improvements
- Reliability: We have made improvements in Narrator reliability.
- Scan Mode: Reading and navigating while in Scan Mode has been improved. Selecting text in Scan Mode has also been improved. Selecting forward in Edge has some known issues that we are actively investigating.
- QuickStart: The link in settings to relaunch the QuickStart should now reliably be working and will launch from the very first Welcome page. The QuickStart should also more reliably take focus when Narrator is launched, which means Narrator should start reading it automatically.
- Providing Feedback: The keystroke to provide feedback has changed. The new keystroke is Narrator + Alt + F. This will work both in the Standard and Legacy layouts. Note: The Legacy layout also allows you to use Narrator + E to send us feedback.
- Move Next, Move Previous, and Change View: When changing Narrator's view to either characters, words, lines or paragraphs the Read Current Item command will read the text of that specific view type more reliably.
- Keyboard command changes: The keystroke to Move to beginning of text has changed to Narrator + B (was Narrator + Control + B), Move to end of text has changed to Narrator + E (was Narrator + Control + E).
- Braille: Improved usage of Braille commanding when using the Narrator key from the braille display.
General changes, improvements, and fixes
- We fixed an issue resulting in Notepad's "Search with Bing" feature searching for "10 10" instead of "10 + 10" if that was the search query. We also fixed an issue where accented characters would end up as question marks in the resulting search.
- We fixed an issue where Ctrl + 0 to reset the zoom level in Notepad wouldn't work if the 0 was typed from a keypad.
- We fixed an issue resulting minimized apps having squished thumbnails in Task View.
- We fixed an issue resulting in the tops of apps in tablet mode being clipped (i.e. missing pixels).
- We fixed an issue where the taskbar would stay on top of full-screened apps if you had previously hovered over any grouped taskbar icon to bring up the extended list of previews, but then clicked elsewhere to dismiss it.
- We fixed an issue where the icons in the Microsoft Edge extension pane were drawing unexpectedly close to the toggles.
- We fixed an issue where Find on Page in Microsoft Edge would stop working for open PDFs once the PDF had been refreshed.
- We fixed an issue where Ctrl-based keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl + C, Ctrl + A) didn't work in editable fields for PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge.
- We fixed the issue where if the Narrator key is set to just Insert, sending a Narrator command from a braille display should now function as designed regardless if the Caps Lock key is a part of the Narrator key mapping.
- We fixed the issue in Narrator's automatic dialog reading where the title of the dialog is being spoken more than once.
- We fixed the issue where Narrator won't read combo boxes until Alt + down arrow is pressed.
The Skip Ahead ring is no longer accepting new enrollments, so this build is only available to those who managed to get in while it was open. However, as Redstone 5 testing continues to wind down, expect 19H1 builds to start hitting the Fast ring once this fall's update ships out to everyone.
For now, if you count yourself among those in the Skip Ahead ring, you can grab build 18219 via Windows Update now. And for the full look at what's new, along with this build's known issues, check out Microsoft's full release notes on the Windows blog.
