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Next Windows 10 Update Lets You Go Back in Time


straycat19

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The next Windows 10 update is set to arrive on Monday, April 30. Most Windows updates are pretty boring affairs, consisting mainly of security and reliability tweaks, but next week Windows 10 users will get some interesting new features including the ability to go back in time.

 

The focus of the update is time and the efficient use of it. The first new feature is called Timeline, and it allows you to go back in time up to 30 days to find your unfinished stuff. By that, Microsoft means anything you do using Microsoft Edge or Office 365 on your Windows 10 PC, iOS, or Android device while logged in to a Microsoft account. If you are part way through an online order, or wrote a document on your smartphone and want to finish it on your PC, Timeline is meant to make searching for and accessing that content seamless across devices. The ability to retrieve stuff up to 30 days in the past is a nice added feature.

 

Next up is Focus Assist, which is all about removing distractions when trying to work or relax. With Focus Assist turned on in Windows 10, all social media updates and notifications in general will be muted. When turned off, a summary of what you missed is presented as a quick recap to see if you care. It's also possible to automatically turn Focus Assist on for regular periods of the day when you don't want to be distracted.

 

Microsoft Edge is also receiving new features which aren't exactly new. Audio can now be muted per tab by clicking an audio icon, there's a full-screen distraction-free reading mode for web pages, e-books, and PDFs, and Edge will offer to save your address and payment details securely for easier online shopping. You'll also see a new Grammar Tools button, which can help with text comprehension by breaking down words on a page into syllables as well as highlighting nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

 

Finally, we have improved voice control in two forms. The first is Cortana, which once the April 2018 update is installed can control your smart home if compatible devices are present. Smart home appliances from ecobee, Honeywell, and Nest should all carry out the commands you give them via Cortana. Then we have Dictation, which has been much improved for recording your thoughts. Pressing Win+H allows you to talk and everything you say is written down. Microsoft is confident everyone will be impressed with how accurate Dictation has become.

 

If your Windows 10 computer seems to be working harder than usual on Monday, that's probably the April 2018 Update downloading and installing in the background. It may not happen until later in the week, though.

 

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Microsoft is finally naming its next Windows 10 update today. The Windows 10 April 2018 Update was originally scheduled to release on April 10th, but Microsoft hit a blocking bug that pushed the release to the very last day of April. Microsoft is now releasing its April update for people to manually download on Monday April 30th, before it’s more broadly rolled out to machines on May 8th.

 

Microsoft is changing up its naming structure for this particular Windows 10 update, after the company referred to it as the “Windows 10 Spring Creators Update” inside the operating system and in various public documentation until recently. “I think people were really craving a lot more simplicity,” explains Aaron Woodman, a director at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge. “We floated a number of different names to a lot of customers that provided that proactive feedback, and really the simplest way to help people understand the update was to give it a time that people can clearly understand and works really globally much more efficiently.”

 
Windows 10’s new Timeline feature
The Windows 10 April 2018 update includes a new Timeline feature for recalling previous apps you were working on across machines, or even the ability to open your browsing history from Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android. Microsoft is also adding a new dictation feature, alongside an improved Focus Assist feature for silencing notifications. Microsoft’s Edge browser is also getting a mute tab feature with this update, and the company is refreshing its Xbox Game Bar with a new design.

 

Most of the features in this latest update are fairly minor, but welcome changes for regular Windows 10 users. Microsoft is now pressing ahead with its next update, codenamed Redstone 5. The update, due later this year, will include clever tabs for apps, and will even feature a dark mode for File Explorer. Microsoft hasn’t named its future update just yet, and the company is looking for feedback on the new naming. “I actually honestly don’t know,” says Woodman, when asked whether the next update will have a similar name. “I believe this is a strong likely candidate to continue, but I also want to be willing to be wrong for customers as well.”

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/27/17289598/microsoft-windows-10-april-2018-update-release-date-features

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