





Hello Windows Insiders!

Thank you very much to those of you who joined in on yesterday’s Beam webcast for our Bug Bash! It was a pleasure to hear from so many familiar names in real time. We loved talking with you all and definitely want to do so more often. We will vary the times so that we can hit various regions around the world!

Are you a Windows Developer? Today is Windows Developer Day! Check out our livestream from 9am-1pm PST, which outlines what’s new for developers in the Windows 10 Creators Update. Whether you’re building for the web or UWP, the latest consumer app or line of business tool, there’s something in it for you. Tomorrow will be our “Developer focus” day for the Bug Bash, so tune in today to learn what’s new, and get ready to bash on it! We’ll have a new set of Developer-focused quests ready for you in the Feedback Hub tomorrow.

Today we are excited to be releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15031 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.

What’s new in Build 15031

Do more at once with the new Compact Overlay window: Ever want to continue watching a movie while switching app to check your email? Or keep an eye on your video chat even as you’re browsing the web? We do all the time! Some tasks don’t require the user’s full attention but is perfect to leave at the corner of the screen so we’re introducing a new compact overlay mode for UWA app developers. When an app window enters compact overlay mode it’ll be shown above other windows so it won’t get blocked. The best part is that compact overlay windows work just like normal windows in all other ways so app developers can tailor the experience with what they already know. Updates to the Movies & TV app and Skype Preview app will take advantage of compact overlay windows in the near future!

Introducing Dynamic Lock: Dynamic Lock automatically locks your Windows 10 PC when you’re not around based the proximity of a Bluetooth-paired phone. If your Bluetooth-paired phone is not found near your PC, Windows turns off the screen and locks the PC after 30 seconds. To enable Dynamic Lock, make sure your phone is paired to your PC via Bluetooth and go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options and toggle Dynamic lock to “on”.

NOTE: See known issues below regarding a bug preventing PCs on this build from successfully pairing devices via Bluetooth.

New Share icon: We’re introducing a new share icon. Apps that used the “share” font glyph in Segoe MDL2 assets should get the change automatically. You can read more about the change here.

Windows Game Bar improved full-screen support: We got a ton of feedback on Game Bar and we are continually adding more titles with this support. In this build, we’ve added support for 52 additional games in full-screen mode with Windows game bar. As always, just hit WIN + G to invoke Game Bar to capture a recording or screenshot.

Aion

Borderlands 2

Call of Duty Black Ops III

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Civilization VI

Company of Heroes 2

Crusader Kings 2

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Dishonored 2

Elite: Dangerous

Euro Trucks 2 Simulator

Europa Universalis IV

Eve Online

F1 2016

Fallout New Vegas

Far Cry 4

Football Manager 2016

Football Manager 2017

Garry’s Mod

Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Hearts of Iron IV

Hitman – Full Experience

Killing Floor 2

Lineage 2 – The Chaotic Throne

Mafia III

Mass Effect 3

Mechwarrior Online

Metro 2033 Redux

Metro Last Light Redux

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

Need for Speed

Path Of Exile

Planet Coaster

Planetside 2

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare: Deluxe Edition

Pro Evolution Soccer 2016

Project CARS

Roblox

Smite

Source Engine Titles/Half Life 2

Team Fortress 2

TERA

The Sims 3

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Titanfall 2

Total War: Attila

Watch_Dogs 2

World of Warplanes

XCOM 2

Tip: You can control this feature through the Windows Game bar settings. In the settings dialog, look for the “Show Game bar when I play full-screen games” checkbox. See Major Nelson’s post on Game bar for more info on how to adjust settings for best game performance.

Other changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed the issue causing Tencent apps and games to crash or work incorrectly.

We’ve updated OOBE so that if there’s no detected audio output device, for example with VMs, it now skips Cortana’s introduction.

[GAMING] We fixed the issue causing popular games may experience crashes or black screens when trying to load due to a platform issue.

[GAMING] We fixed the issue where Game Mode is enabled system wide by default, however, the ON/OFF toggle in Settings will incorrectly show it as being OFF until the user manually toggles the Setting to ON which will cause it to update and accurately display the status of Game Mode system wide.

We fixed an issue where the night light quick action was unexpectedly disabled in the last Insider flight.

We fixed an issue resulting in audio going quiet each time the Start menu is opened after a SpeechRuntime.exe crash.

Dragging apps from the all apps list to pin on Start’s tile grid will now work. We also fixed an issue on recent builds where some tiles might unexpectedly appear blank and with a name starting with “P~…” after upgrading.

We fixed an issue where Win + Shift + S wouldn’t work to capture a region of the screen if the Snipping Tool was already running. We also fixed an issue where taking a snip with the Snipping Tool would fail on 4k monitors when 60-80% was selected.

