Microsoft releases Windows 10 Build 21276 with news and interests on the taskbar

After a brief hiatus for the holidays, Microsoft today rolls out a new Windows 10 preview build for those Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Build 21286 is being offered to all Dev Channel testers and brings with it a major change to the Windows taskbar -- the addition of a 'news and interests' feed.

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This change sees Microsoft introducing an integrated feed of dynamic content including news and weather updates, and users will be able to personalize the feed to suit their interests.

Microsoft explains the benefits as:

• Staying up to date: Quickly glance at your news and interests directly from the taskbar. Get caught up on the latest headlines, weather, sports, and more, then go back to whatever you were doing without disrupting your workflow. You have convenient access to news and interesting content from over 4,500 global brands such as The New York Times, BBC or The Verge, and gorgeous live weather maps. Select an article to open a streamlined reading view with fewer distractions, so you can save time and stay focused.
• Personalize your feed: You can tell us which content you like seeing or don’t like seeing (select More options … and choose "More stories like this" or "Fewer stories like this") and over time, more stories about the things you care about will show up in your feed, including ones you might otherwise miss. You can also use emoji to react to stories, too.
• You’re in control: At Microsoft, we believe privacy starts with putting you in control and giving you the tools and information, you need to make informed choices. Through news and interests, there is quick access to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard. Through the Microsoft Edge browser, there are built-in controls to limit tracking from advertisers and third parties. And if news and interests doesn’t appeal to you, you can easily turn it off by right-clicking on the taskbar.

Going forward, Microsoft plans to add the news and interests feed to other areas of Windows, including the Edge browser.

This feature is currently only available to Windows Insiders in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and India, and requires you to have the new Chromium Edge browser installed. You will need to reboot once you’ve installed the update to activate the feature.

In addition, this build also lets you create and manage Storage Spaces from within the Settings app, and run any specified commands on start up in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Other changes and improvements include:

• Based on feedback, (GitHub issue #1495) Microsoft is adding an option to disable automatic controller-to-virtual-key mapping for UWP apps. If you have a need to do this, add the following registry key, with a DWORD value of Enabled set to 0: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Input\Settings\ControllerProcessor\ControllerToVKMapping.

Fixes in this build are:

• Fixed and issue causing some Insiders to see a popup that says "Your PC ran into a problem and restart in 1 min" after logging in to Windows with either an Azure Active Directory or Active Directory account on Build 21277.
• Fixed an issue where no drives appeared under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes.
• Fixed an issue resulting in some printers getting stuck on connecting when added from Settings.
• Fixed an issue that could result in sometimes unexpectedly being signed out of apps and websites after rebooting your PC.
• Fixed an issue where the Windows Security icon would sometimes be unexpectedly large in the context menu when shift-right-clicking taskbar icons.
• Fixed an issue that could result in MediaTranscoder hanging when transcoding certain files.
• Fixed an issue where audio playing from UWP apps wasn’t ducking after pressing the microphone icon to start Cortana listening.
• Fixed an issue that could result in VPN entries in the network flyout getting stuck at Action Needed until you pressed Cancel and Connect again.
• Fixed an issue impacting touch targeting when resizing windows using touch.
• Made some fixes to our emoji keyword search results based on feedback, including adding a new keyword so that typing "lgbtq" will now return the rainbow flag emoji. Please continue sharing feedback with us in the Feedback Hub under Input and Language > Emoji Panel.
• Fixed an issue that could result in the Read Aloud options in Magnifier being unexpectedly greyed out.
• Fixed an issue where the "Help make Narrator better" toggle in Narrator Settings was disabled for Insiders.
• Fixed an issue so that Narrator will now read Excel cell contents when verbosity is set to 2.
• Fixed an issue where Narrator might not announce whether a combo box was in expanded or collapsed state.
• Fixed an issue impacting Narrator’s ability to read the names of certain hyperlinks on websites in Microsoft Edge.
• Fixed an issue impacting Narrator’s ability to read code windows in Visual Studio.
• Fixed an issue for high contrast users that could result in Settings crashing when going to Ease of Access.

Known issues are:

• Microsoft is working on a fix for an issue Insiders have reported where certain games like State of Decay 2, or Assassin’s Creed, may hang or crash when launching.
• Microsoft is investigating an issue where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War may not launch starting with this build. If you play these games, you may wish to pause updates until the issue is resolved.
• You may experience some rendering / graphic issues after resizing certain app windows. If you minimize all your app windows and open them again it should resolve the issue (Press the Windows key plus D twice).
• Microsoft is investigating an issue where some 32-bit systems may lose network connection after taking this build. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows, you may wish to pause updates until the issue is resolved.
• When Xbox Game Bar is launched from Start or via the Windows key + G when using a text editor, the computer may appear unresponsive. If you encounter this, dismiss the Xbox Game Bar with WIN + G and end the GameBar.exe process from Task Manager.
• Miracast users may experience very low frame rates in this build.
• Microsoft is investigating reports that starting with Build 21277 where explorer.exe / the Windows shell is hanging and or crashing.
• Microsoft is looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
• Aero Shake is disabled in this build. To enable it, you will need to go here in Registry Editor and create a new DWORD entry named DisallowShaking with a value of 0: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
• Live previews for pinned sites are not enabled for all Insiders yet, so you may see a grey window when hovering over the thumbnail in the taskbar. Microsoft is continuing to work on polishing this experience.
• Microsoft is working on enabling the new taskbar experience for existing pinned sites. In the meantime, you can unpin the site from the taskbar, remove it from the edge://apps page, and then re-pin the site.
• [News and interests] Sometimes the news and interests flyout may show as offline even when the user is online.
• [News and interests] Users cannot navigate into the news and interests flyout using keyboard.
• [News and interests] In some scenarios, the news and interests flyout may appear empty with no content.
• [News and interests] Sometimes the news and interests flyout cannot be dismissed with touch and pen.
• [News and interests] News and interests uses more taskbar space on the left than expected.