Windows 10 build 18970 hits the Fast ring with new tablet experience for 2-in-1 PCs

What you need to know

• A new Windows 10 20H1 preview build is now available for Fast ring Insiders.
• The update pushes the build number to 18970 and brings a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 PCs.
• This build also adds the new Cortana experience for everyone and introduces a cloud download option for resetting your PC.

Windows Insiders on the Fast ring can get their hands on a new Windows 10 20H1 preview build today. The update brings the build number up to 18970, and it adds several notable new features. Chief among them is a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 PCs, which is available as a beta for now.

While the new tablet experience for 2-in-1s is the most notable visual update in build 18970, this update also brings the ability to reset your PC back to a fresh state via a cloud download. The new Cortana experience is also now rolling out to everyone on the Fast ring.

Here's a look at all of what's new and fixed in 18970.

What's new in build 18970

Introducing a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 convertible PCs

• We are beginning to roll out a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 convertible PCs as a Beta to Windows Insiders. This new experience allows users entering tablet posture to stay in the familiar desktop experience without interruption, plus a few key touch improvements:
  • Increased spacing between Taskbar icons.
  • earch box on taskbar collapsed into an icon.
  • File Explorer switches to touch optimized layout
  • Touch keyboard auto invokes when you tap text fields.

Introducing a new Reset this PC option–Cloud Download

• Reset this PC now provides users a new choice to download Windows or use local reinstall. Previously, Reset this PC was only able to do a local reinstall and would build a new Windows installation from existing Windows files. When this feature was introduced in Windows 10 version 1507, it provided the advantage of enabling Windows to be recoverable without requiring extra disk space to store a compressed, backup copy of Windows in a hidden partition. We've heard feedback that some of you would prefer to use your high-speed internet connection to speed up this process by just downloading Windows.

Continuing the Cortana rollout

• The new Cortana experience is now available to all Insiders in the Fast ring in the United States. If it's available on your device and you haven't tried it out already, we'd love to hear your feedback! We've posted a Quest in the Feedback Hub to help you get started.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

• We fixed a DWM memory leak that was impacting the previous two flights.
• We fixed an issue resulting in some WSL distros not loading (Issue #4371).
• We fixed an issue impacting a small number of Insiders, involving a lsass.exe crash and resulting in a message saying, "Windows ran into a problem and needs to restart."
• We fixed an issue resulting in WIN+(period) closing if you tried to search for an emoji when focus was set to a text field in an Electron app.
• We fixed two issues that could result in Settings crashing when interacting with options on the Search page.
• We've done some work to help improve the launch performance of Settings when the Setters header is visible.
• We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders experiencing a bug check with BTHport.sys in recent flights. I>- t's important to periodically back up your data. Starting in recent Insider builds, Windows Home and Pro users without a first party backup solution will now see a friendly reminder to consider setting up a backup option that is included with Windows. If you'd prefer to turn this off, there's an option to do so in the notification.
• We're working on addressing feedback about the acrylic in certain surfaces not appearing immediately. In this build, it's fixed for Start menu, the volume flyout, the network flyout, the clock & calendar flyout, and notification toasts.
• We've made some bug fixes and improvements to Magnifier reading capabilities.
• Improved Magnifier performance when moving the mouse around the screen.
• We resolved an issue where Control + Alt + L would not put Magnifier into Lens mode.
• No one likes bugs, so we squashed several of them related to the new text cursor indicator. Text cursor indicator now appears and disappears more reliably. We also fixed an issue where text cursor indicator preview in settings did not change size when text scaling was on.
• We have made improvements in Magnifier reliability.
• We fixed an issue where the File Explorer search suggestions weren't being read out by Narrator.
• We fixed an issue in Narrator where it would speak "unknown" if you had the "Header Status" column enabled within Outlook as you arrowed between different email messages.
• We fixed a couple Narrator dialog reading issues. Narrator would sometimes speak "empty document" or stop the dialog reading too early.
• We fixed an issue where Narrator would not always speak the group name of a radio button on web pages.
• We fixed an issue with Narrator and Excel not speaking the column header when arrowing between cells in a table.
• We fixed an issue where Narrator would only speak "item" when navigating by table cells in an Outlook email instead of reading the entire cell's contents.
• Narrator will now read webpages from the top of the page and not at the main landmark with a fallback to find a paragraph. Thank you for your feedback!
• Narrator now supports the aria-haspopup property.
• Improved Outlook performance and stability when reading mail messages in Outlook.
• We have made improvements in Narrator reliability.
• We made a change to Narrator input learning, so you just have to press Narrator + 1 once to turn input learning off. Thank you for your feedback.
• We fixed an issue when a user navigated to a webpage in Edge, Narrator would read just the URL field and not the webpage.
• We fixed an issue when a user was replying to an email in Outlook, Narrator was automatically reading the message while the user was trying to type.

If you're enrolled in the Fast ring, you can grab build 18970 now via Windows Update. For more, including a list of known issues, you can check out Microsoft's full release notes.