We fixed an issue resulting in “Fn”+”Pause/Break” key not working to pause the checking progress when running chkdsk.

We fixed an issue where resizing windows with a pen would be unexpectedly slow. We also fixed an issue where resizing a window across monitors with different DPIs could be unpredictable.

We fixed an issue where the Windows Ink highlight preview wouldn’t be visible in Web Notes when Microsoft Edge was using dark theme.

We’ve improved gesture recognition for 3 finger swipes on precision touchpads.

We fixed an issue where a number of files with the name GLOB(0xXXXXXX) could be unexpectedly found in the system root directory after upgrading.

We fixed an issue where you couldn’t rename disk volumes via File Explorer in recent flights.

We fixed an issue where rapidly tapping a button to bring up the new Share experience, for example in Microsoft Edge, could result in the Share UI not coming up again until the device had been rebooted.

We fixed an issue resulting the lists of thumbnails in Photos and Groove Music visibly shifting up when the app resumed.

We fixed an issue where the Themes Settings page would blink when a theme was deleted.

We’ve updated the help string on each page of Settings to be a bit more succinct.

We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to type ę on the Polish keyboard into the Settings search box.

We fixed an issue where Cortana Background Task Host might have ended up using an unexpectedly large amount of CPU in recent flights. We also shorted the two factor authentication notification from Cortana so that it won’t be truncated.

We fixed an issue where the UI to input credentials wouldn’t have keyboard focus after initiating a remote connection to another PC.

We’ve improved reliability when handling malformed Gifs in XAML-based apps.

The icons should now be shown as expected instead of squares under Settings > Gaming.

Known issues for PC

[UPDATED] IMPORTANT: You may see “Initializing…” when attempting to download this build and the download progress indicator shown when downloading this build may seem broken under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. It may look like you’re getting stuck at 0% or at other percentages. Ignore the indicator and be patient. The build should download fine, and the installation should kick off. See this forum post for more details .

While we fixed the primary bug causing this issue, some Windows Insiders may still hit nonstop exceptions in the Spectrum.exe service causing their PC to lose audio, disk I/O usage to become very high, and apps like Microsoft Edge to become unresponsive when doing certain actions such as opening Settings. As a workaround to get out of this state, STOP the Spectrum.exe service and delete C:ProgramDataMicrosoftSpectrumPersistedSpatialAnchors and reboot. For more details, see this forum post.

Going to Settings > Devices will crash the Settings app. You will be unable to pair a Bluetooth device. Bluetooth quick actions from Action Center also does not work.

You will not be able to launch the Connect UX via Action Center, Win + K, or Settings (it will crash upon launch). This will impact wireless projection scenarios.

[GAMING] Some popular games might minimize to the taskbar when launched. You can click on the game on the taskbar to get the game back.

[GAMING] Certain hardware configurations may cause the broadcast live review window in the Game bar to flash Green while you are Broadcasting. This does not affect the quality of your broadcast and is only visible to the Broadcaster.

Microsoft Edge F12 tools may intermittently crash, hang, and fail to accept inputs.

Microsoft Edge’s “Inspect Element” and “View Source” options don’t correctly launch to the DOM Explorer and Debugger, respectively.

Under Settings > Update & security > Windows Update you might see the text “Some Settings are managed by your organization” even though your PC isn’t being managed by an organization. This is a bug caused by an updated flight configuration setting for Insider Preview builds and does not mean your PC is being managed by anyone.

On some PCs, audio stops working sporadically with ‘device in use’ error”. We are investigating. Restarting the audio service may fix things for a bit.

The Action Center may sometimes appear blank and transparent without color. If you encounter this, try moving the taskbar to a different location on screen.

The icon for Windows Insider Program under Settings > Update & security is shown as a square.

ADDED 2/10: Users of the JAWS screen reader may have difficulty using the Start Menu, logging into their computer, and using Outlook with this build while JAWS is running. We are working with VFO to resolve the issue.

Community Updates

Last week our team traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to launch the second #Insiders4Good fellowship in East Africa. The response to our announcement was tremendous and the Windows Insider Program was talked about in 11 sessions, interviews, press events and panels across the two days. You all are famous!

We continue to learn about the more developing parts of the world and today, we are celebrating Nigeria Day, a day to reflect upon our learnings from and investments in our time spent in Africa. We have invited the entire Windows org to come and bug bash on our 2G network using some standard quests (install Windows, join the Windows Insider Program, set up your machine, etc.) so our team can develop more empathy for what most of the world experiences quite often. We will have a full recap of our experience next week!

Happy bug bashing—and see you on the next Beam live stream on Saturday 7-9 pm PST.

Keep hustling team,

Dona <3