It’s been three years since Windows 10 rolled out. That said, Microsoft has released the New Windows 10 Insider preview to showcase the most innovative features. It brings additional improvements to Narrator and features your Phone app, an app that has been anticipated for a long time and is the biggest highlight of the upcoming update, estimated to come out later this year. The preview comes from the RS5 branch. However, the company is also rolling out builds from the 19H1 branch, which, as its name implies, is estimated to come early next year.
Since Windows 10 functions as a service, it constantly adds new features. There have been five major updates since Windows 10 rolled out: November Update, Anniversary Update, Creators Update, Fall Creators Update and April 2018 update.
Your Phone app
The app was initially introduced at Microsoft’s Build 2018 developer conference that took place in May. The app is capable of mirroring your phone’s content to your Windows 10 running PC. It provides much easier access to your phone’s content, than sending it through the clouds or via USB to your PC.
“This week we’re introducing a set of features and updates across a variety of devices and platforms and a better blending between web and application environments for end users and developers. Last year at Build, you heard us talk about our commitment to meeting our customers where they are – across platforms. We’re expanding this work to not only bring more Microsoft 365 services across platforms and into applications, but to better connect customers’ existing PC experiences with their phones, helping to increase engagement for developers.”
“A new ‘Your Phone’ experience that enables a window into a user’s phone right from their PC for instant access to text messages, photos and notifications. Imagine being able to quickly drag and drop your phone’s photos into a document on your PC in one swift movement – without having to take your phone out of your pocket. ‘Your Phone’ will begin to roll out in the Windows Insider Program soon.”
For now, Your Phone app, as noted by the new Windows 10 Insider preview, will only be working on Android devices at first. Basically, you can take a picture using your phone’s camera and then display it to your PC. Your phone syncs your Android’s most recent photos and lets you drag and drop them to your computer’s desktop, or some other desired folder.
In the upcoming weeks, Windows Insider and Android users will be able to try out the app. It will display as a desktop pin which then takes you to Your Phone app. It is also important to note that the app can only work on Android 7.0 or above, with the only country being excluded from this feature being China.
Narrator improvements
The new Windows 10 Insider preview also features enhancements to Narrator, reliability in changing Narrator’s view. New features like Scan Mode (reading, navigating and text selection), QuickStart (relaunching and focusing) and Braille, which is a command when using the Narrator key.
The new Windows 10 Insider preview comes with general bug fixes that will be applied when the update starts rolling out, as well as some known features that Microsoft is working on fixing that can be found on Microsoft’s website.
