After a week off, Microsoft is rolling out a brand new Insider Preview build for Windows 10 on PC and Mobile! Today's builds are 16251 for PC, and 15235 for Mobile. At this point, these builds will be mostly focused on general OS improvements and bug fixes on the lead up to release.
Microsoft is actually rolling out two builds for PC today. One build is for the Fall Creators Update, and the other is for Redstone 4, the update coming after the Fall Creators Update. As of right now, these builds are essentially identical, but over time they will diverge.
What's new for PC?
- Windows lets you link your phone and PC: You may remember at Build we talked about PCs and phones working better together. With Build 16251, we are introducing the first set of features that enable "linking" your phone to your PC. This build's scenario is focused on cross-device web-browsing. Today, we're asking for you Windows Insiders to help us test this experience out using your Android phones. Support for iPhone is coming very soon, stay tuned.
- Get web search results in Cortana without opening your browser: Now you can view the results that Cortana has for you without launching the web browser. For some questions, the Cortana pane will expand automatically, quickly showing you exactly what you need to know. It works with movies, celebrities, stock prices, weather, flight status – you name it!
- Use Cortana voice commands to lock, sign-out, shutdown, or turn off your PC: We have now enabled the ability for you to use Cortana to turn off, restart, lock, or sign-out of Windows. While previously announced, we haven't fully enabled it via the cloud until now.
- Use sign-in info to apply settings after a restart or update: The advanced Windows Update feature to use your sign-in info to automatically finish setting your device after an update has been extended to regular reboots and shutdowns. When you log in and initiate a reboot or a shutdown through power options available on the Start Menu and various other locations, Windows will automatically setup your account after it's has booted back up.
What's new for Mobile?
Yes, Mobile got a new feature. We can't believe it either.
- Switch to portrait mode orientation in Continuum: When using Continuum on a monitor in portrait, Continuum will display in a portrait orientation.
General improvements for Mobile
- This build also includes all the improvements from KB4025342.
- We fixed an issue where downloading large apps could report out of disk space when there is sufficient space available.
- We fixed an issue where installing apps (particularly games) from the Windows Store would sometimes fail with "Error, see details".
- We fixed an issue where a device could not be unlocked after removing/turning off Windows Hello.
- We fixed an issue where Cortana would not provide the region when saying "Your region is set to" and then "Is that right?".
- We fixed a Turkish localization issue where the string "We need to fix your Microsoft account before you can use shared experiences …" was shown in English.
As always, you can check out the full changelog, including a list of known issues at the Windows Blog!
Finally, for those who jumped into the new "Skip ahead" feature this is what to look for when the download begins.
While the build numbers are the same thers3_release (for Redstone 3, or Fall Creators Update) versus rs_prerelease (Redstone 3 plus new inbox apps and code) is the difference. Later, those build numbers will diverge.
