Microsoft releases Windows 10 20H1 Build 18932 with notification improvements

When it’s not crowing about the cutting edge abilities of Windows 1.0, Microsoft is busy working on the next big feature update for Windows 10, due out next year.

Today it rolls out Build 18932 which introduces some eye control improvements, and refined notification settings, among other changes.

Users controlling Windows with their eyes are now able to perform mouse drag and drop, and there have been improvements made to the pause and button clicking functions too. Settings now allows users to manage more eye control features.

Microsoft has made a number of welcome changes to how notifications work. These are:

  • When you receive a notification toast, there will now be an inline option to turn off notifications for that app, or head to the app’s notification settings.
  • When you dive into an app’s notification settings, you’ll find that pictures have been added to help articulate the impact of a certain settings.
  • Prefer to have all your notifications muted? You no longer have to go to the old sound control panel to do that -- it’s added as a top-level option in Notification & Actions Settings.
  • There’s a new direct link at the top of the Action Center to manage notifications, so it takes one less step to get to Notification & Actions settings. To make room for this, the "no notifications" text has been moved down to the middle of the Action Center, which also means your eyes don’t have to traverse as far to see it when you launch the Action Center from the bottom of the screen.
  • Finally, ever dismissed a notification you wanted to disable, and went to Notification & Actions Settings only to find the list of notification senders to be really really long? You can now sort the list by which apps most recently sent notifications.

General changes, improvements, and fixes in this build include:

  • Microsoft is in the process of converging settings sync engines to reduce complexity and improve reliability of sync. As of today, the older settings sync engine will be turned off for 20H1 builds and changes made to settings that have not yet been migrated to the new settings sync engine will stop being sent and received until that work is complete. Some settings may not be migrated. The full list of settings that have been supported for sync are available here, but the list is subject to change during 20H1. Synced settings that are impacted by this change include settings pertaining to taskbar orientation, wallpaper, theming, and others. Please note, you may notice a one-time receival of synced settings changes after you upgrade or reset your PC, but after that it will stop.
  • Microsoft has updated its indexing behavior to exclude common developer folders, such as .git, .hg, .svn, .Nuget, and more by default. This will improve system performance while compiling and syncing large code bases in the default indexed locations such as user libraries.
  • Fixed an issue where the update might have failed the first time you tried to download it with a 0xc0000409 error code.
  • Fixed an issue where recent updates might have failed with a 0x80070005 error code.
  • Fixed an issue for Home editions where some devices couldn’t see the "download progress %" change on the Windows Update page.
  • Fixed a race condition resulting in some Insiders seeing a large number of explorer.exe crashes in recent builds. This is also believed to be the root cause for some Insiders finding that Control Panel wasn’t launching.
  • Fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders finding that their File Explorer search box was rendering in an unexpectedly small space and crashed when clicked.
  • Fixed an issue where Settings would crash if you tried to add a language on the previous build.
  • In Word, after showing a "flash message" on a braille display, Narrator is now correctly showing just the current heading.
  • Microsoft made a small backend change to the updated Windows Ink Workspace to help improve the launch time.
  • Fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager unexpectedly showing 0 percent CPU usage in the Performance tab.
  • Fixed an issue that could result in a black remote desktop window for a few seconds when disconnecting from a remote desktop session.
  • Fixed a issue resulting in Direct3D 12 games crashing in the previous flight.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause certain apps to crash when you input Asian characters.
  • Fixed an issue for the Chinese Pinyin IME where, if you were in the middle of finalizing a phrase and clicked away, the next thing you typed wouldn’t show the characters.
  • Fixed an issue with the Chinese Pinyin IME where the mouse over highlight could get stuck on a particular candidate in the candidate window.
  • Fixed an issue with the Chinese Pinyin IME where the candidate window wouldn’t display when typing in the Microsoft Edge search box (Ctrl+F).
  • Fixed an issue resulting in not being able to use touch to open context menus on websites in Microsoft Edge after using pinch to zoom in and back out.
  • Narrator search mode will now reset scoping to all elements each time it is opened.
  • The data looks good, so Microsoft is now rolling out the fix for taskbar unexpectedly dismissing when invoking Start if set to autohide to all Insiders in Fast.
  • Fixed an issue where the Bluetooth Hands-Free audio driver (bthhfaud.sys) could get stuck when making or breaking a synchronous connection-oriented (SCO) link to the headset. This would cause all audio on the system to stop working until the system was rebooted.

Known Issues in this build are:

  • If you’re seeing failures installing games via the Xbox app, you can retry the install. If it continues failing, you may want to roll back to Build 18922.
  • There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. Microsoft is working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. Microsoft is also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future.
  • Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. Microsoft is investigating the issue.
  • Tamper Protection may be turned off in Windows Security after updating to this build. You can turn it back on. In August, Tamper Protection will return to being on by default for all Insiders.

Photo credit: charnsitr / Shutterstock

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